Robert Wood (Australian Politician) - Wood and The Nuclear Disarmament Party

Wood and The Nuclear Disarmament Party

Wood was a member of the Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP), and was its candidate at the NSW Vaucluse by-election in 1986. The NDP had failed narrowly to win a Senate seat in the 1984 federal election, when Midnight Oil singer Peter Garrett had stood under the party's banner. In 1987, the party had a lower profile, and Wood was at the head of its NSW Senate ticket. Though the party received only 1.53 per cent of the vote, Wood was elected as a result of preference flows from other parties, and the quota being nearly halved due to a double dissolution election for all Senate seats. This was the lowest primary vote ever received by a successful minor party or independent candidate in an Australian Senate election.

Wood took his place in the Senate in August 1987. He immediately faced a court challenge from one of the unsuccessful candidates in the election, the Call to Australia party's Elaine Nile. This case was dismissed in December that year. However when Wood applied for a passport some months after entering parliament, it transpired that he had never taken out Australian citizenship and was thus ineligible to sit as a member of parliament. A High Court case resulted in his disqualification, his term ending on 12 May 1988. A recount of the ballot resulted in the election in his place of Irina Dunn, who had been second on the ticket of the NDP.

Further controversy occurred when the NDP asked Dunn to resign so that Wood could reclaim his seat, following his assumption of Australian citizenship in 1988. Dunn refused, resulting in her expulsion from the party, and she remained in parliament as an independent until her defeat in the 1990 election. Wood contested that election as the first-ranked candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party in New South Wales, polling just over 1 per cent of the vote - more than his former running-mate Dunn, but nowhere near enough to be competitive for a Senate spot.