Ward held on to the bitter end. Now his seat is up for grabs

NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman and his Nationals counterpart Dugald Saunders will thrash out which Coalition partner should contest the Kiama byelection after convicted rapist Gareth Ward’s 11th-hour resignation from state parliament on Friday.

The lower house was set to vote on Ward’s expulsion at 10.30am on Friday but it did not need to because Speaker Greg Piper received Ward’s letter of resignation at 9.08am, sparking a byelection in the South Coast electorate.

Still reeling from Ward’s conviction for historic sex offences, the Liberals are split over whether to run in the seat, which the party held until Ward was charged in 2021 and was forced to the crossbench.

Ward was last month found guilty of one count of sexual intercourse without consent and three counts of indecent assault against two young men he had met through his role as an MP.

Senior party operatives have concerns that the Liberal Party would be severely punished by voters at a byelection because of its long association with Ward, who was still actively involved in the Liberals despite being kicked out of the party when he was charged.

The party did not contest the Charlestown and Newcastle byelections in 2014 after the Liberal MPs in those seats resigned over taking illegal cash donations from developers.

Speakman on Friday said he would form a view about the byelection and that he would put that to the party’s management committee, which is running the NSW Liberals after a tumultuous time for the division.

Kiama is not Nationals territory and senior party sources said it would be unlikely that the party would contest the seat. However, there is a strong feeling that the seat could not be left without a Coalition option if the Liberals decide to sit out the byelection.

Labor, the Greens and a community independent will contest Kiama in a byelection that is likely to be held next month if there is an available date with the NSW Electoral Commission.

Former journalist and union organiser Katelin McInerney is the probable Labor candidate after falling just 698 votes short of beating Ward in the 2023 state election, which he contested and won despite facing the serious criminal charges.

The teal candidate for the federal seat of Gilmore Kate Dezarnaulds is the likely community independent option.

Ward attempted this week to block the parliament from voting to expel him, taking his fight on Monday to the Supreme Court where he was granted an interim injunction barring the lower house from holding the vote.

On Thursday night, he lost his final chance at hanging onto his job when the NSW Court of Appeal rejected Ward’s legal team’s arguments that the expulsion would be punitive, and that citing criminal convictions wasn’t enough to demonstrate behaviour unworthy of parliament.

Speakman slammed Ward for dragging out his resignation.

“The people of Kiama have been left without a voice for too long, and taxpayers have been forced to foot the bill while this circus dragged on,” he said. “Public office is a privilege, not a personal fiefdom, and when that trust is broken, the right thing is to go immediately.”

Premier Chris Minns said Labor would contest Kiama, but the party would be “complete mugs to expect that this is anything but an incredibly difficult contest”.

“It would be so arrogant for us to roll into the seat that in 2019 the Liberal Party won in the primaries and in 2023 an independent won notwithstanding the fact that he was facing incredibly serious charges,” Minns said.

“They’re independently minded there. They’ll make their own decisions and we would be going in with our eyes wide open that this would be a very, very tough contest for Labor.”

Until Friday, Ward had ignored pleas from his former Liberal colleagues and Labor to resign as he awaits his September sentencing hearing from his prison cell in Cessnock.

The fact that parliament had to threaten to expel Ward before he resigned was a “shameful exercise”, Labor’s leader of the lower house Ron Hoenig told the parliament.

“I would have thought being a convicted rapist is enough infamy without going down in history as both a convicted rapist as well as the first person in more than a century to be expelled from the house,” Hoenig said.

Hoenig later said Ward’s legal challenge this week had come at a cost to taxpayers and that it had wasted the time of the government on what he said was a baseless argument.

“To try to engage the court in vexatious litigation … it’s been since 1689 that courts have no jurisdiction over the workings of the parliamentary process,” he said.

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