Police are investigating after a NSW MP accused One Nation’s Mark Latham of harassment.
Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said on Monday morning he plans to sue Latham over comments made in a widely criticised tweet last month.
Latham in the tweet made graphic comments about Greenwich’s sexuality.
“I’ve been openly gay in public life for 15 years and in NSW Parliament for over 10 years, and never have I experienced such a homophobic, sexualised attack that exposed me to contempt, ridicule and extreme abuse, based on my sexuality,” Greenwich said in a statement.
NSW Police confirmed to Crikey they were investigating.
“Officers attached to Surry Hills Police Area Command have commenced an investigation after receiving reports of online harassment directed at a 42-year-old man. Inquiries are continuing,” a police spokeswoman wrote in response to an email asking for comment on Greenwich’s statement.
Greenwich said he had also lodged a complaint of homosexual vilification with the Anti-Discrimination Board of NSW, but the board refused to comment, citing secrecy provisions.
Greenwich’s reports to authorities came after Latham doubled down on his comments in an appearance on a radio show hosted by ex-Sky News Australia host Chris Smith.
“There will be no apology for Greenwich,” Latham said on the program on radio platform TNT.
Latham said he posted the March 30 tweet because Greenwich called him “disgusting” after LGBTQIA+ protesters were attacked outside a NSW election event where Latham was speaking.
“He defamed me severely,” Latham told the radio show.
Greenwich said he has engaged lawyers and that he will sue Latham for defamation unless the NSW One Nation leader apologises.
“Enough is enough,” Greenwich said in his statement.
Crikey has contacted Latham for comment.
This is an excellent development and I wish Alex Greenwich all the best. I’m starting to feel as though we’re back in the 70s. Thank heaven our laws haven’t regressed along with some of the vile behaviour we have been seeing lately.
When he says things like this, how on earth can Mark Latham imagine that it is possible to defame him? Is it possible to think any less of him after hearing and/or reading his own words?
I’m not so sure. Is lawyering-up ever an excellent development? If Latham (whom I don’t seek to defend) has defamed himself with his slur, as seems to be the consensus, then what is to be gained by litigation? What I find unfortunate is that now everyone seems to be in furious agreement that buggery between men is “disgusting” rather than the perfectly natural and pleasurable experience that I have found it to be. Consider that before you down-vote my comment.
That witch-finding/burner attitude is the same centripetal circle in which the 60/70 gay movement now finds itself trapped by the alphabet brigade.
Most revolutions eat their children but it used to take a bit longer – must be that damned social contagion speeding everything up…
This makes absolutely no sense.
I’m not much for the down voting.
Who is in agreement? Very few in my somewhat wide and diffuse circle of friends and associates.
Apparently Greenwich – who started this circus by calling that Latham’s ‘political views were those of disgusting person’ – else he’d not claim to have been defamed by a straight forward description of sodomy.
It’s of a piece with the proudly promiscuous feminist who never-the-less claims, when a man notes that same promiscuity, that he is ‘slut-shaming’ her. It’s an untenable duality, it can’t quite add up to defamatory unless the defamed concedes the behaviour noted is indeed deservedly reputation-damaging. In which case, it’s not defamatory, being true. It’s a circular own goal, grounded I reckon in a kind of nervous middle-class prurience. All the anxiously bienpensant soft paps in this thread falling over each other to take offence on Greenwich’s behalf seem oblivious to the bigoted confusion and mixed messaging it witlessly reveals in themselves.
