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Like a cockroach that can't be killed, Mark Latham has crawled around public life for too long. He must go

Like a cockroach that can't be killed, Mark Latham has crawled around public life for too long. He must go

Gough Whitlam commands a legacy the scale of which few prime ministers have matched. In three short years, his government extricated Australia from the Vietnam War and abolished conscription, recognised China, established Medibank and Australia Post, did away with the death penalty for Commonwealth offences, and replaced God Save the Queen with Advance Australia Fair.
Regrettably, Australia is stuck with one of Whitlam's less desirable achievements: Mark Latham. Few did more to build Latham up as a potential prime minister than Whitlam, and it is still remarkable that he and other Labor types saw fit to think this toxic political figure could lead our country.
In fairness to the then caucus, Latham's behaviour has deteriorated with time. But there were plenty of early warning signs when, in December 2003, Labor MPs voted 47-45 to replace Simon Crean with the fiercely bright but deeply flawed then member for Werriwa. As the Herald 's Deborah Snow and Damien Murphy reported at the time, many around Latham knew he was an erratic loner fundamentally unsuited to the role his party had entrusted him with.
Voters saw through the charade and thoroughly rejected him at that year's poll. But like a cockroach that can't be killed, Latham has crawled around public life ever since, surviving or succumbing to various scandals during stints at Sky News and The Australian Financial Review, and political flirtations with the Liberal Democrats and then One Nation. Each scandal had common threads, chief among them Latham's extreme nastiness, disrespect for women and sense of superiority over all others.
It was on the platform of One Nation that Latham was elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 2019. Ever the opportunist, Latham quit ahead of the 2023 election so he could run again and secure a fresh term on Macquarie Street. Latham and Pauline Hanson's awkward match detonated later that year, and Latham is now an independent on the crossbench. That said, Latham has not always been alone in parliament: he's been repeatedly wined, dined and courted by Liberals who should have known better than to mix with this stain on public life.
Because upper house MPs are given eight-year terms, Latham is entitled to stay in NSW Parliament until 2031. This would be a bad outcome even if Latham had been on his best behaviour. But given his deplorable conduct in parliament over recent years, NSW MPs may need to contemplate a difficult, complex change in the rules.
Should Latham remain an elected representative? The Herald strongly believes he should not. In our view, Latham disqualified himself from office long before allegations this week by his former partner, Nathalie Matthews, of a 'sustained pattern' of abuse, including emotional, psychological and financial manipulation.
An apprehended violence order application lodged by Matthews in the NSW Local Court claims Latham pressured her to have sex with other people and participate in depraved acts, and drove his car at her. The Daily Telegraph also revealed sordid WhatsApp messages Latham and Matthews exchanged while the MP was sitting in the parliamentary chamber. The Herald then reported that Latham's Parliament House office was allegedly used as the scene of 'sordid' sexual trysts captured on video.
In the latest instalment, the Telegraph on Thursday reported that Latham allegedly took photos of female colleagues in the chamber without their knowledge and made disparaging comments about their appearances in text messages.
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Fears for vulnerable children as social media ban grows
Fears for vulnerable children as social media ban grows

The Advertiser

timean hour ago

  • The Advertiser

Fears for vulnerable children as social media ban grows

Limiting children's access to social media could inadvertently harm marginalised children, an expert has warned, as YouTube is roped into Australia's ban. The federal government's decision to include the video-sharing platform in its social media ban for under-16s has renewed focus on the measure. While it has been broadly celebrated by the coalition and Labor, who say it will protect children from the harms of social media, youth mental health foundation Headspace disagrees. "This is seen as a solution and it may be helpful, we don't know. But it may cause harm as well," national clinical advisor Simon Dodd told AAP. "We've talked to young people and they value social media. They value the connections it gives them." This was particularly true for those who struggled to find physical community in parts of regional or rural Australia, and for LGBTQI youth, who use social media platforms to find support and stay safe, Mr Dodd said. Mental health is complicated as there are many factors that can impact it, including a person's social environment, and focusing on one measure as a solution risks missing opportunities to address young people's challenges . From December, people under 16 will no longer be able to create accounts on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook ,TikTok and now YouTube. Platforms that fail to conform with these rules face fines of up to $49.5 million. Eating disorder not-for-profit Hide N Seek warned YouTube could be home to harmful content such as extreme videos about body transformations or "what I eat in a day" media. "It can be extremely damaging, extremely damaging for children who are still developing their sense of self," founder Jaimee Krawitz told AAP. "But YouTube also hosts supportive, recovery-focused communities and educational content that can be part of a young person's healing journey." The changes will still allow children to access YouTube Kids or view videos accessible without an account. Though he recognised regulation was part of the answer to making online spaces safer, Mr Dodd has also urged the government to centre on young people's voices. "They have consistently told us they get the complexities of the social media environment and understand it better than many of the adults who are trying to legislate something that is difficult to manage," he said. "Without genuine consultation, this will result in young people feeling less trust in government and that is a real worry." Limiting children's access to social media could inadvertently harm marginalised children, an expert has warned, as YouTube is roped into Australia's ban. The federal government's decision to include the video-sharing platform in its social media ban for under-16s has renewed focus on the measure. While it has been broadly celebrated by the coalition and Labor, who say it will protect children from the harms of social media, youth mental health foundation Headspace disagrees. "This is seen as a solution and it may be helpful, we don't know. But it may cause harm as well," national clinical advisor Simon Dodd told AAP. "We've talked to young people and they value social media. They value the connections it gives them." This was particularly true for those who struggled to find physical community in parts of regional or rural Australia, and for LGBTQI youth, who use social media platforms to find support and stay safe, Mr Dodd said. Mental health is complicated as there are many factors that can impact it, including a person's social environment, and focusing on one measure as a solution risks missing opportunities to address young people's challenges . From December, people under 16 will no longer be able to create accounts on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook ,TikTok and now YouTube. Platforms that fail to conform with these rules face fines of up to $49.5 million. Eating disorder not-for-profit Hide N Seek warned YouTube could be home to harmful content such as extreme videos about body transformations or "what I eat in a day" media. "It can be extremely damaging, extremely damaging for children who are still developing their sense of self," founder Jaimee Krawitz told AAP. "But YouTube also hosts supportive, recovery-focused communities and educational content that can be part of a young person's healing journey." The changes will still allow children to access YouTube Kids or view videos accessible without an account. Though he recognised regulation was part of the answer to making online spaces safer, Mr Dodd has also urged the government to centre on young people's voices. "They have consistently told us they get the complexities of the social media environment and understand it better than many of the adults who are trying to legislate something that is difficult to manage," he said. "Without genuine consultation, this will result in young people feeling less trust in government and that is a real worry." Limiting children's access to social media could inadvertently harm marginalised children, an expert has warned, as YouTube is roped into Australia's ban. The federal government's decision to include the video-sharing platform in its social media ban for under-16s has renewed focus on the measure. While it has been broadly celebrated by the coalition and Labor, who say it will protect children from the harms of social media, youth mental health foundation Headspace disagrees. "This is seen as a solution and it may be helpful, we don't know. But it may cause harm as well," national clinical advisor Simon Dodd told AAP. "We've talked to young people and they value social media. They value the connections it gives them." This was particularly true for those who struggled to find physical community in parts of regional or rural Australia, and for LGBTQI youth, who use social media platforms to find support and stay safe, Mr Dodd said. Mental health is complicated as there are many factors that can impact it, including a person's social environment, and focusing on one measure as a solution risks missing opportunities to address young people's challenges . From December, people under 16 will no longer be able to create accounts on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook ,TikTok and now YouTube. Platforms that fail to conform with these rules face fines of up to $49.5 million. Eating disorder not-for-profit Hide N Seek warned YouTube could be home to harmful content such as extreme videos about body transformations or "what I eat in a day" media. "It can be extremely damaging, extremely damaging for children who are still developing their sense of self," founder Jaimee Krawitz told AAP. "But YouTube also hosts supportive, recovery-focused communities and educational content that can be part of a young person's healing journey." The changes will still allow children to access YouTube Kids or view videos accessible without an account. Though he recognised regulation was part of the answer to making online spaces safer, Mr Dodd has also urged the government to centre on young people's voices. "They have consistently told us they get the complexities of the social media environment and understand it better than many of the adults who are trying to legislate something that is difficult to manage," he said. "Without genuine consultation, this will result in young people feeling less trust in government and that is a real worry." Limiting children's access to social media could inadvertently harm marginalised children, an expert has warned, as YouTube is roped into Australia's ban. The federal government's decision to include the video-sharing platform in its social media ban for under-16s has renewed focus on the measure. While it has been broadly celebrated by the coalition and Labor, who say it will protect children from the harms of social media, youth mental health foundation Headspace disagrees. "This is seen as a solution and it may be helpful, we don't know. But it may cause harm as well," national clinical advisor Simon Dodd told AAP. "We've talked to young people and they value social media. They value the connections it gives them." This was particularly true for those who struggled to find physical community in parts of regional or rural Australia, and for LGBTQI youth, who use social media platforms to find support and stay safe, Mr Dodd said. Mental health is complicated as there are many factors that can impact it, including a person's social environment, and focusing on one measure as a solution risks missing opportunities to address young people's challenges . From December, people under 16 will no longer be able to create accounts on social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook ,TikTok and now YouTube. Platforms that fail to conform with these rules face fines of up to $49.5 million. Eating disorder not-for-profit Hide N Seek warned YouTube could be home to harmful content such as extreme videos about body transformations or "what I eat in a day" media. "It can be extremely damaging, extremely damaging for children who are still developing their sense of self," founder Jaimee Krawitz told AAP. "But YouTube also hosts supportive, recovery-focused communities and educational content that can be part of a young person's healing journey." The changes will still allow children to access YouTube Kids or view videos accessible without an account. Though he recognised regulation was part of the answer to making online spaces safer, Mr Dodd has also urged the government to centre on young people's voices. "They have consistently told us they get the complexities of the social media environment and understand it better than many of the adults who are trying to legislate something that is difficult to manage," he said. "Without genuine consultation, this will result in young people feeling less trust in government and that is a real worry."

Their founder now calls them unlikeable and authoritarian. Can the Greens change their spots?
Their founder now calls them unlikeable and authoritarian. Can the Greens change their spots?

Sydney Morning Herald

time2 hours ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

Their founder now calls them unlikeable and authoritarian. Can the Greens change their spots?

Not so long ago, Adam Bandt was a very happy man. It was the winter of 2022. The Morrison government had been defeated and Bandt, in his fifth term as the member for Melbourne, was accompanied in the lower house by three new Greens colleagues who'd won seats in inner-city Brisbane. The 'old' parties – Labor and the Coalition – were in terminal decline as far as the Greens leader was concerned. 'We created a Greenslide, and we've put down even deeper roots in Greensland,' he declared. 'Next election, I know we can grow again. I think we can win even more lower house seats.' Bandt stayed on his high for the next three years. He looked ahead to the prospect of Labor falling into minority government status in 2025 and how that would enable the Greens to have a direct role in setting national policy. He worked with his housing spokesman, Max Chandler-Mather, to block the Albanese government's housing policies, deemed to be insufficient, by joining with the Coalition in the Senate. Bandt and Chandler-Mather convinced themselves they were creating a whole new Greens-supporting political constituency of mostly young, angry renters. They overplayed their hand. The government stared them down and the Greens eventually folded late last year, waving through Labor's legislation. But the damage was done. The Greenslide was going into reverse. Most renters don't want to stay renters forever. They wanted action on building more houses; Labor's prescription might not have been ideal, but it did offer action while the Greens for too long delivered inaction and boasted about it. It was a shocking failure of strategy. Much of the talk in politics, encouraged by Bandt publicly, was about a possible Labor-Greens minority government. At the May 3 election, voters with the power to make a definitive difference acted assertively. Two of the 'Greenslide' seats went to the ALP, and Bandt himself was turfed out of Melbourne, which Labor's Sarah Witty won with a swing of more than 8 per cent. There is now just one Greens MP in the lower house, Elizabeth Watson-Brown. A couple of points need to be made. One is that although the Greens lost three of their four seats, the party's lower house vote was still 12 per cent, just as it was in 2022. The other is that while the party was hurt in the lower house, it is by no means irrelevant. One of the biggest running stories about the Albanese government's second term is that it will have to rely on the Greens in the Senate to get its legislation passed. The Greens have 10 senators and the balance of power. They are the legislative gatekeepers. But they have been on a long march to try to fulfil the wish of one of their founders, Bob Brown, to replace the Labor Party as the pre-eminent 'progressive' party. That venture is not going well and took a bad hit at this election. In fact, the 2025 outcome could well come to be seen as a watershed for the Greens. It suggested very strongly that while the public is OK with the Greens having a substantial presence and role in the upper house, it's much less interested in entrusting them with a direct role in government. Loading Just to put the Greens' new single-seat status in context, the party's 12.2 per cent share of the national primary vote is certainly substantial. But the other parties holding one seat are Centre Alliance, with 0.2 per cent of the vote, and Katter's Australian Party, with 0.3 per cent. The Greens' lower house vote share has hovered around 12 per cent for six consecutive elections. And on May 3, many of its older, cashed-up supporters in gentrified suburbs, put off by the performative politics of Bandt and Chandler-Mather as well as its aggressive stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict, flipped to the Labor Party. In my local polling place, a hitherto heavily Green part of the seat of Wills, there was a 7 per cent swing away from the Greens, which, along with similar vote shifts elsewhere, was enough to keep Wills in Labor's hands. Bandt's successor as leader, Larissa Waters, has a massive job ahead of her in navigating the responsibility of holding the balance of power in the Senate while also recalibrating the tone and behaviour of the party. There is a key question about the Greens' mission. The party grew out of the environmental movement, a global phenomenon, and is still struggling with broadening itself. The split over transgender rights and restrictions on discussing the issue within the party, which has led to the expulsion of a co-founder, Drew Hutton, is an example of this. Hutton has described the modern Greens as aggressive, weird, unlikeable, authoritarian and doctrinaire.

