Mark Latham, who left politics after leading the Labor party to defeat at Australia's general election in 2004, blames changes in the workplace and -families, a rise in leftwing feminism, and neoconservatism for creating "a crisis in male identity" and "debilitating" the language.

"Instead of calling a spade a spade, our national conversation is now dominated by weasel words and the pretence of politeness," Mr Latham writes in his collection of favourite quotes and political anecdotes, A Conga Line of Suckholes - a phrase he used to deride John Howard's centre-right 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 says in an extract published in a newspaper yesterday.

Mr Latham, labelled by political opponents as the most abusive lawmaker to speak in the federal parliament, blames the prime minister, an owlish social conservative who commentators say has turned his blandness into a political strength. "It's the revenge of the nerds, John Howard-style," Mr Latham writes.

Mr Howard, who will run for a fifth three-year term next year, declined to comment.

Mr Latham notoriously broke a Sydney taxi driver's arm in a beer-fuelled fare dispute in 2001, and once described George Bush, a personal friend of Mr Howard, as "the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory".

In his book, Mr Latham laments the loss of the Australian language's "larrikin" character - a word used to describe a fun-loving troublemaker who bucks authority and conventions, considered a cherished aspect of the Australian character.

"One of the saddest things I have seen in my lifetime has been the decline in Australian male culture - the loss of our larrikin language and values," he writes. "Australian mates and good blokes have been replaced by nervous wrecks, metrosexual knobs and tossbags."

The book includes 40 of Mr Latham's own quotes and anecdotes as well as those from historical figures as diverse as Plato and Stalin.