Convicted rapist Gareth Ward has resigned as a New South Wales MP just moments before the state’s parliament was due to expel him.
The resignation automatically vacates his south coast seat, meaning there will be a byelection. The seat was held by Ward for the Liberal party from 2011 until he left the party. He subsequently ran as an independent.
Ward was found guilty in July of sexually abusing two young men in 2013 and 2015. He is appealing against the convictions, which include three counts of indecent assault and one for sexual intercourse without consent. He is due to be sentenced next month.
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The resignation marks the end of a difficult chapter for the NSW parliament. In 2021, Ward left the Liberal party and moved to the crossbench after identifying himself as the state MP under investigation by the child abuse and sex crimes squad.
When charges were laid in March 2022, the then NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, called for his resignation. Later that month, Ward was suspended after a motion unanimously passed the Legislative Assembly. In August 2022, Ward was committed to stand trial.
But voters in Kiama re-elected him in March 2023 and he returned to Macquarie Street as an independent.
Ward is currently on remand in Cessnock prison.
Ward sought an ex parte injunction on Monday night to prevent the parliament from expelling him, but the court of appeal lifted the injunction on Thursday, clearing the way for parliament to force him out on Friday.
That was scheduled to occur at 10.30am with the support of both Labor and the opposition. But Ward resigned by letter at about 9am on Friday.
The chief justice, Andrew Bell, oversaw Thursday’s court hearing alongside justice Anna Mitchelmore and Jeremy Kirk. Bell, who delivered the judgment, said he rejected the arguments put forward by Ward’s lawyers, stating the “notice of intention to appeal does not affect the power of the assembly to expel him”.
The speaker must now issue a writ for a byelection under the Electoral Act. In practice, it can take some days or weeks for the writ to be issued.
The leader of the house, Ron Hoenig, said he was withdrawing the motion to expel Ward.
“It is regrettable that this house has been put through this difficulty. But better late than never. It is better to avoid having to do something that the house hasn’t done in 107 years,” he said on Friday.
Hoenig said he was relieved that Ward had at least exercised some respect for his former community and the lower house by tendering his resignation. He said he should have done it when the jury had found him guilty.
The premier, Chris Minns, said on Friday that “we believe this resignation should have come earlier”.
“A lot of time, effort and energy was spent in the NSW supreme court proving what most people who live in this state would have known instinctively. And that is, if you are convicted of some of the most serious charges – sexual assault in NSW – you can’t sit as a serving member of parliament drawing a parliamentary salary,” he told reporters.
“How can you represent your community from behind bars?”
Minns said the government would seek to recover costs for the supreme court action from Ward.
The opposition leader, Mark Speakman, strongly criticised Ward’s “five minutes to midnight” resignation.
“What the member for Kiama has done in the past couple of weeks, playing games with his constituents, playing games with you, Mr Speaker, playing games with the government and the opposition and the general public, is disgraceful,” Speakman said.
“He has already been convicted of serious, very serious, sexual offences, and I think every member of this chamber’s heart would go out to the victim survivors of those offences, who, no doubt, continue to be traumatised and retraumatised by the cat and mouse game that has gone on in the past fortnight.”
