An Australian legal tribunal ordered former parliament member Mark Latham to pay $100,000 to current parliament member Alex Greenwich for unlawfully vilifying and sexually harassing him over his homosexuality, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.
The case involved public statements Latham made on social media, in the Saturday Telegraph newspaper, and on the online radio station TNT Radio. While the tribunal told Latham to delete his homophobic social media posts about Greenwich and refrain from making similar unlawful statements, Latham has pledged to appeal the tribunal’s ruling.
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On March 30, 2023, Latham commented on a link posted to Twitter (now X), which included a video of LGBTQ+ protestors outside of a candidates forum attended by Latham. The link quoted Greenwich as saying, “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.”
In response, Latham wrote, “Disgusting? How does that compare with sticking a d**k up a bloke’s ar** and covering it with s**t?”
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Greenwich’s legal filing said that Latham’s statement unlawfully said that Greenwich engages in “disgusting sexual activities” which make him “not a fit and proper person to be a member of the NSW [New South Wales] Parliament.”
The tribunal said that Latham’s social media message incited Latham’s social media followers to express “hatred towards, serious contempt for, or to severely ridicule” Greenwich on the basis of his homosexuality, which “unleashed a campaign of terror and harassment, with police making an arrest of a person, electoral office workers having to wear gloves to open some mail in case it contained dangerous substances,” causing Greenwich to suffer psychological injury.
On April 1, 2023, Latham told the Saturday Telegraph newspaper, “Greenwich goes into schools talking to kids about being gay. I didn’t want to be accused of anything similar…” Greenwich said Latham’s comment insinuated that Greenwich is “going into schools to groom children” and raising “fears of pedophilic behavior.”
In comments made in an online radio interview with Chris Smith of TNT Radio, Latham described Greenwich’s presumed sexual practices as “puke-worthy.”
The court found all of these comments to be instances of sexual harassment and homosexual vilification, which are forbidden by Australian civil law.
On Thursday, Latham criticized the tribunal’s “woke, left-wing political judgment,” stating, “One of the two tribunal members is a prominent transgender activist who was asked to recuse herself but failed to do so… She’s straight from the Greenwich school of Alphabet Politics and naturally, has been hostile to me.”
He promised to appeal the “absurd” ruling, which said his comments “damaged” Greenwich and violated “workplace” standards. Latham argued that the parliamentary workplace shouldn’t include airwaves and social media.
But the tribunal wrote, “Politicians have unusual work, in that their work requires them to be in the public eye. Attending such interviews and posting material is part of their parliamentary and political work.”
Greenwich said, “The judgement makes clear that social media is plainly capable of being a vehicle for unlawful vilification, particularly where the conduct is engaged in by a public figure with a large audience.”
He added, “I pursued this matter not only for myself, but for the many people across the LGBTQIA + community who experience similar abuse and are told to accept it as part of public life or online debate.”
In 2024, the Australian Federal Court awarded Greenwich $140,000 in damages after it found that Latham’s comments had defamed him. Latham appealed that ruling as well.
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