Bryce James Gaudry (23 November 1942 – 4 October 2019) was an Australian politician, elected as a member of 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 ...

representing

Newcastle Newcastle usually refers to: *Newcastle upon Tyne, a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England *Newcastle-under-Lyme, a town in Staffordshire, England *Newcastle, New South Wales, a metropolitan area in Australia, named after Newcastle ...

. Gaudry was educated at Kendall District Rural School,

Taree Taree is a town on the Mid North Coast, New South Wales, Australia. Taree and nearby Cundletown were settled in 1831 by William Wynter. Since then Taree has grown to a population of 26,381, and is the centre of a significant agricultural distr ...

High School and

Teachers' College. He received a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

from the

University of New South Wales The University of New South Wales (UNSW), also known as UNSW Sydney, is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It is one of the founding members of Group of Eight, a coalition of Australian research-intensiv ...

and Macquarie University and became a physical education teacher. He was married with two adult children. Gaudry represented Newcastle for the Labor Party from 1991 to 2007. He was associated with the

soft left The soft left is a faction within the British Labour Party. The term "soft left" was coined to distinguish the mainstream left of Michael Foot from the hard left of Tony Benn. History The distinction between hard and soft left became eviden ...

of NSW Labor. In May 2003 he was appointed as a parliamentary secretary by New South Wales Premier

Bob Carr Robert John Carr (born 28 September 1947) is an Australian retired politician and journalist who served as the 39th Premier of New South Wales from 1995 to 2005, as the leader of the NSW Branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He later en ...

following the state election earlier that year. In 2006, the Labor Party State Executive deselected him in favour of the

Labor Right The Labor Right, also known as Modern Labor, is a political faction of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) at the national level that is characterised by being more economically conservative and, in some cases, more socially conservative. The Labor ...

-aligned

Jodi McKay Jodi Leyanne McKay (born 16 August 1969) is a former Australian politician who was the Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of New South Wales from June 2019 until May 2021. She previously served as a member of the New South Wales Legislat ...

, the preferred candidate of then Premier,

Morris Iemma Morris Iemma (; born 21 July 1961) is a former Australian politician who was the 40th Premier of New South Wales. He served from 3 August 2005 to 5 September 2008. From Sydney, Iemma attended the University of Sydney and the University of Techno ...

. The deselection occurred after Gaudry had revealed that the Labor government were planning to privatise the state's electricity system. The controversy around the selection led to around 130 members of the Newcastle ALP branches, then the largest in the state, leaving or being expelled. On 29 January 2007, Gaudry announced his resignation from the Labor Party and his intention to run as an independent candidate at the next state election. Gaudry was subsequently defeated in the 2007 general election by the new Labor candidate, Jodi McKay. However, McKay lost the seat at the following election in 2011. Gaudry died on 4 October 2019 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

References

1942 births 2019 deaths Australian schoolteachers Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly University of New South Wales alumni Place of birth missing Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of New South Wales Independent members of the Parliament of New South Wales 21st-century Australian politicians Deaths from cancer in New South Wales Deaths from pancreatic cancer {{Australia-Labor-NewSouthWales-MP-stub