97 Facts About Mark Latham

Mark William Latham is an Australian politician and media commentator who is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Mark Latham previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party and leader of the opposition from December 2003 to January 2005, leading the party to defeat at the 2004 federal election.

Mark Latham left the ALP in 2017 and joined Pauline Hanson's One Nation in 2018, gaining a seat for that party in the New South Wales Legislative Council at the 2019 New South Wales state election and winning re-election in 2023.

Mark Latham joined the Labor Party at a young age and worked as a research assistant to Gough Whitlam and Bob Carr.

Mark Latham was elected to the Liverpool City Council in 1987 and became mayor in 1991.

Mark Latham entered the House of Representatives by winning the seat of Werriwa at the 1994 Werriwa by-election.

Mark Latham was included in Labor's shadow cabinet after the 1996 federal election, but left the frontbench in 1998 following a dispute with the party leader, Kim Beazley.

Mark Latham returned to the shadow cabinet in 2001, when Simon Crean became leader.

Mark Latham became leader of the Labor Party in December 2003, narrowly defeating Beazley in a leadership vote after Crean's resignation.

Mark Latham was the youngest leader of the party since Chris Watson in 1901.

Mark Latham became disillusioned with politics and retired in January 2005.

Mark Latham returned to politics and joined the Liberal Democratic Party in May 2017, which led to him receiving a lifetime ban from the Labor Party.

In November 2018, Mark Latham left the party and announced that he had joined One Nation as its state leader in New South Wales.

Mark Latham successfully stood for the party in the upper house at the 2019 state election.

Mark Latham resigned in the middle of his eight-year term on 2 March 2023 in order to run for a new eight-year term at the state election later that month.

On 22 August 2023, Mark Latham resigned from One Nation to sit as an independent.

Mark Latham was born on 28 February 1961 in Ashcroft, a suburb of south-western Sydney in New South Wales.

Mark Latham was educated at Hurlstone Public School; the Hurlstone Agricultural High School, where he was dux; and at the University of Sydney, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Economics with Honours in 1982.

Mark Latham worked as an adviser to Labor politician John Kerin from 1980 to 1982.

Mark Latham played rugby union with the Liverpool Bulls club and had a stint as its president.

Mark Latham has been a fan of St George Dragons rugby league club since 1968.

On 1 June 2004, Mark Latham told Parliament that during his time as mayor he had reduced Liverpool's debt service ratio from 17 to 10 percent, which he said was less than half of western Sydney's average.

Mark Latham said Liverpool had adopted a debt retirement strategy that he claimed would have made it debt free by 2005, but it was not implemented by his successors.

In January 1994, Mark Latham was elected at a by-election to the House of Representatives for the Sydney seat of Werriwa, which had been Gough Whitlam's seat from 1952 to 1978.

Mark Latham was elected to the Opposition front bench after Labor lost the 1996 election, and became shadow minister for education.

Mark Latham once referred to Prime Minister John Howard as an "arselicker" and to the Liberal Party frontbench as a "conga line of suckholes".

Mark Latham described US President George W Bush as "the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory".

Mark Latham was a strong supporter of Kim Beazley's successor Simon Crean, defending the leader against his critics within the party.

Mark Latham called Crean's principal frontbench detractors, Stephen Smith, Stephen Conroy and Wayne Swan "the three roosters".

When Crean resigned the Labor leadership, Mark Latham contested the ballot for leader against Beazley.

On 2 December 2003, Mark Latham won the vote for the leadership by 47 votes to 45.

At age 42, Mark Latham became the youngest leader of the federal parliamentary Labor Party since its first leader Chris Watson, who became leader at age 33 in 1901.

On winning the leadership, Mark Latham appointed his predecessor, Simon Crean, as shadow treasurer, while retaining a number of Kim Beazley's supporters in senior positions.

Mark Latham introduced an unusual campaign style, choosing to focus on "values" issues, such as reading to children and economic relief for middle-class Australia, which he termed with the political slogan "ease the squeeze".

Mark Latham put forward plans to reform the education and health systems.

Commentators began to discuss the serious possibility that Mark Latham could be Prime Minister by the end of the year.

