One Nation’s Mark Latham
One Nation’s Mark Latham (Image: AAP/Bianca De Marchi)

Mark Latham, Australia’s great dodged bullet, the human manifestation of the phrase “incident at Hungry Jack’s“, continues a public dissolution more protracted and painful than that of the Ottoman Empire.

In his recent blow against the cultural elites in aid of returning politics to the material concerns of the working man, One Nation’s New South Wales leader boldly… subjected independent MP Alex Greenwich to an episode of homophobic taunting. And in the absence of an apology, which seems highly unlikely to come, he’s going to be sued for defamation over it.

If it does go to court, how might Latham’s defence play out? Thankfully, we have a historical precedent to guide us. Back in 2018, Latham’s quest to render the phrase “humiliating new low” meaningless from overuse saw him sued by journalist Osman Faruqi for Latham’s claims that Faruqi supported “anti-white racism”.

Latham’s initial defence was struck out by Justice Michael Wigney, who described it as “on just about any view, an extraordinary document”.

“In order to address Mr Faruqi’s strike-out application, it is necessary to attempt to come to grips with it. That is no mean feat,” Wigney said.

The document argued that Faruqi had portrayed Latham as, among other things: 


(i) a person whose literary tastes and interests do not rise above the level of providing manual sexual stimulation to horses;
(ii) a ‘white supremacist’;
(iii) a person who talks in an ‘idiotic way’;
(iv) a person whose literary style is inexcusable;
(v) a person who publishes the same column over and over;
(vi) a ‘lunatic’;
(vii) a person so bereft of common sense, and so out of touch with reality, as to maintain ‘his own dirt unit on himself’;
(viii) an ‘angry white man with bad opinions’;
(ix) a person ‘famous for making totally ludicrous statements’; and
(x) a fit subject for scorn, derision, ridicule and mockery

Furious at the implication he would ever do anything “totally ludicrous”, Latham’s team put together a section headed “The connexion between racial vilification and racist violence”. (Yes, the rather anachronistic spelling “connexion” was deployed.) It was an extremely not ludicrous attempt to connect Faruqi’s tweets about how white people don’t like spicy food to events such as the martyrdom of Christians in the Roman Empire. Wigney said the section had “no rational or logical connection” to the legal issues in the case.

The spicy food thing isn’t a comic exaggeration, by the way. In his commentary, Wigney had to go through the 150 or so of Faruqi’s tweets collected by Latham’s team and, one by one, explain to a man who once nearly became our prime minister that while someone may consider some of Faruqi’s gags to be “puerile, shallow, trite or even hackneyed”, they didn’t necessarily “constitute vilification”:

‘The owner of my fav[ourite] Pakistani restaurant in Sydney always reminds me what food on the menu to not order because it’s “for white people”.’

127    Does Mr Latham seriously suggest that this constitutes “anti-white racism”? He must, because he included this tweet in Schedule II, though that suggestion borders on the fanciful.

…

‘Labradors are to dogs what straight white dudes are to politics. Boring, too common, entitled.’

133    This tweet may well have been offensive to owners of labradors, or perhaps even labradors themselves. Some readers may well have considered that it was a fairly crude and simplistic way for Mr Faruqi to make his point. Others may have been simply amused. Either way, it hardly constitutes vilification.

It went on like this for 76 pages. Faruqi’s initial claim was two pages.

Latham eventually agreed to pay damages and legal costs to settle the case.