Penny Sharpe will nominate for the NSW upper house vacancy she created when she chose to run for the lower house seat of Newtown in last month’s state election. Sharpe lost the inner-Sydney seat to the Greens.
She announced on Tuesday she would seek endorsement from the Labor party for the Legislative Council despite having previously rejected the idea.
“This decision was not my original intention nor my intention after the disappointing result in Newtown,” she said. “On election night I informed Labor leader Luke Foley that I would not be returning to the NSW parliament. Luke asked me to take some time to rethink this position and I agreed to do this.”
Sharpe said she had been overwhelmed by the number of calls and messages in the past week asking her to return to the upper house. She was first elected to the upper house in 2005 and has served as parliamentary secretary assisting the ministers for energy and mineral resources and transport.
“The next four years holds many challenges for NSW. There are decisions that will be made that will fundamentally change our state,” she said. “I have very strong views on how Labor works with the community to respond to those challenges, how Labor should shape a vision for the future and how the opposition must hold the government to account every single day between now and March 2019.”
The results of two lower house seats remain in doubt more than a week after the election and the final make-up of the upper house is yet to be declared. Votes are still being counted in the seats of East Hills, where the Labor candidate has made a complaint to police about a smear campaign, and in the central coast seat of Gosford.
In East Hills, which sits on a margin of 0.2%, the Liberals are ahead with a 0.3% swing to the sitting MP Glenn Brookes, while in Gosford there are fewer than 20 votes between Labor’s Kathy Smith and Liberal’s Chris Holstein with 90% of the vote counted.
In Lismore, where the Greens have come within a hair’s breadth of winning the previously safe Nationals seat, the candidate Adam Guise has released a statement saying the result will not be known until the count is finalised. The electoral commission is currently checking its count which has given victory to the Nationals MP Thomas George despite a swing of 22.5% against him.
“Regardless of who wins, this has been an incredible community victory off the back of an inspirational grassroots movement against coal seam gas and for a new way of doing politics,” Guise said on Tuesday. “Whoever is the member cannot be complacent in the role and must act immediately to ensure all gas licences across the Northern Rivers are cancelled without compensation.”
