After 14 years in the political wilderness, former Labor leader Mark Latham is widely expected to return to office as a One Nation member of the New South Wales upper house.
Last night the controversial political figure was believed to have surpassed the 4.55 per cent quota required to secure an eight-year term without preferences.
At the current count, One Nation has attracted 5.83 per cent of the total votes, likely winning the right-wing party’s first seat in the NSW Legislative Council.
The former federal Labor leader was hopeful One Nation would reach a second quota.
“We only ran in 12 lower house seats so I’m keen to see what happens in the Legislative Council,” Mr Latham told Channel Seven last night.
“At the moment we were tracking towards two quotas (upper house seats) and when the metropolitan numbers are counted in the Legislative Council they are pretty encouraging.”
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Twenty-one seats in the state’s Legislative Council was up for election on Saturday. Early results show that the Liberals won 32.62 per cent of the vote and Labor 26.80 per cent before preferences.
Minor parties including the Greens and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers who were polling strongly in early results will likely claim two seats and one seat respectively.
Leading the revival of One Nation in NSW, Mr Latham could see it become a powerful force in NSW politics for the first time in two decades, but whether his controversial positions on many issues has changed will remain to be seen.
In announcing his candidacy, Mr Latham identified immigration, congestion, overdevelopment and electricity prices as issues of focus.
He’s hit out at “political correctness” and “divisive identity politics” and has said he wants to end the “spiteful discrimination against men and boys now evident in Australian life”, reported the ABC.
He has also proposed cutting Australia’s immigration rate and more recently suggested a DNA test to verify claims of Aboriginality despite experts cautioning that such tests can’t be accurately performed.
Stepping into the political arena in 1994, winning the NSW federal seat of Werriwa, Mr Latham first found himself in the centre of controversy in 2001 when he allegedly broke the arm of a Sydney taxi driver during a confrontation over his fare.
After leaving politics in 2005, Mr Latham landed a job with Channel Nine. He also worked as a columnist for the Australian Financial Review but resigned after the secret Twitter account he used to troll prominent women was revealed.
After calling a group of high school students “dickheads” in 2017, Mr Latham was sacked by Sky News after questioning the sexuality of a Sydney teenager, speculating that the high school student involved in a video about International Woman’s Day was gay.
He later took to twitter to comment: “Why does bigoted Left assume use of the word ‘gay’ automatically negative?”
“I love gays! away from poisonous Left politics, they are great people.”
Why does bigoted Left assume use of word "gay" automatically negative? I love gays! Away from poisonous Left politics they are great people
— Real Mark Latham (@RealMarkLatham) 29 March 2017
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