Until March 2004, Labor under Mark Latham's leadership held a strong lead in national opinion polls.

Shortly afterwards, Mark Latham announced the recruitment of Peter Garrett, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and former lead singer with the rock band Midnight Oil, as a Labor candidate in Kingsford Smith, a safe Sydney electorate being vacated by the retiring former minister Laurie Brereton.

The second coup scored by Mark Latham was the announcement that he would abolish the generous superannuation schemes available to members of parliament; his plan was quickly adopted by the Howard government in the face of a rising wave of public support with the support of his mentor former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the former member for Werriwa.

In July 2004, Mark Latham again became the centre of controversy when it was alleged on a commercial television network that he had punched a political rival during his time on Liverpool Council.

The government denied that any such unit existed, but some observers speculated that Liberal Party researchers had accumulated more potentially embarrassing material about Mark Latham, which would be used during the election campaign, in addition to claims that Mark Latham was an inexperienced economic manager.

The footage showed Mark Latham appearing to draw Howard towards him and tower over his shorter opponent.

Mark Latham became the first Labor opposition leader since Frank Tudor in 1917 to fail to make a net gain in seats from the government at his first election.

Some commentators, including Kim Beazley, said Mark Latham's leadership had rescued Labor from a much heavier defeat.

Mark Latham had a heated public confrontation with the Labor deputy leader in the Senate, Stephen Conroy, renewing speculation there would be a challenge to Mark Latham's leadership in the new year.

Mark Latham was helped by the fact that there was no obvious successor to the leadership.

The final crisis for Mark Latham's leadership erupted in the aftermath of the December 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.

Mark Latham was criticised for not issuing a statement as leader personally, particularly at a time when John Howard expressed national sympathy over the disaster, pledged $1 billion in loans to Indonesia and declared a national day of mourning.

On 18 January 2005, citing life-threatening illness and family concerns, Mark Latham announced his resignation from the Labor Party leadership and from Parliament.

Mark Latham strongly criticised the media for invading his family's privacy during his illness.

Mark Latham had been federal Labor leader for 13 months, the shortest tenure since Billy Hughes was expelled from the party in 1916.

Mark Latham was only the second federal Labor leader, after Matthew Charlton in 1928, to leave politics without ever having held ministerial office.

Mark Latham became leader too early in his career, he lacked the skills needed to deal with the webs of intrigue within his own party, he refused to massage the media and the advisers he did listen to were out of their depth against Howard's praetorian guard.

In November 2010, Mark Latham contributed an essay in The Monthly titled "No Exit The ALP".

Mark Latham's suggested solution is that Labor again champions great causes, writing that:.

Mark Latham wrote a weekly column for the Spectator magazine entitled "Latham's Law".

Mark Latham gave his first public lecture since the release of the Diaries, titled "Ten Reasons Why Young Idealistic People Should Forget About Organised Politics", on 27 September 2005, at Melbourne University.

Mark Latham claimed politics has a detrimental impact on health, happiness and family life, largely blaming the "arrogant" and "incompetent" media, as well as internal party struggles.

On 19 January 2006, Mark Latham was eating with his two sons at a Hungry Jack's restaurant in Campbelltown, New South Wales when he was photographed by Ross Schultz, a photographer from The Daily Telegraph.

Mark Latham snatched the camera and smashed it, without destroying the electronic media that contained the photographs.

The Telegraph subsequently announced plans for upcoming publication of the photographic images in the following Saturday's edition and that it would be seeking $12,000 from Mark Latham to replace the equipment.

The photographer was unhurt but Seven's head of news in Sydney, Chris Willis, said the footage clearly showed Mark Latham's car veer toward the cameraman as he stood on the side of the road.

In February 2006, Mark Latham was charged with assault, malicious damage and theft in relation to the incident.

Mark Latham was required to pay $6,763.70 in compensation for the damaged camera.

Mark Latham commented on the 2007 federal election campaign with an article in the Australian Financial Review, in which he said Australia was having a "Seinfeld election, a show about nothing".

