Jono said:
I don't like the Liberal Part at all, and see myself pretty left with most issues (barring a few economic ones), but I can't for the life of me see how anyone with any knowledge of politics could have voted someone like Latham in. Someone so volatile like him was never going to win. Howard may be awful, but from a leadership P.O.V, I'd rather him at the helm than Latham, and in hindsight its fairly obvious why.
Missed this. Latham was an inspirational leader, I think. It wasn't so much his personality, but he's the only leader the ALP have had in my political lifetime that actually appeared likely to achieve anything particularly positive. I like Keating, but he wasn't exactly the sort of guy who made you desperately want to vote for him, and I was 10 when he lost anyway.
Latham's campaign derailed a bit at the end and he turned out to be a bit of a questionable character, but there's no doubt that during the brief period of his leadership the ALP had more direction than they've had in a decade. And as far as him "never going to win" is concerned, that's certainly fine in hindsight, but it didn't appear that way during the early part of his leadership. Even a month or so out from the election he looked a very good shot, it was only towards the end that the result became obvious.
Anyway, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "leadership" here. Neither of the last two PMs before Howard were particularly straight-laced, and you could describe them both as "volatile" to some degree or another. Australia has never been particularly invested in having the most boring guy available lead the country, so Latham was always someone who could have won. He certainly wouldn't get anywhere in, say, the US, but then neither would Keating. If anything, if you look at the way he mobilised his party from being virtually unknown to the general public, it was Latham who showed strong leadership qualities during the campaign. Howard got in as the "safe" option, and because he's a very skilled politician, has has a better organised party. He's not exactly inspirational.