State Political Career
In 1999, he challenged the former Nationals Minister, Ray Chappell, for the seat of Northern Tablelands, running as an independent candidate. In a surprise result, Torbay defeated Chappell, winning 44.15 per cent of the primary vote to Chappell's 34.09 per cent, with a two-party preferred margin of 59.37 per cent.
Torbay was re-elected at the 2003 and 2007 general elections, again representing Northern Tablelands. He accepted an offer by Premier Morris Iemma to become Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, a position usually filled by a member of the governing party. Following the election of the O'Farrell–Stoner Liberal/National coalition government at the 2011 general election, Torbay was replaced as Speaker by the Liberals' Shelley Hancock.
Torbay was pre-selected as the National Party candidate for the federal seat of New England for the 2013 election, challenging former fellow state independent and current sitting member Tony Windsor. However, in a surprise move on 19 March 2013, the Nationals cancelled Torbay's pre-selection and asked him to resign from the National Party. The following morning Torbay also resigned his seat in State Parliament.
Despite being a Federal Nationals candidate Torbay remained an independent for the remainder of his state parliamentary career and did not join the State Nationals parliamentary team.
Read more about this topic: Richard Torbay
Famous quotes containing the words state, political and/or career:
“During those years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love.... it was Shakespeare who said, “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.” It was a state of mind with which I found myself most familiar. I pacified myself about his whiteness by saying that after all he had been dead so long it couldn’t matter to anyone any more.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity, quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace.”
—Benito Mussolini (1883–1945)
“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)