I know this is unusual but I thought I might post the letters page from today's smh just to get a sample of what people think of what is a bit of a smear campaign against the would be PM

I'm interested 2 know what you all think, whether a person's personal life should be upstanding if they are in Politics, personally that just doesn't seem like any fun!

Here's the letters (the names have been removed 2 protect the innocent...

Latham's done, now for the other contenders ...
July 5, 2004

Now that the weekend media has given Mark Latham a working over, I trust that, in a spirit of fairness, they'll dig into the pasts of the prime-ministerial alternatives: Messrs Costello and Abbott.
Geez, I am looking forward to Sunday doing a similar, well-balananced program (before the election) on John Howard's treatment of truth and non-core promises over the last 10 years, as it did on Mark Latham today. No! Oh well.
Well done, Nine. So next week we will be hearing from Julia Gillard (instead of Christopher Pyne) and Phillip Adams (instead of Janet Albrechtsen) on their opinion of John Howard? Throw in Malcolm Fraser, Andrew Peacock and the naval captain involved in the SIEV X incident for good measure. I, for one, will be watching with interest.
Politics aside, when the man aspiring to lead the nation excuses bad behaviour on the basis he grew up in the western suburbs, something is wrong ("Love and other bruises: an ode to Latham", Herald, July 3-4). Not only is it an insult to those Mark Latham claims to represent, but it reflects badly on him. If alcohol is no excuse for footballers behaving badly, neither is a childhood postcode. None of us is perfect, so we don't expect a leader with a perfect past, but when it comes to personal behaviour a little contrition, confession and repentance are far more persuasive than excuses based on misinformed cultural stereotypes.
I live in the western suburbs and it is not part of my culture to assault anybody, nor to participate in an active sex life with anyone other than my one husband. If Mr Latham thinks the blokey larrikin thing is going down with me, he's wrong. I would be more interested in hearing something from him that demonstrated a bit of character, rather than an insulting "It's all because I was a westie" excuse. If he wants to be prime minister, he first of all needs to be a man - say sorry, move on and don't blame other people for his own character flaws.
Mark Latham said, "I had an active love life before marriage. I think the big news is if you didn't." As a single, celibate, Christian woman, I expect to see the front-page article any day now.
I have heard a very reliable rumour (that I suspect came via the Liberal Party) that Mark Latham used to brutally stomp on sandcastles made by his little friends at kindergarten, and throw his dinner from his highchair when he was a little tot. Not only that, I understand he was very restless and used to kick a lot before he was born. This is not the sort of person to become prime minister.
I was wondering if there's a need for a Mark Latham fridge magnet so that we can better be prepared, should he suddenly explode? The slogan might read "Latham alert: be alarmed, be very alarmed".
The one thing that has always set our media apart from their counterparts in the US is their respect for the private lives of our politicians. Suddenly this has changed and every detail of Mark Latham's life is up for public scrutiny. This is a dangerous road to travel down and I wonder if there are any politicians on the other side who may not have led exemplary lives?
At last Labor have found an answer to Wilson "Iron Bar" Tuckey.
Biff Man verses the Man of Steel - now I am paying attention.

Not every bit of their personal lives, but if they have been involved in something seriously morally wrong, or criminal, then I think that is in the public interest.

I don't mind so much something like, in your 20's you were a typical single guy and slept around, or was involved in a bit if a fight in a pub, etc. Just about everyone does that.

But if you have been involved in thuggish behaviour as you get older, especially when you are already in a position of power such as an elected offical, then I think you have a problem, and it's the publics right to know about it.

Something for all the "nobody tells me anything" Howard lovers.
http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/06/1089000156096.html?from=storylhs

Some projects, PM, that need explaining

By Alan Ramsey
July 7, 2004


Cross your heart and hope to die, John Howard. Then tell voters about Ian Hanke and what is referred to within your Government as "special projects", something Hanke, an old Liberal Party hand of umpteen years' standing, runs out of the office of Melbourne's Kevin Andrews, the soft-voiced, psalm-singing Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations.

This, of course, is the same Kevin Andrews who made his name politically as a backbencher by formally sponsoring the abolition, by federal law, of euthanasia, and who took 10 years to become a junior minister, in November 2001, but only a further two years to reach the inner sanctum of cabinet.

