Alex Greenwich to launch defamation action against Mark Latham

Sydney MP Alex Greenwich will launch defamation action against Mark Latham after the NSW One Nation leader refused to apologise for a series of homophobic and sexualised slurs.

A statement issued on Thursday by Greenwich, the influential NSW independent MP, confirmed he had instructed lawyers to begin defamation proceedings against Latham over a highly graphic and offensive tweet aimed at Greenwich, who is gay, last month.

Sydney MP Alex Greenwich will launch defamation action against the NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Greenwich had given Latham until May 17 to apologise for the comments, but on Thursday said he had received correspondence from Latham’s lawyers saying they would not accept that offer.

“Mr Greenwich wrote to Mr Latham concerning his Tweet and commentary, provided Mr Latham with a required deadline of May 17 to apologise, and advised Mr Latham that were that not to occur Mr Greenwich would commence defamation action against Mr Latham,” the statement read.

“Late yesterday Mr Greenwich received a letter from Mr Latham’s lawyers saying they would not accept his offers to resolve the situation outside of court and as no apology has been received, Mr Greenwich has instructed his lawyers to commence defamation proceedings, with the filing of a claim expected in the coming days.”

Earlier this month this masthead revealed Greenwich had also filed a complaint with NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb, alleging Latham had used a carriage service to “menace, harass or cause offence”, while also lodging a complaint of homosexual vilification with Anti-Discrimination NSW.

Greenwich’s statement said police had confirmed “their investigation is ongoing”, while the NSW Anti-Discrimination body had “accepted the complaint for investigation”.

Latham made the comments in March in response to an article in this masthead in which Greenwich called the former Labor leader “a disgusting human being”. The article was about LGBTQ protesters who were targeted outside a candidates’ forum that Latham addressed during the state election campaign.

Despite the comments being widely condemned, including by One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, he has refused to apologise, though he has removed the tweet at the centre of the controversy

Earlier this month, he gave his first interview since the comments on radio host Chris Smith’s online show, in which he doubled down on his comments about Greenwich and refused to apologise.

On Thursday, Greenwich said he had been “inundated with abusive emails, and in some cases threats that I’ve had to report to police”.

“This is not a process I enter into lightly, and a process I wish I didn’t have to engage in,” he said.

“I know this is not going to be an easy process but when someone seeks to reduce you to being a sex act, continues those attacks on you and has a history of attacking the LGBTI community, enough can finally be enough.

“If that means I have to go through an emotionally gruelling and a financially gruelling legal process I will do that.”

His lawyer, Nicholas Stewart, said they would seek aggravated damages from Latham.

In 2021, NSW introduced a new “serious harm” threshold in defamation cases, meaning that a plaintiff must show the publication of allegedly “defamatory matter” about them “has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm” to their reputation.

University of Western Australia law professor Michael Douglas said that, while that test “could” be used, Latham’s public following suggested the case “might not have much work to do” to meet the test.

“You have two public figures and the Tweet in question has received an obvious amount of attention and national coverage,” he said.

He said generally speaking it would not currently be defamatory to call someone homosexual but that the context of Latham’s comments was what mattered.

“Although it’s vexed, the issue here is not just that Latham called a political opponent homosexual, the language he used to do so is language which encouraged the public to hate someone and subject someone to hatred and contempt is a test of whether something is defamatory,” he said.

“It’s not just the bare meaning that someone is a homosexual. But that will of course be a matter for the judge.”

Latham wrote on social media on Wednesday that Greenwich’s criticisms of him after the protest incident were “unprovoked and totally unnecessary”, and said he had also referred those criticisms to the police.

“This was a reckless, ill-informed and malicious attack on everything I do: my love of my children, my sexuality, my work in the community in which I live and my role as a NSW parliamentarian,” he wrote.

“It was unprovoked and totally unnecessary. Greenwich made no attempt to check with me the facts of what happened that night at the Belfield Catholic Church. He wasn’t even there.”

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