Mark Latham wrote that, no matter which party won, Australia would have a conservative economic policy and an industrial relations system which was decentralised and productivity-based.

In 2010, Mark Latham was a guest reporter for television show 60 Minutes, where he reported on the federal election campaign.

Mark Latham pushed his way through the crowd and confronted Gillard and her partner, Tim Mathieson, saying: "I understand you have made a complaint about me working for Channel 9".

Mark Latham caused a stir when, on 60 Minutes, he urged voters to issue a protest vote by leaving the ballot paper blank on election day:.

On 14 August 2013, during the election federal campaign, Mark Latham was interviewed by the 3AW radio station in Melbourne.

Mark Latham caused controversy when asked to comment on Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott's characterisation of Fiona Scott, the Liberal candidate for Lindsay, as having "sex appeal".

Mark Latham's resignation was linked to a series of articles critical of Australian of the Year Rosie Batty and Group Captain Catherine McGregor.

Since Mark Latham's podcast was broadcast, there have been widespread calls for White Ribbon to distance itself from Triple M and Mark Latham.

In 2016, Mark Latham became co-host of Sky News Live programs Jones + Co and in 2017 co-host of Outsiders.

Mark Latham responded by criticising both, including negative statements about Keneally's record as Premier of New South Wales.

Mark Latham was fired from Sky News on 29 March 2017 after the story was published.

Mark Latham later defended himself saying that a lot of journalists who discussed the comments had not seen the show:.

Also in the video, Mark Latham postulated that the ethnic enclave in Fairfield and Cabramatta signaled multiculturalism was failing as the West Asian-descent people in Fairfield did not want to visit Cabramatta, a suburb with a large East Asian population.

In 2019, Mark Latham was a keynote speaker at the inaugural Conservative Political Action Conference in Australia, alongside former prime minister Tony Abbott and British politician Nigel Farage.

In May 2017, Mark Latham announced via his Facebook page that he would be joining the Liberal Democrats, a libertarian party.

Mark Latham announced that he was open to running as a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in future elections.

In November 2018, Mark Latham announced that he had joined One Nation as the party's state leader in New South Wales, and would stand for the Legislative Council at the 2019 state election.

Mark Latham ran on a platform which opposed immigration, congestion, overdevelopment and renewable power, and proposed DNA tests for Aboriginal welfare recipients and banning the burqa in Government buildings.

Mark Latham was successful in his bid to return to parliament, winning an eight-year term in the Legislative Council alongside Rod Roberts.

Since 2020, Mark Latham has promoted a bill titled "Parental Rights" which seeks to prohibit teachers from discussing "the ideology of gender fluidity to children in schools".

In 2021, Mark Latham moved a motion to pull Bruce Pascoe's book Dark Emu from the New South Wales school curriculum.

In October 2022, Mark Latham announced his plan to quit the Legislative Council just before the 2023 New South Wales state election and to run again on the top of the One Nation ticket.

Mark Latham resigned from the Legislative Council on 2 March 2023 and was re-elected 23 days later.

Mark Latham denounced this decision, declaring that Hanson should "buy a mirror" as her own vote share had decreased at the previous federal election, and that she had stacked the NSW state executive with interstate residents.

Mark Latham supports banning the burqa in government buildings, banks and airports.

Mark Latham has previously claimed he is a supporter of same-sex marriage.

The comments were deemed to be homophobic by Greenwich and other politicians, and received significant backlash, even from within his own party as Pauline Hanson criticised Mark Latham and called for him to apologise.

Mark Latham made a formal police complaint about Latham using a carriage service to harass and offend, and a homosexual vilification complaint to the anti-discrimination board.

Mark Latham rejected Latham's defences, a statutory defence of honest opinion and a common law defence of qualified privilege, right of reply to attack.

Mark Latham argued "Changing the date will not change the circumstances of any disadvantaged Indigenous people" and "if the Left succeeds in moving or abolishing Australia Day, there is nothing about Australia that will be safe into the future".

Mark Latham began dating his first wife, Gabrielle Gwyther, in 1987, and they married in 1991.

Mark Latham married his second wife, Janine Lacy, in 2000; they have two sons together.