Perhaps, Prime Minster, you could also tell people exactly what it is Gerry Wheeler, until early this year one of 16 advisers among your 40 personal staff wholly paid for by taxpayers, really does as head of what is called the Government Members Secretariat (GMS), a $1.3 million unit of 11 people housed in the same Parliament House suite of offices that used to contain the Hawke/Keating governments' National Media Liaison Service, the much-vilified (by you) aNiMaLS unit that you abolished in 1996 and quietly replaced with your own publicly funded who-knows-what.

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I say "really" does, because, as you know, the GMS is not responsible to a minister - not like the aNiMaLS unit - but to your NSW colleague, Jim Lloyd, the Government's chief whip in the House of Representatives. This clever ploy prevents Senate estimates hearings annually scrutinising just what it is the GMS actually does for the $10 million-plus it has cost taxpayers since you set it up in 1996, and whether its functions are a proper use of public money and not, as we suspect, just another blatantly political operation which should be housed - and funded - by the Liberal Party's national headquarters at Menzies House just down the road.

Clever ploy? Of course.

As voters would have no idea, Prime Minister, by putting this operation under the authority of your whip in the House, rather than a minister accountable to Parliament, you prevent the Senate poking around in whatever it is the unit does. The cute expedient that neither house, by convention, ever examines the staffing and funding of the other, very effectively quarantines the GMS from any sort of parliamentary scrutiny, least of all by a hostile Senate. Clever indeed.

Labor's Robert Ray and John Faulkner have been trying at Senate estimates to winkle out details of the GMS for years, never successfully. Ray especially pursued the issue after the Liberal Party's former federal director, Lynton Crosby, quit after the last federal election, and your chief of staff, Arthur Sinodinos, let Crosby's wife, Dawn, know late last year she should go, too, after eight years as head of the GMS, thus ending a very cosy little set-up that was not, shall we say, without advantage to the Government. And that, PM, was when your Mr Sinodinos replaced Mrs Crosby with, happily, Gerard Wheeler from your personal staff.

I mention all this after Mark Latham went public in his compelling defence on Monday of the surge in trash generated around his private life and his family, and you, very piously, PM, immediately repudiated as "nonsense" any interest "in Mr Latham's personal life", as well as any suggestion of a Government "dirt file" on your opponent.

But his role, you said, as mayor of Sydney's Liverpool Council 12 years ago, well, that was "different". "I mean, that's part of his public persona," you told reporters, "and he has got to be accountable for that" and "anything connected" with the Liverpool Council. So what has Ian Hanke been up to with his "special projects"?

Remember what you said?

Reporter: "Mr Latham has named Ian Hanke today, a Government staff member."

PM: "Well, look, I-"

Q: "Do you know what Mr Hanke does?"

PM: "I beg your pardon?"

Q: "Do you know what Mr Hanke's job is?"

PM: "He works for Mr Andrews." And that was the sum total of your reply.

A bit thin, I'd have thought, even if Hanke did put out his own brief statement some hours later denying any involvement in digging "dirt" on the Labor leader.

So tell us, Prime Minster, exactly what do Ian Hanke and Gerry Wheeler do? Taxpayers pay their salaries, their ministerial allowances in lieu of overtime, and their tax-free travel expenses. They have a right to know, surely.

And no porkies, please.

Things that make you go Hmmm

Well somebody has to expose that fat bully as a piss-weak imposter.

I think it's a bit of a sick joke for the Lathams or Abbots (sp?) of this world to cry foul when people start dishing out to them the exact same crap they've been spraying at others for years.

I wish the private lives of politicians (and for that matter all celebrities) could be kept out of the spotlight, and politics in particular kept clean, but let's face it, some of these pollies ask for it.
This is the same Latham who attacked fellow head kicker Abbot over his illigitamate child, called a female journalist a "Skanky Hoe" and labelled another politician a "deformed character".

His crocodile tear jerking performance the other night may have won him some sympathy, but it lost him a hell of a lot of credibility.

What's next? I suppose we will have John Howard crying over the plight of Australia's asylum seekers, or maybe Kim Beasley and Amanda Vanstone will issue a joint statement deploring kids who over-eat and don't exercise.

lol

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/08/1089000288509.html

Change details Inside the 'politics of character'
July 9, 2004
The inside story on Howards "dirt file group" from a Liberal staffer!

This Government smears the credibility of those it doesn't like, writes former adviser Greg Barns.

