Former Labor leader turned right-wing internet commentator Mark Latham has suffered a significant blow in the defamation case he is fighting against ABC employee Osman Faruqi, with his entire defence being thrown out by a judge.



Faruqi is suing Latham over an August 2017 video published on the Mark Latham's Outsiders website and other sites, in which Latham made comments about Islamic terrorism and "anti-white racism".

Per the court judgement, Latham said in the video: "Anyone out there, on the left of politics in particular, that’s fermenting [sic] hatred of white people, the rise of anti-white racism in Australia, and also those fermenting [sic] the idea of an Islamic master race in Australia, they are aiding and abetting Islamic terrorism. They are giving encouragement and succour to the terrorist fanatics who want to kill innocent people in this country..."

He added: "Now there’s an instance of this earlier in the week, a guy called Osman Faruqi…"

In the lawsuit, Faruqi claims Latham defamed him by suggesting he assists terrorist fanatics who want to kill Australians, that he condones murders committed by Islamic terrorists and that he encourages and facilitates terrorism.



Latham is fighting the case, but had his entire defence struck out in a decision from Federal Court Justice Michael Wigney, handed down on Thursday morning. Justice Wigney described the defence as an "extraordinary document" that was "no mean feat" to come to grips with.

Faruqi's statement of claim was two pages long; Latham's defence ran to 76. The first line of the lengthy judgement lends some insight into the nature of the document:

"What does the martyrdom of Christians in the Roman Empire between the reign of the Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus and Emperor Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus have to do with a defamation action commenced in Australia in 2017?" Wigney pondered.



The doomed defence included large amounts of material Latham had compiled on Faruqi, including 164 of Faruqi's tweets, extracts from articles he had posted in his stint as the politics editor of Junkee, and allegations about his association with former Greens senator Lee Rhiannon.

The defence also cited the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney and bombings in Paris and Brussels.



Wigney was unconvinced the tweets vilified white people. "Does Mr Latham seriously suggest that this constitutes 'anti-white racism'?" he wrote in response to one of them.