Mark Latham is doing far better than anyone expected. No one had particular faith in him, though there was a bare majority in his caucus, if not in his party’s machinery, who had the sense to recognise that a great gamble with an outside chance was more sensible than a low-risk, low-dividend Kim Beazley. But the signs, so far, are good. It’s probably six months out from an election, but the polls put Labor well in front, and show Latham, personally, gaining in stature with the electorate. The doubters worried about his self-discipline; he has kept it. The doubters thought that a history of flirting with often contradictory ideas would make him vulnerable to parliamentary attack. The attacks have been made, but they have not seemed to work. John Howard does not seem able to get a fix on him, and often responds to Latham rather than making Latham go after him. This has weakened the Government’s self confidence and faith in Howard as leader, although there is no evidence that Peter Costello is a surer bet. Indeed even Costello’s supporters suspect that his unwillingness to wield the knife against Howard is a proof of incapacity, not only to use it more successfully on Latham, but to govern generally.
John Howard has been in this fix before. Six months before the 2001 election he was in much the same position at the polls. Howard fights well with his back against the wall. At that time he dumped unpopular policies and not a little of his reputation for fiscal rectitude. He looted the Treasury to buy off key groups who were critical. He kept hammering away at a complacent Kim Beazley, who had imagined that government would fall into his lap, if only because the Howard Government had plainly run out of steam and ideas. And Howard was pulling back the margin well before two extraordinary bits of political luck came his way; the Tampa, and the events of September 11. Even in his exploitation of that luck, he left nothing to chance, quite happy to mislead the electorate, to misuse defence forces for crude politics, and to throw $1 billion away to save face over his Pacific solution. That Labor panicked and, seeking to neutralise Howard’s issues, abandoned any moral right to govern was mere bonus. Howard does not panic, and, this time, does not even have any core agenda or