Vile voice messages to Alex Greenwich played in defamation case

A second caller called him an expletive and said to him and his office staff: “I bet you your fathers are proud of you, aren’t they?”

A third caller said: “Jump over the Gap, you ---- .”

A fourth mocked him by saying: “Mark Latham made me cry!”

Greenwich filed defamation proceedings against Latham last year after the independent NSW upper house MP posted and later deleted a highly graphic and offensive comment on Twitter, now X, on March 30 last year. Greenwich, who is gay, described the tweet as “defamatory and homophobic”.

Greenwich is also suing Latham over related comments he made to Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph on April 1 last year.

The tweet led One Nation founder Pauline Hanson to remove Latham, a former federal Labor leader, as the party’s parliamentary leader.

‘Loss of standing’

On the third and final day of the defamation trial, Collins submitted that the tweet defamed Greenwich and “led to a loss of standing” in the community.

“We say your honour will be satisfied from the fact that a not insignificant number of members of the community were provoked into branding him with those terms evidences a serious loss of standing,” Collins submitted.

“It’s not an answer for [Latham’s lawyers] … to say, as they did yesterday, ‘Oh well, these people probably already would have held those views about him.’ These views were not views that had ever been expressed with this ferocity to Mr Greenwich before.”

Tweet posted after election

Latham’s tweet was posted five days after the NSW election last year.

Four days before the election, Latham had spoken at a Catholic Church in Sydney’s south-west about what he called “religious freedom, parental rights, school education and protecting [non-government] schools from Alphabet Activism”. Collins told the court on Wednesday that “Alphabet” appeared to be a derogatory term for the LGBTQI community.

About 15 LGBTQI protesters outside the event were reportedly confronted by violent counter-protesters, Collins said. He said Latham “got his facts completely wrong” and publicly accused Greenwich of instigating a violent protest.

Greenwich was later quoted in The Sydney Morning Herald describing Latham as a “disgusting human being”.

Five days after the election, Latham tweeted in response to Greenwich’s remark: “Disgusting? How does that compare with [sexual activity described in graphic and offensive terms the Herald has chosen not to publish]?”

He later tweeted: “I’m very sorry for saying I hate the idea of having anal sex with another man. Has it become compulsory?”

Collins told the court this was not an apology.

Greenwich alleges the initial tweet conveyed up to two defamatory meanings, including that he is “not a fit and proper person to be a [NSW MP] ... because he engages in disgusting sexual activities”.

Latham’s response

Latham is seeking to defend the case on a range of bases, including that the defamatory meanings alleged by Greenwich are not conveyed by the tweet or Telegraph comments.

“What we say globally is that Mr Latham’s tweet may have wounded Mr Greenwich, but it didn’t wound his reputation,” Latham’s barrister, Kieran Smark, SC, said on Thursday.

Smark submitted on Friday that Latham’s comments may have been “the trigger or the spur” for abuse, but it did not prove those people changed their view about Greenwich “in any significant way” following his client’s remarks.

Justice David O’Callaghan will deliver his decision at a later date.

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