Pauline Hanson has announced she’s removing Mark Latham as the Leader of One Nation in New South Wales.
It has been revealed that Hanson wrote to the members of the NSW leadership team to disband the state executive. In its a place a new executive has been installed with Hanson leading the party.
The move is permitted under the party’s constitution, but it means current NSW party leader Mark Latham has been removed from his leadership position.
In the letter Hanson cited the party’s failure to meet expectation as the March state election as the key reason for the change.
A spokesperson for the party had confirmed the change, telling The Guardian Latham was no longer part of the executive body.
“I can confirm that the party’s national executive has resolved to form a new NSW state executive for the party. That state executive has been in place since the 9 of August this year and that includes, on the executive, senator Pauline Hanson,” he said.
“Latham is not on the new executive.
“The national party’s national executive has decided to declare vacant the position of NSW state parliamentary leader.”
The national executive of One Nation is set to be in charge of taking “a comprehensive review of the party’s organisation in NSW”.
“In particular with respect to future campaigns and the relationship between the party organisation in NSW and the NSW parliamentary wing of the party.”
In a post to social media Mark Latham said he rejected the Queensland takeover of the New South Wales branch and remained the leader of the parliamentary party in New South Wales.
Latham said Hanson had no reason to complain about electoral performance, citing her own most recent election results.
“Hanson’s sole justification for this takeover is our upper house vote, which fell by 1% in March. Yet our 6% result was still 2% ahead of the NSW Senate result last year in a campaign Hanson herself headed.
“In Queensland, Hanson’s Senate vote fell by 3% and she only just scrapped in for re-election. If she is worried about under-performance, her best solution is to buy a mirror.” Latham said.
“Last month Senator Hanson was briefed on the review’s findings. Our NSW party was moving forward in a sensible, cooperative way but has now been turned upside down by the Queensland intervention.
“Equally, the decision to try to abolish the position of NSW One Nation Parliamentary Leader is bizarre, mirroring something the Greens do in the NSW Parliament.
“This is a matter, quite rightly, for me, Rod Roberts and Tania Mihailuk. I remain as the leader of our parliamentary team. Over the past 5 years we have built up into the largest One Nation parliamentary party in the country – so where’s the problem?” Latham said.
Latham went on to accuse the party of attempting to move funds from the New South Wales branch to other areas of the party.
The move comes just months after the federal and state leaders had a falling out over comments Latham made in relation to New South Wales independent MP Alex Greenwich.
Latham made a post on social media that described Greenwich in relation to a sex act, the Twitter post was widely condemned and Hanson demanded Latham make a public apology.
Latham refused, and said while Hanson was publicly declaring she had tried to contact him in relation to the post, he said he’d never heard from her.
He later gave a radio interview where he said Hanson would not understand the nature of his comments about Greenwich because she was a woman.
Greenwich has filed a defamation lawsuit against Latham, as well as making reports to police and human rights organisations.
Last week Latham’s legal team filed there defence against the defamation action, where in part, they argued that Greenwich’s reputation had not been damaged by Latham’s comments but enhanced.
OIP Staff
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