The rise of new Families Minister Gareth Ward
From leaked homophobic joke email to a bizarre New York extortion case, recently promoted NSW Families Minister Gareth Ward has lived a complicated life of ambition and scandal, writes Danielle Gusmaroli.
AN email entitled “Monday Funny” spells out a crass joke about music legend Molly Meldrum and pop stars Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue. A drunken Kylie leaves a nightclub, slips, and traps her head between the railings of a fence when Robbie lifts her skirt and has sex with her.
He steps aside to allow Molly to take over when the funnyman bursts into tears and declares: “My head won’t fit between the railings!”
The homophobic quip distributed by a zealous Young Liberal student Gareth Ward from his parliamentary email address at 4.45pm on 8 September 2003 epitomised the gauche, aspiring, politician when he worked as an electorate officer for Senator John Tierney.
It reached the ears of a journalist at the online newsletter Crikey, who asked: “If you’re bright enough to work for a Senator, shouldn’t you be bright enough to send out this sort of thing via Hotmail?”
NEW YORK DRAMA
This week Ward, 37, was sworn in as the new Minister for Disability Services and Minister for Family and Community Services proclaiming he was the right person for the job having been bullied and overcome challenges of being born legally blind.
His naivety remains a curse.
Fast forward 14 years and the 37-year-old moderate Liberal MP for Kiama was catapulted into the centre of another episode of spectacular naivety — a bizarre New York extortion scandal — which he feared would irrevocably damage his chances of re-election.
Ward, born with oculocutaneous albinism and legally blind, claims two male Afro-Caribbean masseuses attempted to blackmail him at his hotel the Intercontinental in Times Square, demanding $US1000 after filming him in his underpants in his hotel room.
He maintains he lured the men downstairs by telling them to accompany him to an ATM where he quickly urged the concierge staff to dial 911.
“I was terrified, the events were frightening, I thought they were going to bash me,” he said.
The Saturday Telegraph understands the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was drafted in to probe the inquiry.
“We are not prepared to comment on this matter,” an ASIO spokesman said but sources close to the investigation say Ward booked the service after finding the number in online classified website Craigslist’s therapeutic massage section. Ward denies making the booking through Craigslist.
The New York drama shone the spotlight on the snowy-haired factional obsessive who has control of the University of Wollongong’s Liberal Club in Illawarra.
Born in coastal Gerringong to a pianist mother Margaret Bowcher and accomplished violinist father Malcolm Ward, the family was well-known in the musical society of Shoalhaven.
BIG DREAMS
With such a pedigree, his mother had high hopes for her son, even though doctors told her in the ’80s: “You’ll need to keep him in the dark and behind closed doors.”
Determined to ensure his physical impairments did not hold him back in later life, his mother taught him the violin, aged Two-and-a-half, using a tissue box and ruler to develop his bowing technique.
At the age of five he entered and won the Shoalhaven Eisteddfod and by the time he was 16 he had studied at the Wollongong Conservatorium of Music and completed grades through the Australian Examination Board.
“I still play today but rarely in public,” he told supporters in his inaugural speech in 2011, adding: “No one is a fan of a fiddling politician.”
Ward’s unworldliness has dogged his early life and political career but failed to dampen his drive to share the stage with members of state cabinet.
At school he was bullied for his pallid complexion and inability to withstand the sun, with pupils at Nowra East and Bomaderry primary schools and Bomaderry High cruelly dubbing him “toothpaste” and “vampire”.
VICTIM OF CRIME
When he was 26 he was bashed by a gang in Kogarah when accompanying two friends to a taxi rank.
Seven men jumped him punching him across the head and kicked him to the ground in an unprovoked attack which left him needing four stitches to a cut behind his ear.
Steeled by an unshakeable belief in himself as a champion forged by adversity, he joined Shoalhaven Young Liberals at the age of 16 and dedicated his life to campaign doorknocking taking eight years instead of five to graduate from the University of Wollongong.
