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NSW State Parliament is well known for playing host to some of the most bizarre stories in Australian politics – and the saga of Gareth Ward MP is definitely one of those stories.
The Minns government have today sought an urgent Supreme court hearing to lift an injunction granted to the incarcerated former Liberal MP yesterday. The injunction prevents parliament from expelling the jailed member for Kiama, which would force the south coast NSW electorate to host a by-election.
Gareth Ward MP has vowed to appeal his July criminal convictions on three counts of indecent assault and one for sexual intercourse without consent, involving two young men in incidents that occurred in 2013 and 2015.
News of his arrest became public in March 2022, when the Liberal Party were in power under NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet – who called for Ward’s resignation from Parliament. However, Ward decided to resign from the Liberals and stay on as an Independent, before he was committed to stand trial.
However, the bizarre stories that come of out NSW Parliament can only exist with the help of the state’s voters, who appear to have played a major role in all of this.
Because the people of the NSW South coast state decided to RE-ELECT him in March 2023.
So far, nobody has really dug into why. And the voters haven’t really bothered to explain themselves either.
In case you aren’t following:
The people of Kiama have not yet shone any light on why in the fuck they decided to elect a man who was facing multiple charges of heinous sex crimes, which everybody knew about, including his colleagues in the Liberal Party, who tore up his membership as a result of it all, before the MP decided to run for re-election as an Independent candidate without any of the party resources that a Liberal MP would usually benefit from like TV and radio ads or billboards, meaning the only air-time he was getting was the news stories about the heinous crimes he had been charged with.
The people chose to give the alleged sex offender another term in Parliament, in turn, bucking all voter trends that saw a major swing to Labor right across the state
And worse, he has now been convicted of those crimes, and is currently sitting in a jail cell, on full Parliamentary salary.
It really doesn’t make any sense at all.
Explain yourselves, Kiama.
