The controversial politician, who is vying for a NSW upper house seat in the upcoming state election, said his top priority was the hot topic on everyone’s lips: water, water, water.
“The Murray-Darling Basin Plan has been developed by politics rather than science and I think the politics of it, quite truthfully, is marginal seats in South Australia,” he said.
“The South Australian allocation is excessive and when the drought became clear, NSW should have said look, we’ve got to keep more of our own water. But that didn’t happen.’’
Tackling power prices is also high on the list, with One Nation keen to cut the NSW electricity tax to reduce power bills by $85 per annum.
Mr Latham said his party also hoped to reverse the Coalition’s $810 million spending on a new seating plan at ANZ Stadium and reallocate that to capital works and maintenance at country hospitals.
With his party currently running 15 lower house candidates in the coming election, Mr Latham claimed members like Tom Weyrich could have significant clout if elected.
“The crossbench in a hung parliament is a powerful place and if Tom was there as the Member for Murray then we’d be striking a very tough bargain for the benefit of this electorate on the issues I’ve just mentioned,” he said.
“I think people know we speak our mind and we’ll get stuck into the job without fear of political correctness or upsetting some little snowflake somewhere.”
Leader of the Australian Labor Party from December 2003 to January 2005, Mr Latham caused shockwaves in November 2018 when he returned to politics as NSW state leader for One Nation.
He said disillusionment with the Labor Party was a major motivator for this shift.
“I always say to people that politics has changed more than I have. Most of these parties have lurched to the left over the past 10 years … the Labor Party is sort of a light green now,” he said.
“One Nation is the best expression of what I believe in. Free speech, merit selection, love of country and support of Australia Day.”
As for those critical of his party’s policies – including ‘ban the burqa’ and plans to introduce legislation that would make it illegal for individuals to identify as being transgender – Mr Latham said there was nothing discriminatory about them.
“We are very much a pro-merit anti-discrimination party — in fact the policy I released last year on changing the human rights laws in NSW says there are new forms of discrimination against men, Christians and white people where if you haven’t got the right skin colour or gender you can’t possibly get the job,’’ he said.
“Unfortunately the critics you’re talking about don’t debate these issues – their way of dealing with the fact they’re normally losing the debate is to put a label on someone like racist or misogynist or homophobe or islamophobe.”
With only two One Nation members currently in the Senate, Mr Latham admitted his party was coming off a low base.
“We’re well-known I suppose, particularly with the profile of Senator Hanson but we actually haven’t got a single elected state or federal representative in NSW – so our starting point is to get some people elected,” he said.
“Murray has got a great chance to do really well so if people can support us then we’ll fight hard and won’t let them down.”
