Moves are afoot to expel the MP for Kiama, Gareth Ward, from the New South Wales parliament after he was convicted of serious sexual offences involving two young men.
State parliament sits next week and Ward has not yet said whether he intends to appeal Friday’s convictions. The MP has also not indicated whether he might resign from parliament and did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia.
Ward was granted bail ahead of a hearing on Wednesday, when the prosecution will seek to have him taken into custody ahead of his sentencing. A date for that is due to be set on Wednesday.
The 44-year-old stood trial in the NSW district court after pleading not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent and indecent assault charges.
Several politicians have been convicted of “an infamous crime” or a crime that carries a sentence of five years or more – which is the threshold that disqualifies a person from sitting in the NSW parliament.
Most have chosen to resign when they have been charged and were well out of parliament by the time they were convicted.
So the question of how lodging an appeal – or winning an appeal – might affect an MP’s right to sit in the parliament has rarely arisen.
Will Gareth Ward resign?
Both major parties are hoping that Ward will choose to resign from parliament and the matter is resolved quickly. But Ward has, to date, shown little inclination to end his own political career.
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 of the NSW police force.
