Ousted “outsider” Mark Latham is back on the air. Kind of. The debut of his Facebook Live version of Sky’s Outsiders last night looked even more low-budget than the program that was canned last week over a series of generally awful comments by the ex-pollie.

Sitting around a sound desk with a cardboard cut-out of Donald Trump and a “Mark Latham’s Outsiders” sign, Latham and panellists Miranda Devine and Bettina Arndt drew a peak of about 1800 viewers at once last night with the broadcast. Outsiders got an audience of about 35,000. The video had clocked up 38,000 views by this morning.

Many of the comments were complaining about buffering and the poor sound quality of the video — something Latham has promised to improve, while also plugging his fundraising efforts for the show.

“A few teething issues with audio that we can improve,” he posted. “Please support the show to help these improvements.”

Latham is asking for donations for start-up and ongoing costs of the program, in denominations from $10 up to $2000. 

There’s no mention of how much of Latham’s parliamentary pension, estimated to be about $80,000 a year, is going towards the effort. — Emily Watkins