COLOURFUL former councillor Gordon Crisp will contest the March 28 state election, running as an independent for the NSW Upper House.
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Mr Crisp said his dissatisfaction with a number of public authorities – including the NSW Police, Independent Commission Against Corruption and Bathurst Regional Council – had prompted him to run for parliament.
And this is not the first time he has sought higher office: In 1999, he ran as one of two unsuccessful candidates for the No Nuclear Waste Dumps Party in the NSW Legislative Council elections.
He said he would be running for next month’s election on a platform of “justice for all”.
“Justice for all means ordinary people get the same treatment as is given to more important persons,” he said.
“I’m hopeful I will get double the support I got in 1999 [when he received around 5500 votes]. Even though I didn’t get anywhere there, I did get the policy changed.”
Mr Crisp said he opposed the Coalition Government’s plan to sell-off the poles and wires of the state’s electricity network and, as a Fellow of Certified Practising Accountants Australia, was certain he could find other ways to fund state infrastructure once he had the chance to properly review the state’s accounts.
He said he did not have a position on same-sex marriage (“I haven’t really given a lot of thought to it”) and was willing to consider supporting voluntary euthanasia but only after a thorough review of the research into the issue.
Mr Crisp’s 16-year local government career ended in controversial fashion in 2008 when his place on Bathurst Regional Council was declared vacant after he missed three consecutive meetings without having an apology recorded.
Mr Crisp asked for an apology on each of those three occasions, but his requests were rejected by his colleagues at the time.
Mr Crisp unsuccessfully ran again for council in 2008 and 2012, and still regularly attends Bathurst Regional Council meetings.