Time to sit back and enjoy the Latham and Lidia show
If every yin has a yang and the cosmos is truly in balance then surely it is only a matter of time before Mark Latham and Lidia Thorpe get married. Or at least start a podcast together. Each enjoys crazed obsessive politics and has a background of appalling personal behaviour longer than a dry cleaner’s laundry list.
And in both cases their most recent indiscretions were career bests: the former Greens deputy Senate leader hurling abuse at people outside a strip club at 3am, and the current One Nation NSW leader tweeting a homophobic slur at a fellow MP so graphic that only the Daily Mail had the stomach to publish it.
Point being these acts would be sackable in any workplace apart from those that are supposedly among the highest in the land – the Senate and the NSW Legislative Council. And yet Thorpe and Latham still sit immovably in these houses.
This has led to many calling for their resignation or scrambling for some means by which to eject them.
Thorpe, after all, was infamously elected as the No. 1 candidate for the Greens on their Victorian senate ticket, only to abandon the party because she did not support an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, leading to arguments that she should vacate her seat.
And it was reported that Alex Greenwich – the openly gay member for Sydney at whom Latham directed his foul spray – was launching legal action against him.
If Latham were to be convicted of “using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence”, the offence Greenwich reportedly cited in his complaint to the NSW Police Commissioner, he could be disqualified from the state parliament – though it is still only a complaint and Latham has not been charged with this offence.
In other words what each has done, it is argued, is so morally reprehensible that they should be forced to leave. I disagree.
I think what each has done is so morally reprehensible they should be forced to stay.
Of course it is more than reasonable for Greenwich – who is 10 times the man Latham is – to want to throw the book at the bloke who so nastily abused him. But there are worse punishments than jail, let alone the slap on the wrist Latham would probably receive if he were ever charged and successfully prosecuted.
For one thing, I suspect one of the reasons Latham lashed out so nastily and witlessly on Twitter is because he had just been roundly humiliated at the NSW state election just days earlier.
Despite an all-out offensive and predictions One Nation would get a thumping result – potentially even doubling its number of upper house MPs to four – the party ended up with only 1.8 per cent of the vote and Latham himself just limped over the line. Frankly, you don’t need to be a psychoanalyst to know that’s going to put an angry man in a bad mood.
And it’s unlikely that mood will improve, with pollster and former Labor strategist Kos Samaras declaring One Nation is demographically destined to decline even further in the future.
And so why give Latham an excuse? Why give him martyrdom? Why give him an exit strategy with any more dignity than the drubbing he will inevitably receive the next time he runs for election?
The same goes for Thorpe. She was elected – never forget this – as the poster girl of the Australian Greens. Every embarrassment she brings upon herself and the nation is because of them. Why shouldn’t the Australian people be able to bear witness to the very embodiment of Greens entitlement and rage in its purest unleashed form?
Hell, it’s worth the price of the parliamentary pension for entertainment purposes alone.
And so bring on the next vote for both of them. Both claim to be fearless leaders of some giant unseen movement for which only they have the courage to speak out. Let’s see how many others there are.
Because that’s the beauty of democracy. The people always get it right, and even when they don’t they’re usually pretty quick to correct the record.
And so let’s put these champions of the people to the people themselves – and see how well they do.