Former NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham has lost a defamation case brought against him by independent MP Alex Greenwich over a tweet Greenwich called “defamatory and homophobic”.
The quickly deleted tweet from March 2023 was described as “disgusting” by One Nation federal leader Pauline Hanson. Latham was eventually sacked as the party’s NSW leader in August 2023.
Greenwich claimed in the Federal Court case that the tweet implied he “engages in disgusting sexual activities”, and secondly that it implied he was “not a fit and proper person to be a member of the NSW Parliament because he engages in disgusting sexual activities”.
Justice David O’Callaghan found that the first claim was conveyed by the tweet, but that the second was not.
Greenwich also sued over related remarks made by Latham published in The Daily Telegraph in April 2023, claiming that they were understood to mean Greenwich was “a disgusting human being who goes into schools to groom children to become homosexual” and was not a fit and proper person to be a member of the NSW Parliament because he did so.
O’Callaghan found that that meaning was not made out, but regardless that the first meaning relating to the tweets had caused serious harm to Greenwich’s reputation.
Latham relied on two defences of honest opinion and qualified privilege but it was found that neither defence was made out.
Latham’s barrister Kieran Smark SC said during the trial that the tweet was “offensive and crass and vulgar” but that it did not injure Greenwich’s reputation.
O’Callaghan awarded damages for non-economic loss of $100,000, in addition to aggravated damages of $40,000.
Greenwich said outside court that his “life changed” after “that tweet went out into the world”.
“I dealt with an onslaught of abuse that I’ve never experienced in my life,” he said.
“We should have a higher standard of political discourse in Australia, and this judgment says that
“LGBTQ people experience this kind of bullying and abuse every single day in this country.”
The online sparring match between the two politicians followed violent protests outside a church in Sydney’s southwest, where Latham was giving a pre-election speech in March 2023.
About 250 mostly male counter-protesters violently attacked police and 15 LGBTQIA+ protesters who had set themselves up outside the Belfield church.
Crikey contacted Greenwich and Latham for comment.
The matter will return to court on September 25 for final orders.
— With AAP
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