Mark Latham’s history of bad behaviour and abusiveness

On November 12, 2021, during a debate about changes to New South Wales sexual consent laws, Greens upper house member Abigail Boyd gave a courageous speech about her own abuse as a child.

“I was raped for the first time at eight years old and was subjected to it continuously for many years,” she said.

“Growing up, I thought it was my fault. I was riddled with guilt and the anxiety of not knowing when it would happen next, trying to drown out my thoughts of it by repeating ‘it’s okay’ over and over in my mind for years. For a long time, my experience as a child interfered with getting on with my life.”

Boyd went on to detail the complex post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted and the ongoing effects of the abuse even after a decade of therapy.

The bill to which she spoke – and which subsequently passed – required that for sexual activity to be considered consensual both parties had to actively and freely agree. Silence or lack of resistance – the freeze response – or intoxication did not constitute consent.

“I not only often have difficulty expressing my emotions but also sometimes have difficulty feeling anything at all,” Boyd said. “I spend long periods stuck in the freeze response … because freezing, not feeling and going somewhere else in my mind is a really good way of avoiding pain. Whether it is pain that I am experiencing right then and there or pain from memories, freezing is a protective mechanism, but, if you are stuck in it, you miss out on the richness of emotions and connections with others.”

In the years since, Mark Latham has repeatedly referred back to these statements, in his uniquely nasty way. It is a window into his particularly curdled view of the world and especially women.

In the adjournment debate on November 16, 2022, for instance, Latham accused Boyd of seeking “revenge” on men through her support of “a whole series of bills and reports – from Broderick to coercive control and positive consent”, and so making state democracy “an embittered plaything of individuals, driven solely by their own mishaps and misjudgements…”

By “Broderick” he was referring to the damning 2022 review of the workplace culture of the NSW parliament by former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, which found a “devastating” mix of bullying, sexual harassment and assault, often by members of parliament.

Broderick advocated significant changes to parliamentary process. Boyd has long advocated changes to the rules to penalise bad behaviour. As she says, NSW parliament remains “the wild west”.

Hansard is replete with other examples of Latham’s disdain for Boyd and her trauma. Her “favourite”, she says, using the term sarcastically, was on the night of February 8 last year.

The background to it was a gibe from Mark Banasiak, of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, directed at the federal Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi over a proposed property development that involved the removal of a small number of trees. He suggested Faruqi had a “lumberjack fetish”.

Boyd recalls that after she objected to the comment, Latham trolled her in a speech, “where he said that because I was a victim of child sexual assault, I just don’t like sex, and that’s why I can’t find sexist jokes funny”.

Her recollection is accurate, but reading the actual Hansard drives home the sly meanness of Latham’s speech, which was delivered in a tone of mock concern.

Both sex and laughter were beneficial to health, he began, and: “When someone, especially a member of parliament, is triggered by the mere mention of sex, it indicates that something has gone wrong. The tragedy of childhood sexual abuse obviously gives someone a very different outlook and reaction to sex than those who have had no such experience. Every decent person, of course, has tremendous sympathy for the victims of childhood sexual abuse…”

When parliament resumes next week, Latham will face a motion of “condemnation” moved by Labor, and probable referral to the privileges committee, in relation to another instance of his nastiness.

It is alleged he abused parliamentary privilege to reveal confidential information from a psychologist’s report prepared for civil proceedings brought against him by a gay MP, Alex Greenwich. He denies it.

In all likelihood the move against him will succeed, but whether it results in any significant sanction is dubious.

Still, Latham’s homophobia has cost him plenty. Greenwich sued for defamation and was awarded $140,000 in damages. With legal costs, it is estimated Latham could be out of pocket $600,000.

Some, including The Sydney Morning Herald, have expressed the hope that he will be bankrupted, which would render him ineligible to sit in parliament.

There are other legal proceedings in train. A former long-term partner, Nathalie Matthews, is seeking an apprehended violence order against him. She claims a “sustained pattern” of abuse, including emotional, psychological and financial manipulation, and forced, degrading sex acts. He denies that, too. “The big news is I had a private life,” he said. “I had a sex life, that I’ve got to say was fantastic.”

The Sydney Morning Herald reports allegations a sex tape was recorded in his parliamentary office. Latham says he has checked his devices and can’t find it.

On top of that came revelations that he had furtively taken pictures of female parliamentary colleagues and shared them with Matthews, along with sexist commentary. Reportedly, this included a photograph of Boyd wearing what he called “fuck me” boots, and the suggestion they engage in a threesome.

Boyd says the footwear in question was a pair of mid-calf leather boots.

Latham has apologised for his covert photography.

In a media conference a couple of weeks ago, Housing Minister Rose Jackson gave a succinct character assessment of the independent MP: “Mark Latham is a pig.”

Jackson also referred to his past transgressions, noting his verbal attacks on Rosie Batty, the domestic violence campaigner and former Australian of the Year, whose son Luke, 11, was murdered by his father.

In a podcast, Latham rationalised men’s domestic violence as a “coping mechanism”, said Batty’s campaigning caused “more harm than good” and accused feminists of “demonising men”.

That was in 2016.

The same year saw the settlement of a defamation action brought by journalist and medical doctor Lisa Pryor over a column Latham wrote in The Australian Financial Review entitled “Why left feminists don’t like kids”.

His piece was in response to a column Pryor wrote for Good Weekend magazine, about how she balanced the demands of raising two young children while studying medicine full-time: “antidepressants and caffeine”.

Pryor’s lawyers argued Latham’s column conveyed a number of defamatory meanings, including that “the plaintiff, a mother, does not love her children”.