Ward said this week he has degrees in Arts, Commerce and Law, but his LinkedIn page and a statement from Wollongong University in 2016 make no mention of a law degree.
In response to questions, Ward clarified that he studied online for a law degree at the University of New England.
“It was a difficult challenge given my eyesight,” he said.
Former vice-president of NSW Young Liberals, lawyer Kyle Kutasi, who has known him since 1999, recalls an overly confident and precocious Young Liberal.
“He’s hyperactive, not a smooth talker or charmer,” he said.
“He was always bragging that he was studying law when we were Young Liberals.
“For what he lacks in ability to read between the lines, he makes up for in enthusiasm — his entire life has always been dedicated to politics.
“His end game has always been Cabinet and ultimately prime minister.
“He’s achieved the first, he’s a very ambitious guy, there’s no limit to how far he would like to go. He’ll work hard to make a success of FACS.”
YOUNG LIBERAL
Indeed Ward is credited with reinvigorating the Wollongong University Liberal Club while he was there, attracting about 180 members at the height of its presidency.
Despite State Director at the time Scott Morrison upholding a challenge from his own party for “branch stacking”, amid claims Ward’s 69-year-old stepfather Arthur Bowcher was signed up to the Shoalhaven Young Liberals, first in 2002, to boost party membership, Ward stood for election when Shoalhaven City Council proposed the subdivision of public land behind his house.
Ward this week denied any involvement in branch stacking, telling The Daily Telegraph: “I don’t remember any of this, nor can I add anyone to membership lists — this is done by the party.”
He became the youngest Shoalhaven councillor at the age of 22 and youngest-ever deputy mayor.
His greatest coup to date was toppling Labor Kiama MP Matt Brown at the 2011 state election, winning the stronghold seat he had held for 12 years.
In a documentary titled A Battle for Kiama following the adversaries on campaign trails, an upbeat Ward stands in a bedroom, three teddy bears strewn on the bed, and declares: “Being legally blind makes you more determined.
“Circumstances make people and you become the person you are due to circumstances you are in.”
Ward, a fanatical House of Cards fan who lives in Sydney’s Potts Point when state parliament sits, two months ago backed a recommendation for clergy to be stripped of the right to withhold details of child sexual abuse aired through religious confession.
He has been vociferously calling for tougher child protection laws publicly denouncing former Labor minister Milton Orkopoulos’s bid for a review of the NSW Parole Board’s move to reject his release from prison for failing to undertake a sex offenders’ course.
TOUGH ON CRIME
“This grub should rot in prison,” he wrote in a February 2017 Facebook post, adding: “He destroyed the lives of so many young people … Children have the right to grow up free of monsters like this.”
His anger at the former Aboriginal Affairs Minister jailed in 2008 for almost 14 years for 30 child sex and drug charges may in part be directed by a need to protect his close friend Ben Blackburn, who was 16 when Orkopoulos indecently assaulted him at the 2004 ALP national conference.
Blackburn, who waived his right to anonymity, has sought Ward’s office as refuge for six years working as his electorate officer.
They met through the child care and protection agency Bravehearts when Blackburn was the agency’s education officer.
“Ben is a remarkable young man in whom I have enormous trust and confidence,” Ward said in his inaugural speech …
“He’s a close fronted and invaluable to say the least.”
Passions include improving the Princes Highway and campaigning for people with disabilities yet Ward’s robust debating manner has angered colleagues and opponents alike, with media adviser to South Coast Labor MP Anna Watson once calling him a “little fat pink pig” referring to skin pigment disorder in a Twitter exchange.
The media adviser was forced to apologise in a written letter and Ward shrugged it off as a joke.
He is married to the job and has never spoken about his romantic life but turned heads when he paraded twenty-something Olga Stouchilina at the Kiama Show Ball quietly introducing her as his date during the campaign trail for 2015 state election.
In late 2017, the Russian-born Wollongong University student was living in Brisbane and working for the Australian Taxation Office.
“I would rather not talk about exactly what our relationship was,” she said.
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