Political Career
On 18 October 2008 he was endorsed to be the Labor Party candidate to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of former State Treasurer Michael Costa. He was subsequently appointed to the New South Wales Legislative Council to fill that casual vacancy. Costa was Robertson’s predecessor at Unions NSW, and ironically, was one of the causes that led to Costa’s resignation due to blocking of the privatisation of the NSW power industry.
Shortly after his swearing in, former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating sent a scathing letter to Robertson stating that Keating was "ashamed to share membership of the same party" as him. Keating's view of Robertson was that his opposition to the privatisation bid would cost Labor dearly at the next State election.
Robertson won the seat of Blacktown in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly at the March 2011 election that resulted in Labor being heavily defeated. After Keneally announced she was standing down, Robertson was elected unopposed as leader of the Labor Party and Leader of the Opposition. His immediate task was rebuilding a party that had seen its caucus more than halved in the election held a week earlier—a result that Robertson said the party deserved, calling it "a devastating result, a message that was sent to us."
Read more about this topic: John Robertson (New South Wales Politician)
Famous quotes containing the words political and/or career:
“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it.... The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)