Gerard Francis Martin MP (born 28 May 1946), a former

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

n politician, was 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 the electorate of Bathurst between

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and

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for the Labor Party. Martin has worked as an administrator in the

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

industry for 30 years and is married with two children. He was a councillor on the Lithgow City Council from 1974 to 1999 and was the longest-serving mayor of Lithgow, for sixteen years. Prior to entering New South Wales politics, he was previously Deputy Chair, Central West Regional Development Board, and is a former Chairman of Blayney Abattior County Council. In Parliament, he was

Government Whip A whip is an official of a political party whose task is to ensure party discipline in a legislature. This means ensuring that members of the party vote according to the party platform, rather than according to their own individual ideology o ...

and was a member of both the Standing Committee on Natural Resource Management and the Standing Orders and Procedure Committee. Martin, a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, expressed his opposition to

stem cell In multicellular organisms, stem cells are undifferentiated or partially differentiated cells that can differentiate into various types of cells and proliferate indefinitely to produce more of the same stem cell. They are the earliest type o ...

research in 2007 by voting against legislation allowing the practice. The bill subsequently passed. On 19 October 2010, Martin announced his decision to not seek re-election for the seat of Bathurst at the 2011 state election.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, Gerard Living people Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly 1946 births Australian Labor Party members of the Parliament of New South Wales 21st-century Australian politicians