Their founder now calls them unlikeable and authoritarian. Can the Greens change their spots?
Their founder now calls them unlikeable and authoritarian. Can the Greens change their spots?

The Age

time2 hours ago

  • The Age

Their founder now calls them unlikeable and authoritarian. Can the Greens change their spots?

Not so long ago, Adam Bandt was a very happy man. It was the winter of 2022. The Morrison government had been defeated and Bandt, in his fifth term as the member for Melbourne, was accompanied in the lower house by three new Greens colleagues who'd won seats in inner-city Brisbane. The 'old' parties – Labor and the Coalition – were in terminal decline as far as the Greens leader was concerned. 'We created a Greenslide, and we've put down even deeper roots in Greensland,' he declared. 'Next election, I know we can grow again. I think we can win even more lower house seats.' Bandt stayed on his high for the next three years. He looked ahead to the prospect of Labor falling into minority government status in 2025 and how that would enable the Greens to have a direct role in setting national policy. He worked with his housing spokesman, Max Chandler-Mather, to block the Albanese government's housing policies, deemed to be insufficient, by joining with the Coalition in the Senate. Bandt and Chandler-Mather convinced themselves they were creating a whole new Greens-supporting political constituency of mostly young, angry renters. They overplayed their hand. The government stared them down and the Greens eventually folded late last year, waving through Labor's legislation. But the damage was done. The Greenslide was going into reverse. Most renters don't want to stay renters forever. They wanted action on building more houses; Labor's prescription might not have been ideal, but it did offer action while the Greens for too long delivered inaction and boasted about it. It was a shocking failure of strategy. Much of the talk in politics, encouraged by Bandt publicly, was about a possible Labor-Greens minority government. At the May 3 election, voters with the power to make a definitive difference acted assertively. Two of the 'Greenslide' seats went to the ALP, and Bandt himself was turfed out of Melbourne, which Labor's Sarah Witty won with a swing of more than 8 per cent. There is now just one Greens MP in the lower house, Elizabeth Watson-Brown. A couple of points need to be made. One is that although the Greens lost three of their four seats, the party's lower house vote was still 12 per cent, just as it was in 2022. The other is that while the party was hurt in the lower house, it is by no means irrelevant. One of the biggest running stories about the Albanese government's second term is that it will have to rely on the Greens in the Senate to get its legislation passed. The Greens have 10 senators and the balance of power. They are the legislative gatekeepers. But they have been on a long march to try to fulfil the wish of one of their founders, Bob Brown, to replace the Labor Party as the pre-eminent 'progressive' party. That venture is not going well and took a bad hit at this election. In fact, the 2025 outcome could well come to be seen as a watershed for the Greens. It suggested very strongly that while the public is OK with the Greens having a substantial presence and role in the upper house, it's much less interested in entrusting them with a direct role in government. Loading Just to put the Greens' new single-seat status in context, the party's 12.2 per cent share of the national primary vote is certainly substantial. But the other parties holding one seat are Centre Alliance, with 0.2 per cent of the vote, and Katter's Australian Party, with 0.3 per cent. The Greens' lower house vote share has hovered around 12 per cent for six consecutive elections. And on May 3, many of its older, cashed-up supporters in gentrified suburbs, put off by the performative politics of Bandt and Chandler-Mather as well as its aggressive stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict, flipped to the Labor Party. In my local polling place, a hitherto heavily Green part of the seat of Wills, there was a 7 per cent swing away from the Greens, which, along with similar vote shifts elsewhere, was enough to keep Wills in Labor's hands. Bandt's successor as leader, Larissa Waters, has a massive job ahead of her in navigating the responsibility of holding the balance of power in the Senate while also recalibrating the tone and behaviour of the party. There is a key question about the Greens' mission. The party grew out of the environmental movement, a global phenomenon, and is still struggling with broadening itself. The split over transgender rights and restrictions on discussing the issue within the party, which has led to the expulsion of a co-founder, Drew Hutton, is an example of this. Hutton has described the modern Greens as aggressive, weird, unlikeable, authoritarian and doctrinaire.

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