Former politician laments rise of ‘metrosexual knobs and tossbags’

MOVIE hero Crocodile Dundee and real-life “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin epitomised Australia’s image as a land full of rugged “blokes” who thumb their nose at authority and can only pity latte-drinking, suit-wearing office drones.

But that image is coming under attack, says former prime ministerial aspirant Mark Latham, who declares in a book published yesterday that Australia’s male culture is in crisis.

“One of the saddest things I have seen in my lifetime has been the decline in Australian male culture,” the former Labour leader wrote.

“Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and tossbags,” he added. Metrosexuals are urban men — gay or straight — who spend a great amount of time and money on their appearance.

Mr Latham, who quit politics after leading Labour to defeat at Australia’s last general elections in 2004, blamed changes in the Australian workplace and family unit, and a rise in left-wing feminism and neo-conservatism for “a crisis in male identity” and “debilitating” Australia’s language.

“Instead of calling a spade a spade, our national conversation is now dominated by weasel words and the pretence of politeness,” Mr Latham wrote in his book, A Conga Line of Suckholes — a phrase he used to deride Prime Minister John Howard’s government in its support of the US invasion of Iraq.

“Few people have anything meaningful to say for fear of offending the conservative status quo,” he said an excerpt published in newspapers this week.

He laments the Australian language’s loss of the “larrikin” –— a word used to describe a fun-loving trouble maker who bucks authority and conventions, which is a cherished aspect of the Australian character.

A Latrobe University expert on gender issues and masculinity, Michael Flood, agreed that the larrikin was playing a lesser role in Australian life — for both good and bad reasons.

“There is a larrikin masculinity in Australia that has been celebrated, but it’s also been questioned and certainly feminists and others have drawn attention to some of the more anti-social and sexist aspects of that way of being a man,” Dr Flood said.

Mr Latham, who some political opponents say is the most verbally abusive lawmaker to ever speak in Parliament, partly blamed the decline in male culture on Mr Howard, an owlish social conservative who commentators say has turned his own blandness into a political strength.

“It’s the revenge of the nerds, John Howard-style,” Latham wrote, referring to the 1984 Hollywood comedy in which a gang of unpopular and ungainly college students turn the tables on their oppressors.