By Bert Hetebry

Mark Latham is in court defending his right to use homophobic slurs and language on social media and in a political setting. Included was the claim that as a gay member of the NSW parliament, Alex Greenwich is not a ‘fit and proper person’ to be an elected representative in the parliament. (Silly me for even thinking that in a democracy the voters determine who will represent them in parliament.) Mr Latham was the Parliamentary Leader of One Nation in the NSW parliament until he was kicked out of the party for being too hateful.

Mr Greenwich has since been targeted with very threatening commentary and it seems, rightly, is fearful for his safety.

On the other side of the country, the Western Australian Supreme Court is to hear the defamation case brought by Brittany Higgins’ former boss, Linda Reynolds. A powerful politician is miffed over comments made by an alleged rape victim referred to as a ‘lying cow’ by Ms Reynolds, being ‘trolled’ on social media.

Will this be the last of powerful people caught up in that infamous event five years ago to try their luck feeding from the legal money pot defamation law seems to be? So far, about the only winners have been Channel 10, but will they ever get paid? some very expensive lawyers, and one lot who are probably bit miffed that they agreed to a no win no fee arrangement with the alleged rapist.

Oh, but he, the alleged rapist, lost with a bucket full of gold to find to pay for his ill-fated action, not to mention a bill for damages to a property he lived in, paid for by his benefactor, Kerry Stokes’ Channel 7. Mmmm, how’s the gravy train working out for you, Bruce?

Ms Reynolds has mortgaged her home to pay for the lawyers, and we have a few weeks to wait to see how that will work out.

In the meantime, the appeal against the findings of the Ben Robert-Smith defamation action will be known in a few weeks. We wait with bated breath for the finding, not to mention how many tons of money that little saga has cost along the way.

I don’t know, but it appears that the greater you feel your power is, the better the chances you think you have of getting away with stuff. Mark Latham, never a shrinking violet, has a big mouth, and he fills it with hate as part of his political grandstanding. In this case his slandering not just of the man who brought the action against him, but a whole group of people who are ‘different’ in his eyes: Not worthy of his respect because he imagines their interactions and puts the imaginings in words on social media. He has power and can say whatever he wants in his political discourse… read his defence, the tweet was ‘vulgar and shocking but not defamatory’. In other words, to describe an imagined sexual encounter in the basest, vilest terms is OK when having a shot at a gay political opponent. I wonder how Mr Latham got the idea for his posts? Watching porn perhaps, or maybe… no, he may take me to court for defaming him if I go there.

Ms Reynolds had a position of power both as the employer of Ms Higgins and as a senior minister in the then government. A young woman was raped in her office, and she called her a ‘lying cow’, (lots of empathy shown there). But to take the young woman to court for daring to say she felt the case had not been dealt with adequately – brushed under the carpet when the government was already struggling with its ‘women’ problems – sounds to me like a bit of a power play. Who really cares whether the young lady was raped on the couch in my office, the evidence was cleaned up, if there was any evidence, and what was she doing there at that time of night wearing the little she was wearing anyway. ‘How is it my problem… pass it (the lying cow) on to my friend, Michealia Cash.’

And can we forget about the alpha male and his absolute right to show off his masculinity as he feels fit, whether it is to win the sexual conquest of a work colleague by filling her with booze and (allegedly) raping her in the boss’s office, leaving her to sort her own shit, ‘my girlfriend is wondering what I’m up to, gotta run’.

Ah, and then there is the ongoing saga of Ben Roberts-Smith. Defamation requires a lower level of proof, ‘on probability’ I think is the term, and ‘on probability’ he was found to have murdered unarmed Afghani people, among other things. But denial is not a river in Egypt, it is the fall to position of the alpha male. We see it in domestic violence, ‘look what you made me do’, we see it with the rapist, ‘nothing happened’, we see it with the dominating presence of Roberts-Smith, a reputed bully and big-noter, but he can do no wrong. We will see soon enough I guess.

So dented egos are very expensive to repair, and one benefactor, the Seven West media mogul Kerry Stokes is discovering.

Power is a wonderful aphrodisiac, it seems, and when a powerful person is miffed, feels slighted, the results can be very ugly. We see it with politicians, soldiers, wealthy people, but we see it also in domestic settings where partners will lash out to assert their dominance, whether it is through insidious forms of control or resorting to violence when things don’t go quite as planned.