Latham’s victory seems to have been reasonably well-received, and there are certainly a number of positives. First, while I’m not a fan of activism and innovation for its own sake, Australian politics is certainly in need of some new ideas.

The leaders on both sides of Australian politics have been people whose ideas were formed in the 1980s, and who haven’t seen much need for thinking since. Ross Gittins made this point about Howard a couple of days ago, but its true more generally. When they find that 1980s ideas won’t wash with the electorate, their instinct is to go back to the 1950s (this is particularly true of Howard and explains his long dalliance with Hansonism).

Although age obviously matters, it’s not the sole determinant here. Peter Costello is only a few years older than Latham, but his political views, formed in the unionbusting days of the Dollar Sweets dispute are even more anchored in the past than those of Crean and Beazley, who at least recognised the issues even if they did not come up with much in the way of new responses.

The big issue for the 21st century is that of balancing the needs of a knowledge-based economy, which naturally implies greater demand for publicly-funded services like health and education with the obvious problems of raising additional government revenue. In parallel with this is the conflict between the gift-exchange/common property model that has been the source of most of the productivity growth associated with the Internet and the demands of corporations for tighter control of ‘intellectual property’. In trying to respond to these issues, Latham has flailed about a bit, but at least he is trying.

A more tenuous ground for optimism is that Latham’s election might mark the last gasp of the faction system, at least at the level of the Federal Parliamentary Party. As Dave Ricardo pointed out in a comments thread, the factions in the ALP are now comparable to those that dominated the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party for decades. Any ideological element is long gone, replaced by personal power bases, typically cemented by family ties and inherited leadership positions.