After that tweet by Mark Latham, thousands of column words, outraged tweets and statements by MPs quickly followed. I can’t recall a single one which specifically referenced Sydney MP Alex Greenwich’s comment that preceded it. In case you missed it (which you probably did), Greenwich stated, ‘Mark Latham is a disgusting human being’ and more. It was not the first time Greenwich had had a go at Latham in public and this time Latham was having none of it, returning fire with a flamethrower, before deleting his tweet a very short time later presumably once it had hit his target.

While I can’t support what Latham wrote, the confected outrage which followed was ridiculous. Greenwich sobbing for the camera, Chris Minns vowing not to work with Latham (as if). Yet none of them acknowledged that there were two adults in that slanging match. It reminded me of a classic police report that stated, ‘The trouble all started after the bouncer hit me back’.

Having worked for several decades as a security professional I have trained and spoken to many such bouncers and routinely gave them a warning upon entering the industry: Imagine being a stand-up comedian who gets heckled by a drunk the whole way through their act. Except instead of giving it back to the heckler like most stand-ups, you need to simply smile and cop it. Without any response at all. None. Every night. Every single long night. For your whole career. As a security worker you’ll be called stupid. You’ll be called a thug. You’ll be called a wannabe cop, a coconut and every possible racial epithet and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it. Because if you do what you’d like to do, what every instinct in your body is urging, what many other people who were abused by a drunk stranger in a bar might do, your career is over. If you’re lucky. If less lucky you’re in jail and broke shortly after.

There is only so much a koala can bear and every human has their breaking point. And so is the current state of politics where members are expected to cop the most vile abuse, day in and day out, from strangers and colleagues and simply cop it. We occupy a world where accidentally ‘misgendering’ a man who thinks he’s a girl is a sackable offence. Where words are violence, the word ‘deadline’ causes fainting (sorry editor), ‘guys’ is sexist and the word ‘poor’ is dehumanising. All unacceptable. Yet politicians, ironically, are exempt from all of this political correctness and considered fair game. Particularly, it would seem, politicians on one particular side.

One prominent indigenous academic once tweeted to Latham: ‘You so deserve a slow painful death and humiliating obituaries e.g. “Australia celebrates as white supremacist, homophobic, far right wing arsehole finally dies”.’ Charming. Latham wrote at the time: ‘Political leaders say they are campaigning against online vilification, especially in the education system. But this is guaranteed: nothing will happen to the professor for saying I “deserve a slow, painful death and humiliating obituaries”.’ He was right. Nothing did happen.

Latham is far from the only target of this leftist hate. Does anyone remember when a certain ‘Distinguished Professor’ tweeted after an episode of Q&A, ‘I watched a show where a guy had sex with a horse and I’m sure it was less offensive than Bess Price’. Doubtful.

At the time, Labor’s Federal Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin refused to even comment on it. What’s the bet that if Mark Latham or Peter Dutton said something comparing Lidia Thorpe to a horse, the Greens and Labor front bench would be lining up to accuse them of racism, sexism and hate speech.

It gets worse once you add the anonymity social media affords those who wish to heap the most vile abuse onto people they’ve never met. To say things they’d never say to a person’s face. And politicians are expected to simply cop this as part of the job.

I have my own personal experience of this. After a brief stint in politics as a candidate in the 2022 federal election, I had total strangers, anonymous of course, commenting on my appearance, calling me a child molester, a rapist, a racist, a liar, a Nazi (I’m Jewish) and worse. Needless to say I am none of those things and these people barely know me. A quick check of their Twitter bios also consistently revealed how they might vote. Their intentions were obvious and they probably thought they were helping their side. I doubt their bile changed a single mind.

Having spent enough time early in a security career on pub doors, insults tend to wash off me. I had a thick enough skin to bear it at the time. But few people do and this type of thing simply drives talented people away from politics. ‘We need more women in politics,’ activists cry. While simultaneously shredding the appearance of every woman who dares say something with which they disagree. What decent person would put their hand up for this? As a business owner I lost count of the number of people who asked me why I’d want to enter politics for precisely this reason. My answer: If you don’t rock the boat you’ll go down with it. But it was clear most people would rather stay in the shadows than expose themselves to the drama. So instead of attracting candidates who are the cream of the crop, we end up with the cream of the crap.

Twitter is intended to be ephemeral. Pithy throwaway comments. Not permanent works of art. Occasionally people will say stupid things. What person hasn’t? The irony is that having deleted the tweet in regret, Latham now has it waved in his face by people who kept screenshots of it so they could continue to be offended by it. Clearly no apology or retraction is good enough. Speech crimes must never be forgiven by the angry mob and occasional slip-ups are permanent, never to be forgotten.

The result of this of course will be for most politicians to be less and less authentic, refusing to ever weigh into difficult topics for fear of the raging mob. They will never say what they think for fear of being vilified for what they say. Do we really want this? How many high profile people now will avoid mentioning their disagreement with the Voice, something to which they’re perfectly entitled, for fear of being howled down as a racist?

Eventually people who feel silenced will turn toward someone brave enough to put their head above the parapet. Outspoken politicians like Pauline Hanson, outrageous polemicists like Milo Yiannopolous or even Donald Trump were not creations of the far Right. Rather, they were a pushback reaction to the silencing by the Left of those in the middle who aren’t going to take it any more.

As a free speech absolutist, I dislike what Latham wrote but I support his right to say it and am appalled by those who seek to silence him, as they have. As ugly as his tweet was, after years of abuse, by giving it back, Latham did us all a favour. He reminded us that politicians are human. They make mistakes, they have outbursts and they aren’t going to be pushed around and piled on forever without snapping at some stage. Something people need to consider before hitting ‘submit’ on their online hate-filled comment. Take a breath and remember, every now and then the bouncer will hit you back.