As federal parliament resumes this week, Labor has had to consider what to do with former leader Mark Latham’s portrait, hung on the caucus room gallery.
Now an independent MP in the NSW parliament, Latham was once the leader of the federal Labor Party betwen 2003 and 2005. Last week, Latham’s former partner has accused him of domestic abuse in a civil court application for an apprehended violence order.
It’s not Latham’s first moment of controversy either. He has also been accused of photographing female colleagues in parliament and sharing them with derogatory comments about their looks.
Latham has been called one of the most bigoted MPs in the country. Latham was ordered in 2024 by the Federal Court to pay independent NSW politician Alex Greenwich $140,000 in damages over a homophobic social media post.
Latham is also known for his verbal attack on former Australian of the Year Rosie Batty and has made many disparaging comments towards victims of domestic violence.
In 2017, the Labor party expelled Latham and banned him for life, saying his actions do not meet the party’s values or expected standards.
This week, the first meeting of the new caucus agreed unanimously to keep Latham’s portrait hung on the caucus wall but with an added annotation.
The words underneath the portrait will read: “In 2017 Mark Latham was expelled from the Australian Labor Party and banned for life. His actions do not accord with Labor values and fail to meet the standards we expect and demand.”
There was pressure from some in Labor to remove the portrait entirely, but the annotation was a compromise to these requests.
In an interview on the ABC’s 7.30, journalist Sarah Ferguson asked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about Latham’s portrait and whether he wants it displayed in parliament.
“Well, it’s a historical fact,” Albanese said about Latham’s portrait. “It’s a bit like statues and a range of things. History is there. The way to deal with that is to point out the changes that have occurred.”
“Mark Latham has views which I find repulsive across a range of areas. He is someone who I regret ever being elected leader of the Labor Party. That’s not something I do in retrospect, that’s something I fought very hard on when I was one of the people doing the numbers for Kim Beazley in that ballot.”
“I think that history has proven that judgement to be correct,” Albanese said, adding that since that time, Latham has moved “further and further away from any values that represent mainstream Australia”.
Sharing similar sentiments, the Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher told the ABC that the annotation under Latham’s portrait represents “a recognition on balance” and that “you can’t erase history”.
Gallagher said it was important to acknowledge, however, that Latham was expelled and his actions “don’t align with modern Australian Labor Party values or standards”.
“I wasn’t there at the time but I think it was a style of leadership that didn’t sit well with the values of the Australian Labor Party and it’s a type of leadership people wouldn’t want to return to.”