No longer on the Labor Party Xmas card list

"Headbutt" Latham is at it again - seeking more new friends.....
BTW, more than a bit of truth here.

Deputy PM laps up Latham comments
November 9, 2007 - 12:54PM

Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile has used comments by a former opposition leader to claim that Labor is plagiarising coalition policies.

Mark Latham, who led Labor to defeat at the 2004 federal election, described the current campaign as "a Seinfeld election, a show about nothing", and said there was no real difference between the parties.

"What Mr Latham was saying is what we've been saying, and that is that Mr Rudd doesn't have any policies of his own," Mr Vaile told reporters in Bundaberg.

"... He is plagiarising all the government's policies, he is being completely poll-driven and he's trying to slip into office in the shadow of Mr Howard."

Mr Vaile said it was obvious that Mr Latham did not agree with the direction Mr Rudd was taking the Labor Party.

"He's basically calling him a plagiarist, a plagiarist of conservative policies... poll-driven to get into government."

Mr Latham, writing in a Fairfax newspaper, said nothing will change regardless of who wins the election because Australian public life has reached the "zenith of policy convergence".

"The dominant ethos is greed, not generosity. I expect a Labor administration to be even more timid, more conservative," Mr Latham said.

"If people vote for a change in government on November 24 they will be replacing one conservative administration with another."

Mr Latham resigned as ALP leader and quit his western Sydney seat of Werriwa after the coalition convincingly won the 2004 election.

Despite both major parties focusing on housing, rising interest rates and savings for first-home buyers, Mr Latham says there is no crisis but "just the manufactured hysteria of the political class".

"There is no crisis for the hundreds of thousands of families that have already put themselves into debt and built large new homes, the so-called McMansions, across the country.

"In most cases they are enjoying a quality of housing well beyond the expectations of their parents and grandparents before them," he said.

Both parties' plans to put more money into the housing market would increase demand and push prices up even further, Mr Latham said.

On the environment, Mr Latham said the western world enjoys the trappings of an industrialised society that heavily contributes to pollution and is in no position to tell third world countries how to behave.