One would like to presume that one can still publicly express the personal opinion that sodomy between two men is ‘disgusting’ without automatically entering the realm of harassment, carriage service abuse…or much less (FFS) criminality. However, these are odd times. If AG’s police complaint, suit and/or HRC case should succeed…then the obvious pressing matters to be resolved are a) which sex things are we allowed to describe publicly as ‘disgusting’ without triggering similar legal activity, and b) who maintains this list, and c) how does one get hold of a current copy? (How one yearns, in this neutered technocrat’s paradise, this tediously explicit, incontinently dull, utterly joyless and unerotic age of Big State Curtain-Twitchers & Bedroom Auditers…to be authentically transgressive, erotically dangerous, again…)
Then there is the authoritarianism of it and where it leads. You are probably sick of reprising Niemoller but the narcissistic exceptionalism of ID politics invariably sees its cohorts fragment ever-inwards, into finer gradations of personal grievance. Crikey will bung on its blinkers and hail an AG win, but of course at some future point Greenwich will say something misfirey himself, which an equally-opportunist rainbow-splinterer of some stripe with his own axe to grind will likewise seize upon, and the MP will find the boot on the other foot.
They come for us all in the end, mate, these joyless punishers. They come for us all…
Greenwich criticised Latham for a speech he gave at St Michaels Church in Belfield, in Sydney’s south-west on 22nd March which was targetted by demonstrators from the Community Action for Rainbow Rights group.
“Mark Latham is a disgusting human being and people who are considering voting for One Nation need to realise they are voting for an extremely hateful and dangerous individual who risks causing a great deal of damage to our state,’ Mr Greenwich said at a press conference.
You’re going to have to toughen up. Latham’s hate, aggression and divisive behaviour is acceptable to only a small number of Australians so you can expect to read many comments objecting to his vile behaviour and supporting those who take him on.
I know, Wokey, oh I know. We are indeed awash in sanctimonious curtain-twitchers these days. Perched permanently at your front room windows, scratching relentlessly at your phantom itches, watching down the street like beady-eyed hawks, for Bad Jack to stagger home from the pub a wee bit late with a loose woman or miss Sunday Mass.
Oh noes, I’m shaking in my boots at the punishment you soft pap progs are going to hand out. Etc.
Consider, the Labor Party positioned this man to become the Australian Prime Minister.
Then again, the liberal party gave us tony abbott, malcolm turnbull and scott morrison.
At least they were sane.
Er, no
Turnbull possibly sane, Morrison probable personality disorder, Abbott certifiable nutjob.
that sounds like on of the YEs Minister irregular nouns.
Pablo you are spot on, Abbott had to many hits to the head when he was boxing in University
Rattled his brain, Morrison thought he was God and all ( including his colleagues) his flock.
Popular assessment!
By what definition of ‘sanity’?
Two religious nutters and a bloke whose picture appears in dictionaries to illustrate “smug mug w/o reason”.
This man seems to jump between parties at a whim… seemingly every time he comes close to, or steps over the line, he departs before they show him the door.
There’s also the strong smell of toxic masculinity. When it rears its ugly head, it proves one very important thing. Some males try very hard to prove they’re “men” when all it proves is their insecurities. I’m glad the men I know, work, and associate with are comfortable in their own skins and treat others with decency, and that includes my spouse.
Fred Hollows quote: “Every eye is an eye. When you are doing surgery there, that is just as important as if you were doing eye surgery on the Prime Minister or King.” That’s what my husband trues to use as his mantra in daily life, especially work when he’s dealing with people from all walks of life and usually at their most vulnerable.
Re Latham being allegedly defamed as ‘disgusting’ – is it possible to defame the already infamous?
When I think of where Biff has come from as Leader of the Labor Party to where he is now, nothing describes his situation for me better than these words from Hank Williams…
I’m a rollin’ stone, all alone and lost
For a life of sin, I have paid the cost
When I pass by, all the people say
Just another guy on the lost highway
I don’t really think that Latham has thought his comments through.
Heterosexual anal sex is at least three times more common than homosexual gay sex. Does Latham think anal sex between a man and a woman to be sickening?
It seems to me that the anal sex insults are just an excuse for gay bashing…and a poor excuse it is.
Here’s a suggestion. If Latham finds the thought of gay sex gut churning then he should raise his gaze above the navel and stop thinking of it.
‘at least three times more common’ !!!
Was there ever a research done, if so I’d like to see it.
Yes. Google it, mate.
Sounds like someone has been “doing their own research” on a porn site.