An 18-year-old lining up to vote for the first time in a 2019 Federal election would have been just three years old the last time the former opposition leader, who resigned after losing the 2004 election to John Howard, was a significant political figure.

The youngest voters eligible to vote in that poll, which saw the ALP lose four seats despite a commitment to withdraw Australian troops from Iraq, a proposed national ban on plastic bags and compulsory parenting classes, would now be 32.

While Latham has regularly made headlines since then it has been as an opinionated, aggressive and fundamentally right wing talking head; not as a significant player.

Media career highlights included publicly criticising domestic violence campaigner, Rosie Batty, and prominent transgender figure, Catherine McGregor, in 2015, and being sacked by Sky in 2017.

Latham has now, in rapid succession, hitched his wagon to two marginal political groups on the extreme right.

They are David Leyonhjelm's Liberal Democrats and Pauline Hanson's One Nation.

Almost two months have elapsed since the former prime ministerial hopeful earned himself a life-time ban from ever rejoining the ALP by saying he was willing to run as a candidate for Leyenhjolm's party.

That commitment was to prove short lived. Latham is now apparently firmly in the One Nation camp.

The Australian Financial Review reported on June 6 its former columnist and "conflict magnet" and the One Nation leader were sounding each other out.

Hanson, who had lost the bulk of her parliamentary representation to the s44 debacle and differences of opinion with her proselytes, was apparently on the look out for high profile candidates.

Only a few days earlier Latham had boasted on Channel Seven's breakfast show he had been approached to contest a seat in the Senate, presumably in NSW, by four different, but unnamed, parties.

This week's decision to record a "robocall" message highly critical of the ALP and Bill Shorten for One Nation, to be used during the Longman by-election, seems clear evidence of where his loyalties now lie.

This is a staggering about face given that, when asked about Hanson's decision to contest the Senate in 2004, Latham said the ALP's views on One Nation had not changed and that Labor's policy was to put Hanson last on the ballot paper.

It also confirms Mr Flip-Flop, the name given to Latham by John Howard, is as accurate today as it was then.

While both One Nation and the Coalition are doing their best to make political capital out of "robocall" attack which includes claims Bill Shorten "...just lies, and lies and lies...." it is unlikely to make much difference one way or another.

Latham, as Shorten pointed out on Tuesday, "...used to be someone [but] he's not anymore".

This yesterday's man's only lasting contribution was to pressure the Howard government into undertaking major reforms of the parliamentary superannuation fund; a move welcomed by the electorate at the time.