In troubled times, people look for strong leaders – men and women who offer decisive action to address collective problems, and promise the capacity to deliver. They initially present as larger-than-life characters, and we’ve had our share of them: Robert Menzies, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and perhaps Kevin Rudd.
The dual problems of the pandemic (with its tail of economic problems) and of the destabilisation of the international order, with the rise of an assertive China and the outbreak of war in Europe, has provoked a crisis mentality in which the demand for such leadership is intensified.
