Richard Max Smith (22 February 1930 – 8 November 2020) was an Australian politician. He represented

Pittwater Pittwater is a semi-mature tide dominated drowned valley estuary, located about north of the Sydney central business district, New South Wales, Australia; being one of the bodies of water that separate greater Metropolitan Sydney from the Ce ...

in 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 ...

from 1978 to 1986, first as a member of the

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and then as an

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. Smith was born in

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to John Voyle Smith and Doris Ethel Cullen. He was educated at

Parramatta Parramatta () is a suburb and major Central business district, commercial centre in Greater Western Sydney, located in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located approximately west of the Sydney central business district on the ban ...

High School and then the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...

, and was selected as the youngest member sent to the

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's 1956 study conference at

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. He became a miner and

colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

manager. He worked for Australian Iron and Steel from 1951 to 1962 and was superintendent of

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from 1962 to 1967, subsequently serving as consultant mining engineer until 1974. From 1974 to 1978 he was technical and operations director of Coalex. He married Helen on 3 October 1953 and had three children; he subsequently married Sandra Simpson on 28 April 1984, and Janet Lawrence on 15 March 1998. When the state

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MP for

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, resigned in 1978, Smith was selected as the Liberal candidate to contest the seat in the upcoming election; he had a narrow victory over Charles Wild, the Labor candidate. In 1984, he resigned from the Liberal Party to sit as an

, and resigned from parliament altogether in 1986.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Smith, Max 1930 births 2020 deaths Liberal Party of Australia members of the Parliament of New South Wales Independent members of the Parliament of New South Wales Members of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly