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Latham’s sexually explicit tweet defamed Greenwich, court rules
A court found Mark Latham defamed political rival Alexander Greenwich in an offensive and sexually explicit tweet.
Naomi Neilson
Justice David O’Callaghan of the Federal Court ordered Latham, an independent member who last year was ousted as One Nation’s leader, pay $140,000 to Greenwich for a post on Twitter – now X – that suggested he “engages in disgusting sexual activities”.
“The court has found that the first pleaded imputation relating to the primary tweet is defamatory of Greenwich,” Justice O’Callaghan said.
The offending tweet was published after extensive media reporting of a protest outside St Michael’s Catholic Church in Belfield, where Latham was invited to speak about religious freedom and “protecting [non-government] schools from Alphabet Activism and lawfare”.
The “alphabet” in this context refers to LGBTI.
Greenwich told a journalist that Latham was a “disgusting human being” and people who considered voting for One Nation “needs to realise they are voting for an extremely hateful and dangerous individual who risks causing a great deal of damage to our state”.
The offending tweet was posted in reply to a Twitter user who shared a link to the article and copied Greenwich’s comment.
Latham wrote: “Disgusting? How does that compare with …” and proceeded to refer to a sexually explicit activity.
He was reportedly sacked from One Nation when “mainstream media” stonewalled him for the comments.
Greenwich attended an event with his husband the night the tweet was published and felt “really shaken” when people approached him about it “rather than [his] work as an elected representative”.
He said he got home and “burst into tears”.
Dr Matthew Collins, counsel for Greenwich, said although the tweet was only up for two hours, the “cat was out of the bag”, and Greenwich was subjected to an “utterly hateful torrent of abuse and vitriol”.
Justice O’Callaghan said the tenor of the messages varied.
“Many of them were vile or offensive and, in some cases, confusing. Some were threatening. Others were, as [Latham’s counsel, Kieran] Smark accepted, deranged. Some were all those things combined,” he said.
Latham argued the defence of honest opinion and common law qualified privilege because he was replying to a “very strong attack”.
He added that given the large readership of the newspaper that published Greenwich’s comments, the tweet was “proportionate in scope”.
Justice O’Callaghan dismissed this, finding Latham’s reply “was obviously not proportionate and commensurate to Greenwich’s attack”.
“The attack was strongly worded, to be sure, but it was essentially about politics and, in substance, urged electors not to vote for Latham because of his views about the LGBTQIA+ issues. Latham’s reply, on the other hand, was personal and not germane to any matter of politics contained in the attack. It was neither proportionate nor commensurate,” Justice O’Callaghan said.
“As Greenwich pleaded in his reply as part of his particulars of malice, Latham must have known that what he said in the tweet was untrue because, as his counsel admitted at the hearing, he did not know anything about the private sexual activities of Greenwich.”
Justice O’Callaghan also considered comments made by Pauline Hanson and Andrew Bolt – who cannot “be described as political allies of Greenwich” – that “pilloried” Latham for his tweet.
The case is Greenwich v Latham [2024] FCA 1050.
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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