Mark Latham and his crystal balls

This below is from a 2013 Quarterly Essay  called Unfinished Business: Sex, Freedom and Misogny by Anna Goldsworthy.  It’s in the correspondence bit, talking about the previous essay, ‘Not Dead Yet‘ by Mark Latham. Here below is a prediction Latham made while replying to (most of) his critics.  And so it came to pass, especially after the 2016 double dissolution…

Increasingly, those involved in the two-party system are rusted-on partisans. Labor has fallen back on its core trade-union base, while the Liberal party is now dominated by right-wing fanatics: Tea party-style ideologues, the Religious Right and the growing presence of authoritarian figures from a Northern European background. Publicly, the full impact of this change will not be apparent until such time as the conservatives regain office in Canberra.

Latham, M. 2013. Correspondence, in Quarterly Essay 50, p.115

If only Latham had been as prescient on how readers would respond to some of his more, um, ‘colourful’ comments, he’d still be writing for the Fin.