The case was settled on terms undisclosed.

While women have been frequently subjected to Latham’s bile over the years, his prejudice has been directed in many other directions, too. They have sometimes been very expensive for Latham. His homophobic attacks on Greenwich are one example. Another involved Osman Faruqi, a journalist and son of Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi.

In 2018 he sued Latham over his accusations, made on multiple platforms, that he was “aiding and abetting Islamic terrorism” and fostering “anti-white racism in Australia”.

Faruqi claimed Latham’s comments defamed him by suggesting he “knowingly assists terrorist fanatics who want to kill innocent people in Australia”.

Again, it was settled, terms undisclosed, but Faruqi’s lawyers, Maurice Blackburn, said in a statement the total including costs could be more than $100,000.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the case was Latham’s attempt to defend his comments. Space does not permit a full accounting, but a report in Guardian Australia at the time neatly summarised:

“In August, Federal court judge Michael Wigney struck out Latham’s defence in its entirety, labelling the 76 page document ‘extraordinary’ for its references to, among other things, the martyrdom of Christians in the Roman Empire and the persecution of ethnoreligious Huguenots in the French kingdom during the French wars of religion of the 16th century.”

Further evidence, one might suggest, of Latham’s peculiar mix of erudition and spite, remarked upon by many people, such as Abigail Boyd, who have had dealings with him.

“He’s a horrible piece of work,” she says, “and I hate to say it, but he’s also often quite brilliant. I don’t know what happened to him and whether he was always like this, but every now and then I feel a bit sorry for him.”

In truth, he has always been “quite brilliant”. He was dux of his school and completed his economics degree with honours at Sydney University, even as he worked as a staffer for a Labor MP, the late John Kerin, who was then shadow minister for agriculture.

He lasted a couple of years with Kerin before moving on in 1982, to a job as a research assistant to former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam. Whitlam was so impressed with Latham’s intellect as to nominate him as a future leader.

From 1988 to 1991, he served as an adviser to Bob Carr, then NSW opposition leader. Carr recalls him being very competent. In particular, Latham compiled a comprehensive list of the broken promises of the then Liberal government.

“It was,” Carr says, “a very solid piece of work.”

Latham eventually fell out with Carr, as he would later fall out with Whitlam, and as he subsequently fell out with many, many others.

From there, Latham went on to become mayor of Liverpool City Council for several years, before winning Whitlam’s old seat of Werriwa in 1994. Within two years, he was in shadow cabinet. Within 10, he was opposition leader.

Even by political standards, he stood out as abrasive. To cite just a few examples:

After disagreeing with Kevin Rudd on the impact of research and development tax concessions, Latham sent an email to Rudd that began “Hey, Knucklehead!”

On 2GB in 1998, he had this to say about Anthony Albanese: “If anyone can find a positive speech or idea that Anthony Albanese has ever put forward in public life, I’ll buy them a lottery ticket.”

Referring back to an infamous incident in which he crash-tackled a cab driver over a disputed fare, breaking the driver’s arm, he told The Australian Financial Review in June 2003: “The taxi driver was trying to steal my property and Kim Beazley’s trying to steal the Labor leadership off Simon Crean and I’m happy to tackle them both.”

The remarkable thing is that the Labor caucus elected him leader, despite knowing what he was like. It was, mind you, a very close vote – 47 to 45 – and some of his colleagues were appalled.

Tanya Plibersek recently recalled that “the only time I remember going home and having a little cry after work was the day that Mark Latham was elected as leader of the Australian Labor Party”.

She was a good judge of character. Others delighted in Latham’s invective. He once referred to then prime minister John Howard as an “arselicker” and to the Liberal Party MPs as a “conga line of suckholes”.

The voting public decided it did not want such an unstable man as prime minister. Perhaps the final straw was Latham’s handshake with John Howard, when the two men met outside the ABC studios in parliament on election eve. It was variously reported as aggressive, bullying and intimidating.

Labor was crushed at the election. The Coalition won majorities in both houses of parliament. From there Latham’s political course has become even more erratic.

Labor kicked him out of the party and has recently debated whether his picture should even continue to hang with those of other leaders on the caucus room wall. (It will remain, but with a disclaimer, noting the expulsion.)

He took on, and lost, various gigs as a media commentator – he was deemed too offensive even for Sky News and was sacked.

And so Latham fetched up on the fringe right of politics, first trying his luck with the Liberal Democrats, before running as lead candidate for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation at the 2019 NSW election.

He won, but, true to form, fell out with the party. He contested the 2023 election as an independent and won again. He is, as an editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald put it, “like a cockroach that can’t be killed”.

Members of the upper house serve eight-year terms, meaning the state is probably stuck with him until 2031.

Interestingly, Abigail Boyd does not agree with those who think he should be booted from the parliament.

“I actually don’t. I think he was elected to represent a bunch of people who unfortunately agree with him. What the problem is here is that the rules, the laws, that apply in every other workplace, don’t apply in the house. That’s the thing we can fix.”

It would be nice to think Mark Latham might spur positive change to the operation of parliament, if only by serving as an exemplar of its inadequacy.

Says Boyd: “The Broderick review recommended that we look at our standing orders and try and change them. And then I tried to do that. The first time I put forward the proposal, Labor voted against it.

“We had an inquiry, and the major parties were like, ‘Oh, we don’t really want to change it much.’ ”

Next week, as the government moves to censure Latham, we will hear pious critiques of a nasty man, but don’t hold your breath waiting for serious change to the system that enables such nastiness. 

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