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The independent Sydney MP, 44, opened up to gay magazine DNA about the devastating ordeal, which saw him question his ability to continue his parliamentary career. The primary tweet, which the Federal Court found had defamed Mr Greenwich, was posted on March 30, 2023, with subsequent commentary made by Mr Latham afterwards. It marked the beginning of a lengthy period of online abuse and hate mail, including death threats. “What had happened was a colleague who was a former leader of a major political party, someone with a very large media profile, had used his platform to vilify and defame me in the most graphic and sexually aggressive way, and in doing so provided the green light for others to do the same,” Mr Greenwich told DNA. “And they did. When I see the binders and binders of evidence of all the hate I’ve received, whether it’s social media posts, emails to my office, voice messages that my office received, or physical mail that was sent to me, it feels like being buried in an avalanche of hate. I found that to be suffocating.” As his mental health spiralled, Mr Greenwich was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and eventually turned to medical cannabis to help treat his condition. “When I got that diagnosis, I found that both confronting and comforting, because that told me that what I’d been feeling is real, that there is a name for it, and that it’s also something that I can seek to manage and seek treatment for,” he explained. “ … The thing with PTSD is that it’s not always present; there are things that trigger it, and it manifests in a variety of ways. Some days I’m great and I’m effective and I get sh** done, and I can be really motivated. “But then there are other days where I break into tears and won’t be able to sleep, and where my emotions will be completely deregulated, or I have full-on panic attacks where I can’t breathe and start sweating, or have nightmares and a really heightened sense of anxiety.” Along with the medicinal cannabis, Mr Greenwich gave his physical health a major overhaul. “Another part of managing my PTSD has been doing a lot of exercise, and that has really helped,” he told DNA. “I have a great personal trainer. I’ve been doing Barry’s [Bootcamp] classes with friends, and being active and doing physical activities has really helped. “Knowing that I’m going to do a photo shoot to go with this interview has also been a great motivator to go to the gym, which in turn helps me with my brain and my PTSD, which has been really good for me.” Greenwich added that his fitness journey had helped flip the narrative away from the negativity of the Latham ordeal. “Because of the tweet and the torrent of abuse I received, I felt disgusted by myself at times,” he told DNA.“So I want to focus on health and well-being and feeling good about ourselves. In the lead-up to doing this interview and the photo shoot with Christian, it’s been nice to have people come up to me and say, ‘Oh Alex, you’re looking really healthy,’ rather than saying, ‘How’s it going with Latham?’ I wanted to go to DNA because its own history resonated with me, given what I had been through in the past two and a half years.” However, the legal aspect of his ordeal isn’t quite over. While a Federal Court last year ordered Mr Latham to pay Mr Greenwich $140,000, he’s also taking the matter to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal in 2026. It’s clearly been a challenging saga for Greenwich, but he told DNA he was motivated to stand up “for every LGBTQ+ person who has had enough of this type of torment.” “One of the key reasons why I took the actions against Mr Latham, and why I continue to report threats against me to the police, including one just in the last week, is because I want to encourage others to do the same,” he explained. “We can send a clear message that we have laws in this country to protect people from hate speech and those laws can be used to hold people accountable, and they need to be used.”
