Mark Latham

Mark William Latham (/ˈleɪθəm/; born 28 February 1961) is an Australian politician and media commentator who is a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. He previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and leader of the opposition from December 2003 to January 2005, leading the party to defeat at the 2004 federal election. He 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.

Latham was born in Sydney and studied economics at the University of Sydney. He joined the Labor Party at a young age and worked as a research assistant to Gough Whitlam and Bob Carr. He was elected to the Liverpool City Council in 1987 and became mayor in 1991. Latham entered the House of Representatives by winning the seat of Werriwa at the 1994 Werriwa by-election. He 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. He returned to the shadow cabinet in 2001, when Simon Crean became leader.

Latham became leader of the Labor Party in December 2003, narrowly defeating Beazley in a leadership vote after Crean's resignation. He was the youngest leader of the party since Chris Watson in 1901. At the 2004 federal election, the ALP lost five seats and reduced its share of the two-party-preferred vote; the incumbent Howard government was re-elected to a fourth term. Latham became disillusioned with politics and retired in January 2005. After leaving politics, he published a memoir, The Latham Diaries, in which he attacked his former colleagues and condemned the state of political life in Australia.

After leaving parliament, Latham started a career as a prominent political and social commentator, and became highly critical of the Labor Party and left-wing politics. He would soon gain a reputation for making inflammatory and controversial comments. In December 2016, he began co-hosting Outsiders on Sky News Live, but he was fired from the network in March 2017 after he made insulting comments about a fellow presenter and the teenage daughter of a governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. 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, Latham left the party and announced that he had joined One Nation as its state leader in New South Wales. He successfully stood for the party in the upper house at the 2019 state election. He 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.

In August 2023, it was announced that Pauline Hanson had removed Latham from the position of party leader for One Nation (New South Wales). On 22 August 2023, Latham resigned from One Nation to sit as an independent.