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
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 ...
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
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