Independent NSW MP Mark Latham has labelled embattled Premier Chris Minns his “bitch” after the Labor leader lashed out at him while under increasing pressure from an upper house inquiry into his controversial hate speech laws.
Mr Latham, a former federal Labor leader who was elected to the NSW Legislative Council with One Nation before resigning from the party in 2023, wrote “he’s my bitch” on X on Thursday night in response to a video of Mr Minns calling him “one of Australia’s biggest bigots” during parliament earlier in the day.
Political commentator Anthony Khallouf, who posted the video on his popular Australians vs. The Agenda social media accounts, described Mr Minns’ comments as an “unhinged rant” and said the premier appeared to be angry that his staffers has been made to testify at the inquiry into the new laws at 10am on Friday.
He’s my bitch
— Real Mark Latham (@RealMarkLatham) June 26, 2025
Mr Minns and his Police Minister Yasmin Catley have both refused to appear before the upper house committee, which was set up to examine the hate speech legislation the Premier rammed through parliament in February after lobbying from the Jewish community.
The laws were supported by the Opposition, and Liberal leader Mark Speakman then refused to help minor party MPs repeal them after a caravan full of explosives used by Mr Minns to justify the legislation was revealed to be a “criminal con job” by police, but supported an inquiry into how they were passed.
The committee, chaired by another former One Nation MP, Rod Roberts, does not have the authority to compel Mr Minns or Ms Catley to testify as they are members of the lower house, but summoned three of Mr Minns’ staffers and two of Ms Catley’s, who also failed to appear last week.
Mr Roberts then asked the Legislative Council President Ben Franklin, a personal friend and appointee of Mr Minns and the godfather to one of his sons, to apply for arrest warrants, but the five staffers then changed their minds and decided to appear.
Mr Minns reacted with fury to the summoning of his staffers, accusing the committee of “overreach” and on Thursday said Mr Latham “seemed to be calling the shots in the upper house”, called his X account “odious”, and said he was “blaming a Jewish conspiracy” for the laws.
“It may not shock people in the gallery or this Parliament to hear that one of Australia’s biggest bigots does not like hate speech laws, but that does not mean they are not justified,” said Mr Minns, who has stated repeatedly in recent months that he believes free speech is incompatible with multiculturalism.
In his comments in parliament Mr Minns also referred to Mr Latham’s ongoing dispute with the litigious homosexual activist Member for Sydney Alex Greenwich, who sued Mr Latham for defamation over a tweet saying that sodomy was disgusting.
The Federal Court found in favour of Mr Greenwich, but Mr Latham is appealing the ruling while also defending a “homosexual vilification” and workplace sexual harassment claim brought by Mr Greenwich in NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) over the same tweet.
Last week Mr Latham used parliamentary privilege to reveal the contents of a psychologist’s report on Mr Greenwich that was presented to NCAT but made confidential by the tribunal.
Noticer News cannot repeat Mr Latham’s comments due to the tribunal’s orders, but they remain on the public record.
Mr Latham mentioned the report while speaking out against the Labor government’s proposed workers’ compensation reforms, warning that “weak and woke definitions” would increase the number of psychological injury claims made against employers.
“The problem is that just about every psych is a soft touch for certifying those mental injuries. Patients read the guidelines and coach themselves to give the right anxiety-riven answers. If the psych does not certify the mental injury, they lose all the money that comes from subsequent counselling,” he told parliament.
“Even worse, in the workers compensation system, word gets out on the street that the psych is useless in getting a claim up, so the claimants go elsewhere to find a soft-touch, medically compliant approach.”
Mr Minns’ new laws, which criminalise “racist” speech in public and restrict protests near places of worship, were supported by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry but opposed by the Human Rights Law Centre and the NSW Bar Association.
The inquiry is supported by the Coalition, the Greens and crossbench MPs, covers the period between when the caravan was discovered in Dural on January 19 and when the laws were passed on February 20, and is looking into whether Mr Minns or other senior government figures knew the caravan plot was a hoax but pushed the hate speech laws through anyway.
Mr Minns and NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Dave Hudson spoke to the media on January 29 after the investigation was leaked, and while Mr Minns declared the caravan was “terrorism” and a “mass casualty event”, Mr Hudson went on record just a day later saying that it could be a “set-up”.
In April Mr Hudson told the committee that at briefings with the Premier he had “expressed my suspicion over the motivation behind it from very early on” and that he thought the caravan was a “manipulation of the justice system”.
He also recalled briefing the Police Minister on January 21 after already having briefed Mr Minns.
Header image: Main, Mr Minns in parliament on Thurday. Inset, Mr Latham’s X post (NSW Parliament, X).
