Mark Latham is thumbing his nose at calls to apologise for a homophobic comment he posted and later deleted about openly gay Sydney MP Alex Greenwich.
The tweet posted earlier this week has caused community outrage, and drawn severe condemnation from commentators across the political spectrum.
Mr Latham has been widely condemned since he posted and deleted a tweet in response to a news article about a violent protest outside a church he spoke at during the state election campaign.
In the article, independent MP Alex Greenwich branded Mr Latham a “disgusting human being” who posed a risk to the state.
“Disgusting?” Mr Latham wrote before making a graphic and homophobic description of sex acts.
“Sometimes in public life when you throw out insults they come back at you harder and truer … So boo-hoo Alex Greenwich,” Mr Latham said in a statement to The Saturday Telegraph.
It comes after Mr Greenwich said Mr Latham’s comments briefly brought him to tears.
Mr Latham said he deleted his tweet because he felt it was not acceptable for children to read.
The renewed attacks were called homophobic and sexualised by Mr Greenwich, who said the One Nation member was not fit to serve in parliament.
“Mr Latham is clearly unfit for office and I hope he gets the help he needs,” he told AAP.
“I’m sure the public and a majority of my parliamentary colleagues share this opinion, especially following his vile homophobic and sexualised attacks at me, his transphobic views and the violence directed at the LGBTQ community at the Belfield rally.”
NSW’s environment minister says there is “no place” for Mr Latham’s conduct in NSW and renewed calls for him to apologise to Mr Greenwich.
“Mark Latham and his behaviour over the last couple of days is completely unacceptable,” Penny Sharpe told reporters on Saturday.
“There’s no place for it in NSW. There’s no place for it in NSW politics. There’s no place for it in our community.”
The parliament is currently unable to discipline Mr Latham, Ms Sharpe said, as he used a loophole in the upper house system allowing him to resign as an MP before the state election and recontest his seat.
Mr Latham is set to return to parliament during the next session, with a renewed eight year term.
“The best thing that Mr Latham could do is to apologise to Mr Greenwich. That’s what we want him to do today,” Ms Sharpe said.
“Let’s see in terms of what happens after the press of the button on the upper house ballot on the 20th of April.”
After going to ground for more than 24 hours, Mr Latham broke his silence late on Friday, tweeting “Never apologise, never explain”, linking to an article that suggested public figures who said sorry for wrongdoing were more likely to be seen unfavourably by the public.
Mr Latham has deleted his original tweet, but its content invited broad criticism, including from the federal leader of One Nation, Pauline Hanson, conservative commentators Ray Hadley and Andrew Bolt and NSW Premier Chris Minns.
“I think that they’re vile and shameful comments and I think (Mr Latham) revealed himself to be a bigot,” the premier said at the Lifeline International President’s Lunch in Sydney on Friday.
Mr Greenwich was an “extraordinarily effective” politician who “manages to elevate the conversation and make major changes in the state,” Mr Minns said.
“One of the things that can’t be forgotten is that comments like this, even though in and of themselves they’re terrible, they unleash ghouls on people like Alex.
“There should be an unambiguous and universal condemnation of these comments,” he said.
