Latham Diaries- extract 2

This is probably going to be my favourite part of the whole book.

Wednesday, 26 June (2002)

Pandemonium, simply because I called Howard an arselicker in today's Bulletin. If anything, I was restrained- Howard has got his tongue up Bush's clacker that often the poor guy must think he's got an extra haemorrhoid.
The thing I'm worried about from the interview lunch with the lovely Maxine McKew is some quotes on the politics of hate. I was lamenting the abolition of the Better Cities program in Campbelltown's public housing estates and how much I hated the Tories for it. Needless to say, hatred got a run in the article, but not the policy issue that got me fired up. Doesn't seem to matter- the media have gone off about the arselicker.
The papers had an advance copy of the thing, even a chance for the usual suspects to bag me off the record: Swan in the Courier-Mail with his mate Dennis Atkins, Rudd in the Age with Ab-Fab [journalist Louise Dodson], prissy Labor blokes complaining that I have had a dig at Howard- the revenge of the white-breads. Howard hasn't responded, leaving it to [Tony] Abbott, who reckons I am quite 'vile and scurrilous'.
The hypocrisy of this place is breathtaking. Labor, Libs, Nats, journos- most of them on the tarry-hoot, trying to throw the leg over, into everything but a bath- but today, feigning outrage because I called an arselicker an arselicker. That's what they should stick on my tombstone: Here Lies The Man Who Called Howard An Arselicker- Denounced As Morally Unsound By Tony Abbott In An Article By Louise Dodson, God Help The Poor Bastard.
Anyway, what are the rules of morality in Howard's Australia? Eight months ago he falsely accused some parents of throwing their children off a boat and has never apologised- and the commercial media could not care less. I call him an arselicker and the shock-jocks are all over it like a rash. This is what we are up against: the shameless double standards of the Australian Establishment.