Mark Latham and Pauline Hanson are at war and One Nation’s NSW parliamentary wing is leaderless after an extraordinary federal intervention yesterday. But although Latham has been sacked from the top job, he won’t be powerless in shaping One Nation’s future.
Hanson made herself the leader of the NSW executive, while declaring the state parliamentary leadership position “open” until she can be “confident the [party’s] organisation and parliamentary wings … have established an effective, strong and collaborative working relationship under her leadership”.
When that happens, Hanson “will consider opening the position of NSW parliamentary leader for nominations”.
Latham, the party’s NSW leader since he was elected in 2019, called the situation “bizarre” and a “Queensland intervention” in his statement on Monday.
“[Hanson] has installed her own new state executive with people from Queensland and Tasmania who did not lift a finger to help us during the March election campaign,” he wrote.
He also alleged, without offering evidence, that the takeover wasn’t about performance but “about money”.
“As NSW One Nation leader I have stood in the way of attempts to misuse our funds, especially the administration money contributed by NSW taxpayers through the Electoral Commission,” he said. “I will continue to fight for the proper, ethical use of this money.”
A spokesperson for Hanson declined to comment on Latham’s statement when contacted by Crikey.
Latham, a proud “outsider” politician, won’t necessarily be in the wilderness. Hanson made clear in her announcement that “no-one has been sacked as a member of One Nation”.
And as the ABC’s Antony Green wrote in a blog post overnight, it will be up to Latham and his two upper house colleagues, Rod Roberts and Tania Mihailuk, to “inform the Legislative Council of their party label and who is their parliamentary leader”.
“If the three choose to call themselves One Nation, it is likely the Parliament will accept that name even if they are expelled from the party known as One Nation and registered to contest elections,” Green added.
In her statement, Hanson made a veiled accusation against Latham that he oversaw a failed election campaign, saying the party’s vote dropped by 14%. It’s true the March results in NSW were a disappointment for One Nation: despite running 17 candidates, it didn’t win a single lower house seat, and managed to expand its seats in the upper house by only one.
Even that limited success was achieved by gaming the system: months before the vote, Latham announced he would quit Parliament and recontest his spot, meaning the party could fill the casual vacancy with a new candidate and run Latham at the top of the ticket.
Latham did not respond to a question on Monday, and the last time he issued a comment to Crikey was in October last year when he defended his plan to quit and run again as “seeking reelection, which is an expression of public trust” (while also adding in a text message: “I’ve got no interest in Crikey“).
The move meant Latham doesn’t have to stand for reelection again until 2031, while Roberts and Mihailuk will face voters in 2027.
Latham defended the March results in his Monday statement, saying his state wing’s “6% result was still 2% ahead of the NSW Senate result last year in a campaign Hanson herself headed”.
“In Queensland, Hanson’s Senate vote fell by 3% and she only just scrapped in for reelection,” Latham wrote. “If she is worried about under-performance, her best solution is to buy a mirror.”
According to Green, One Nation’s NSW upper house vote declined from 6.9% in 2019 to 5.9% this year, better than Hanson’s NSW result in 2022 (4.1%) and 2019 (5%).
It appears Latham and Hanson’s relationship had deteriorated long before Monday. In late March, days after the state election, Hanson publicly lambasted Latham for “disgusting” comments he made about a lower house state MP, Alex Greenwich.
Latham, who is being sued for defamation over the comments, has argued that Greenwich’s reputation had not been seriously harmed, and included Hanson’s statement in his Federal Court defence filed last week as an example of “statements of support for Greenwich and criticisms of Latham across politics and the media”.
Hanson said in her response to Latham’s attack on Greenwich that she had “tried to ring Mark a couple of times, to no avail”. It appears their relationship hasn’t improved much since then.
The 10 Network’s NSW gallery reporter Lachlan Kennedy tweeted on Monday: “It has been suggested to me Mark Latham & Pauline Hanson have not spoken in months. He has apparently been refusing calls & requests to meet.”
Latham, whose supporters have raised at least $20,000 for his defamation defence fund, said he would have more to say about the Hanson intervention and alleged party finance issues soon.
