Carl Scully

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Patrick Carl Scully (born 4 April 1957), Australian politician, was a minister in the New South Wales state government, until his forced resignation on October 25 2006.^[1]

Scully was born in Sydney and educated at state schools. He graduated in law from Macquarie University, Sydney, and has been active in the Australian Labor Party since his student days. He practiced as a solicitor before being elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly as member for the safe seat of Smithfield in 1990. He is a member of the dominant right-wing faction of the New South Wales Labor Party.

Scully was Minister for Small Business and Regional Development in 1995, Minister for State Development 1995, Minister for Public Works and Services 1995-97, Minister for Roads and Transport 1997-2003 and Minister for Housing 2003-05, and Minister for Police from 2005-2006.[1]

Scully was considered a possible candidate to succeed Bob Carr as Premier of New South Wales, and announced his intention to run for the position after Carr announced his resignation in July 2005. But he withdrew from the contest on 29 July when it became clear that Health Minister Morris Iemma had majority support in the Labor Caucus. Although Scully publicly blamed the party machine for working against him, it seems that Labor MPs feared that his record as Transport Minister during the Waterfall train disaster and other problems would have worked against the Labor Party at the next State election if he was Leader.^[2]

Carl Scully was sacked as NSW Police minister on 25 October 2006 by Morris Iemma, after having misled parliament twice in two weeks^[3] over the consequences of the 2005 Cronulla riots in December 2005. He had misled parliament when he had said he had not seen a report on the incident. Opposition Leader Peter Debnam had repeatedly called for Scully's resignation.