Notoriously, the Australian state of New South Wales was founded as a penal colony. Since it was granted responsible government by Britain nearly 200 years ago, more than a few of the state’s MPs have gone from parliament to prison. Not all that long ago, the New South Wales corrective services minister was convicted of taking bribes to grant certain prisoners early release, and saw the inside of prisons he once administered.
An honourable person would have taken the hint and resigned, but Ward was not honourable and refused to quit
But that former minister’s disgrace is almost nothing compared to the case of the former minister and serving MP for the pretty coastal town of Kiama, Gareth Ward.
This week, Ward was convicted of the sexual assault of two men in 2013 and 2015. Ward himself had been a magnet for trouble ever since he was first elected in 2011, and was at the centre of several other scandalous incidents involving inappropriate encounters with young men.
The wheels of justice in Ward’s case spun slowly. Charges were laid and Ward committed for trial in 2022. When he was charged, the then conservative government, of which was a member, moved to suspend him from parliament, and that was done by a unanimous parliamentary vote. An honourable person would have taken the hint and resigned, but Ward was not honourable and refused to quit, citing his popularity in his own constituency.
And inexplicably popular he was. Despite having been expelled from his Liberal party, and despite the grave criminal charges hanging over him, Ward held his Kiama seat in New South Wales’s 2023 general election, even as his former party was defeated. He therefore stood trial as a suspended but serving MP, and as a serving MP he now sits in a Sydney jail cell, awaiting sentence. That appointment with the judge is still some months away.
Both the state’s Labor premier, Chris Minns, and Liberal opposition leader, Mark Speakman, have demanded Ward resign in disgrace and, failing that, want the New South Wales parliament to expel him. So far, Ward has refused to quit, and this week his lawyers obtained a Supreme Court injunction preventing the government from initiating an expulsion process, at least until Thursday when the court will hear Ward’s application. From that same Thursday, however, the parliament is in recess and doesn’t resume until next month. Effectively, convicted sex offender Ward keeps his parliamentary seat until further notice and, more importantly for him, clings to his parliamentary salary.
It gets even murkier. Ward is appealing his conviction, and that could take a year or longer. In Britain, under the Representation of the People Act, any MP detained for more than a year automatically loses his seat. The New South Wales constitution, however, provides an MP’s seat can be declared vacant ‘if he is convicted of an infamous crime, or by an offence punishable by a term of imprisonment for life or for a term of five years or more’. But the constitution also implies such a conviction is not deemed in effect until any appeal is dismissed.
The state’s parliament can still expel Ward, but effectively it has to legislate to blast him out. So desperate are both premier and opposition leader to do this that they are seriously considering calling back a quorum of MPs during the recess to pass the necessary resolutions.
The New South Wales government and parliament being mocked and humiliated by a convicted sex offender is bad enough. Worse, this costly legal farce, being played out at the expense of the state’s taxpayers, prolongs the already drawn-out ordeals of Ward’s victims, and of any others who may have suffered sexual abuse at his hands. This is outrageous and unconscionable, and it must stop.
If he has any shred of remaining decency Gareth Ward should do the right thing and resign immediately. That he has not and will not, in his perverse determination to exploit the state’s constitutional loopholes and hold out against all political and legal pressure to remove him, is not just a humiliating political embarrassment for the parliament in which he disgracefully remains a member, it is a grave moral shame. This institutional failure won’t soon be forgotten.
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