WI: Prime Minister Mark Latham

Australia has almost a set-in-stone rule that its politicians have to be brash and/or 'blokey' - Whitlam, Abbott, Keating, Hawke, Holt, Beazley, Rudd, Morrison etc have all gone to great lengths to try and fit the bill. But Australian politics arguably reached peak-'blokeiness' with Mark Latham, a man who broke the arm of a taxi driver over a fare.

How would a Latham prime ministership have turned out? I can it envision it being like Rudd's, when the 'faceless men' wait for the polls to turn sour and then immediately do away with him.
 
I think he’d stay around a little longer than that, from memory the ‘faceless men’ were broadly people who were elected in the 2007 Ruddslide, so I think they could be butterflied away and Labor could go into a place where they more or less had a steady hand over the leadership (don’t forget that Beazley was Labor leader from ‘96-01, Labor can believe in their leadership if they want to). My prediction would be, after winning ‘04 with a fairly large majority, he’d get a reduced majority in 2007, and it’s anyone’s game in 2010.

As for his Prime Minister-ship itself, I don’t think Latham would be as bad as he is now in OTL. I’d see him as more centrist than the far right that he’s become, with a strong focus on public services like schools and hospitals, whilst simultaneously helping middle to low income earners through tax breaks. There’s be a decrease in defence spending, given that he was very keen to get ‘the troops home by Christmas’. There’d also be a frostier relationship with America, given Latham’s feelings towards Bush.

But ultimately, Latham’s strongest weakness is that he can’t trust people. His diaries are full of paranoia towards prominent Labor frontbenchers, like Rudd, Swan, Smith, Beazley, even Crean. I think he’d just about be able to cope for his first term, but when the GFC hits, he’d foul that up massively by refusing to follow advice when it was most needed. He might have gotten through it unscathed. But that would require a major change in his personal philosophies, which I just don’t see happening.

Post-Prime Minister Latham would definitely be a different beast to OTL Latham. The Latham Diaries make it quite clear that the start of his downfall was that his anger came from not being in power. There’d be a memoir where he insults people who he’d believe lost him the Prime Ministership, and maybe a high profile ‘no holds barred’ interview, but after that, a likely retirement into private life, only popping up to endorse Labor at election time.
 
That would have been a wild ride whilst it lasted. The guy is a legit nutter and its pretty much the entire reason he lost the 04 election (an election Labor had no business losing given how unpopular Howard had become).

I think we'd have withdrawn from Iraq pretty quickly given how anti-Iraq he was, we'd get a lot more public services spending whilst some tax breaks in the lower income brackets.

As for the party, Labor Party politics would have been crazy, the man couldn't trust anyone IOTL, as PM it would be 10 times worse. I'd say their would be a spill rather quickly and he'd get rolled and the start of the backstabbing in our current political climate would actually start full force around then.
 
Australia has almost a set-in-stone rule that its politicians have to be brash and/or 'blokey' - Whitlam, Abbott, Keating, Hawke, Holt, Beazley, Rudd, Morrison etc have all gone to great lengths to try and fit the bill. But Australian politics arguably reached peak-'blokeiness' with Mark Latham, a man who broke the arm of a taxi driver over a fare.

McEwen was another, however Menzies and Howard were not and between them they lasted ~25 years.

The guy is a legit nutter

Yep, complete dickhead, so.....

I can it envision it being like Rudd's, when the 'faceless men' wait for the polls to turn sour and then immediately do away with him.

...this.
 
Latham would have likely mismanaged the economy and brought Australia from surplus to deficit in 2005 instead of 2009 like Labor did in OTL, with excessive and wasteful spending.

As others have said, he would have been kicked out of office as soon as the opinion polls turned against him, so would likely be out of office by 2006 at the latest, given his volatile character and lack of popularity within his own party.

Once the GFC hit in 2008-09, Australia would go into recession as Latham and Labor would have made a basketcase of the economy 3-4 years before the crisis occurred and the country would have less ability to defend itself economically.

The nation would be worse off today with 3 extra years of Labor economic mismanagement, incompetence and political infighting compared to OTL.
 
Latham would have likely mismanaged the economy and brought Australia from surplus to deficit in 2005 instead of 2009 like Labor did in OTL, with excessive and wasteful spending.

As others have said, he would have been kicked out of office as soon as the opinion polls turned against him, so would likely be out of office by 2006 at the latest, given his volatile character and lack of popularity within his own party.

Once the GFC hit in 2008-09, Australia would go into recession as Latham and Labor would have made a basketcase of the economy 3-4 years before the crisis occurred and the country would have less ability to defend itself economically.

The nation would be worse off today with 3 extra years of Labor economic mismanagement, incompetence and political infighting compared to OTL.

Yeah honestly it would be a good way to get PM Costello by around 07 or 2010 at the latest (most likely Labor would lose in 07).
 
Latham would have likely mismanaged the economy and brought Australia from surplus to deficit in 2005 instead of 2009 like Labor did in OTL, with excessive and wasteful spending.

As others have said, he would have been kicked out of office as soon as the opinion polls turned against him, so would likely be out of office by 2006 at the latest, given his volatile character and lack of popularity within his own party.

Once the GFC hit in 2008-09, Australia would go into recession as Latham and Labor would have made a basketcase of the economy 3-4 years before the crisis occurred and the country would have less ability to defend itself economically.

The nation would be worse off today with 3 extra years of Labor economic mismanagement, incompetence and political infighting compared to OTL.

I doubt the economy would have tanked much under Latham. He himself was close to Hawke and Keating (who, like him, were independent types) in his economic philosophy at that time. Like the second half of the Rudd/Gillard years, most of the drama would have come on the internal front rather than on the economic front.

The Hansonite version of Latham, however, may have tried to loosen ties with Asia, which probably wouldn't have been good for the economy.
 
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