A court has ordered former One Nation NSW leader Mark Latham to pay Sydney MP Alex Greenwich $140,000 over homophobic Latham’s comments following an 18-month defamation lawsuit.
Greenwich sued Latham for defamation last year, who he argued wrote homophobic comments on social media and in the Daily Telegraph newspaper about him.
Today, the Federal Court ruled in favour of Greenwich and ordered Latham to compensate him for the defamatory comments.
Latham was a Labor politician for more than a decade before he left Federal Parliament in 2005.
Background
Latham was the Federal Opposition leader from 2003-2005.
He led Labor into a 2004 election loss to the John Howard-led Coalition.
Latham was later elected to the NSW state Upper House with Pauline Hanson’s conservative One Nation Party.
He was sacked as One Nation’s state leader last year due to poor election results. Latham currently sits as an independent.
Church protest
In March 2023, Latham spoke at an event at a Sydney church about “religious freedom” and “protecting” schools from LGBTQIA+ “activism”.
A peaceful protest by LGBTQIA+ people outside the event turned violent when a large group called ‘Christian Lives Matter’ descended on the church.
Latham then made a series of social media posts criticising the LGBTQIA+ protesters.
Alex Greenwich, an independent MP in the NSW Lower House, told the Sydney Morning Herald at the time that he believed Latham was a “disgusting human being”.
Homophobic remarks
Greenwich’s comments were reposted on X, where Latham responded by using a graphic homophobic slur against Greenwich.
Latham later deleted this post.
The next day, Latham told the Daily Telegraph: “Sometimes, in public life, when they throw out insults, they come back at you harder and truer, so boohoo, Alex Greenwich… [He] goes into schools talking to kids about being gay.”
Defamation
Greenwich launched legal action against Latham, to sue him over two main allegations of defamation.
The first allegation was that Latham damaged his reputation by suggesting he “engages in disgusting sexual activities” in a social media post.
Second, he alleged Latham’s Daily Telegraph comments implied Greenwich “goes into schools to groom children” and questioned whether he is a “fit and proper person to be a member of the NSW Parliament”.
Judgement
Federal Court Judge David O’Callaghan upheld Greenwich’s first defamation claim (relating to the X post) in a ruling handed down on Wednesday.
He ruled Latham’s online post was likely to cause serious harm to Greenwich’s reputation, and found he had “motives of personal spite or ill will” towards him.
The court ordered Latham to pay Greenwich $140,000.
O’Callaghan did not find Latham’s comments to the Daily Telegraph were defamatory.
He argued this was because a “reasonable” person wouldn’t find them to be homophobic or consider Greenwich unfit to be a member of the NSW Parliament.
Following the judgement, Greenwich said: “When Mr Latham published his tweet, my life changed forever.”
He called the post “a reductionist caricature of me which caused me enormous damage,” and said the victory was “a major relief for me, my family, my staff, and the LGBTQ community.”
