Tough talker has poll win in sight By Stephen Robinson in Sydney (Filed: 04/10/2004)
Mark Latham, Australia's brash populist leader who has accused the government of kneeling at America's feet, is close to snatching an unlikely election victory on a promise to bring home troops from Iraq by Christmas.
When the election campaign began, Mr Latham, 43, a man of strong republican tendencies, was given little hope of depriving the prime minister, John Howard, of a fourth term.But with only five days of campaigning left, the latest opinion polls yesterday showed the Labour Party leader has narrowed the gap to a couple of points, and that he has the momentum which could take him to victory.
The opposition leader came to national prominence partly though his caustic tongue and because, in a now famous incident in 2001, he broke the arm of a taxi driver in a row about a fare. The taxi driver declined to press charges on the grounds that Mr Latham had obviously been drinking. ...
But it is his comments about Mr Howard's support for President George W Bush which sealed his notoriety, and established his credibility in a country where the Iraq war, and the current US administration, are highly unpopular.
Referring to Australia's token military commitment to the Iraqi operation, the Labour Party leader has called Mr Howard an "arse-licker", and said the prime minister returned from one recent visit to the United States "with a brown nose and a lot of skin off his knees".
Mr Howard's cabinet colleagues were described as "a conga line of suck holes", an Australian colloquialism better not explained, nor visualised. ... Mr Latham has promised sharply increased spending on health care for those over 75 in an effort to claw back Mr Howard's popularity with "grey" voters.
He has also made much of his upbringing in a council house in a tough, working-class part of Sydney and has committed himself to redistributive tax policies and to greater concessions to the powerful trade unions, whose privileges have been curbed since Mr Howard took office in 1996. ... By his own account, he is fiercely competitive and a politician who relishes the brutal nature of his trade
"I'm a hater," he said in an interview. "Part of the tribalness of politics is to really dislike the other side with intensity." ...