Has there been a time in Australian politics less edifying than the past week? As the media and politicians gorge themselves on the details of Opposition Leader Mark Latham's colourful life, surely it is time to draw breath and ask this fundamental question: how is Australia's common good served by our political community focusing obsessively on questions of character?

Before answering that question, it is important to note that the tawdry spectacle of the past week is not an isolated incident. Rather, it represents an unfortunate zenith of a practice born 20 years ago this year.

Ever since former Liberal opposition leader Andrew Peacock called then prime minister Bob Hawke a "little crook" during an angry exchange in Parliament on September 13, 1984, it has become acceptable in Australia to launch highly personal attacks on politicians.

When John Hewson led the Liberals from 1990-94, the circumstances surrounding the break-up of his first marriage were laid out for the public to make a judgement upon. The media had a field day trawling through the sadness of the marriage breakdown - and the ALP was content to let Hewson squirm for a few weeks.

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But while the ALP has been happy to condone personal attacks on its opponents when it has suited it over the past 20 years - and Latham's attack on Health Minister Tony Abbott's youthful indiscretion that produced a child falls into this category - it is true to say that the Howard Government has taken to a new level what some now call "the politics of character".

As a senior adviser to John Howard's Government from 1996-99, I was personally aware of two occasions in which government advisers spent time, energy and resources seeking to undermine the credibility of individuals it did not like.

The first was in relation to the former chairman of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Sir Ronald Wilson, and his 1997 report on the "stolen generations". A small meeting of government advisers, which I attended, worked on strategies to debunk the commission's findings. Undermining Sir Ronald was part of that strategy. It was decided to emphasise his previous involvement in a church home for Aboriginal children.

The more infamous example of the Howard Government's preparedness to devote time and resources to dishing out dirt on its enemies relates to former prime minister Paul Keating. His involvement in a failed piggery investment occupied the time of a number of ministers and their staff during 1998 and 1999, as the Howard Government sought a way to land the former Labor prime minister in legal trouble.

Of course, the politics of character haven't ended since I left the Howard Government five years ago. Liberal senator Bill Heffernan's extraordinarily vicious attack on High Court judge Michael Kirby in early 2002, and the preparedness of Howard and former immigration minister Philip Ruddock to demonise asylum seekers by twisting evidence from the armed forces in the "children overboard" affair during the 2001 election are two of the more prominent examples of this Government's preparedness to blacken reputations for political purposes.

The seemingly relentless inquisition into Mark Latham's past by the Government and sections of the media is dangerous for our democracy, not only because we ought to be focusing on policy and not personalities, but because in the past week the line between legitimate questions about a political leader's previous public life and illegitimate questions about his personal relations has been rubbed out.

If Labor is elected to office later this year, one can expect it will exact revenge on the Liberal Party for this horrible week, despite Latham's claims that he would close down any "dirt units". Labor will fight fire with fire if only because, unfortunately, that primal human tendency to get even is too tempting to resist for most people who work in the inherently adversarial, clinical and emotionally distorting atmosphere of Canberra's Parliament House.

Sadly, it appears that constant Government and media preparedness to legitimise the tactic of marshalling of evidence and scuttlebutt to enable direct attacks on the personal integrity of individuals - be they party leaders or nameless asylum seekers - is now part of the Australian political landscape.

This returns us to that question about our society's common good, and what ends are served by focusing on "character" issues.

The concept of the "common good" has not changed since Aristotle introduced it more than 2000 years ago. It is the idea that our democracy's primary purpose is to determine how we best live together as a community today and into the future. In this context, vigorous political debate about issues of policy is essential. And it is legitimate to hold politicians accountable for their past - in so far as it relates to the conduct and skills that are important in constructing and implementing policies on behalf of the community.

But drawing attention to the peccadilloes and behavioural lapses (unless they involve proven criminal conduct) of politicians and individuals involved in public discourse simply confirms the immutable fact that humankind is flawed. The attempt to suggest that such lapses and flaws should disqualify an individual from contributing through political life to advancing Australia's common good is abhorrent.

We cannot pretend that our democracy will ever be free of muck-raking and mud-slinging. But perhaps we can minimise its impact if we reflect on the fact that the Latham character assassination of the past week has done nothing to further our common good.

Former Howard Government adviser Greg Barns, now a member of the Australian Democrats, is the author of What's Wrong with the Liberal Party? (2003).

"Latham character assasination" ? Jeez. If he and his can't stand the heat...

You Aussies really,really,really,REEEEAALY hate your politicians !!!