A by-election was held for the

New South Wales Legislative Assembly The New South Wales Legislative Assembly is the lower of the two houses of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The upper house is the New South Wales Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament Ho ...

seat of

Ku-ring-gai Kuringgai (also spelled Ku-ring-gai, Kuring-gai, Guringai, Kuriggai) (,) is an ethnonym referring to (a) an hypothesis regarding an aggregation of Indigenous Australian peoples occupying the territory between the southern borders of the Gamilar ...

on Saturday, 22 August 1992. It was triggered by the resignation on 24 June 1992 of Liberal Party Premier,

Nick Greiner Nicholas Frank Hugo Greiner (;) (born 27 April 1947) is an Australian politician who served as the 37th Premier of New South Wales from 1988 to 1992. Greiner was Leader of the New South Wales Division of the Liberal Party from 1983 to 1992 an ...

, after the scandal known as the 'Metherell affair'. The seat was subsequently won by Stephen O'Doherty of the Liberal Party. However the Liberals suffered a 14% drop in their primary vote, and a 17% drop in their two party preferred vote.

Background

The seat of Ku-ring-gai, a traditionally safe Liberal seat, was held since 1980 by Nick Greiner, who had been Premier of New South Wales since 1988. However, with the hung parliament result of the 1991 election, Greiner's performance in government had become dependent on the support of the few independent members of the legislative assembly. With the resignation from the party of former minister

Terry Metherell Terry Alan Metherell (born 9 January 1947) is a former Australian politician who represented the Electoral district of Davidson in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1981 to 1992. When the Liberal Party won the 1988 election, Premi ...

in October 1991, the government's majority became even tighter. The government subsequently created a job for Metherell, a position with the Environment Protection Agency, which he accepted, effectively engineering a vacancy in a seat the Liberal Party would recover at a by-election. While the Liberal Party won the by-election, there was a much higher cost. Because the Greiner government was in a minority, it could not prevent the Legislative Assembly referring the matter of Metherell's appointment to the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which made findings of corruption. These findings were eventually ruled by the Supreme Court of New South Wales as being outside the powers of the ICAC to make, but by then Premier Greiner had already resigned as Premier and an MP after the four independent MPs threatened to bring down the government if Greiner stayed in office.

Results

The Liberal Party retained the seat, despite a 2PP swing of 17%. The Liberal candidate, Journalist Stephen O'Doherty, was declared the winner against Independent Candidate, Mick Gallagher. The Labor Party did not field a candidate.

() resigned after the scandal known as the 'Metherell affair'.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuringgai 1992 New South Wales state by-elections 1992 elections in Australia 1990s in New South Wales

Background

Results

See also

References