Ted Mack (politician)
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Ted Carrington Mack (born December 20, 1933) is an Australian politician. He is the only person ever to have been elected and re-elected as an independent to local, state and federal government in Australia, and is often referred to as the "father of the independents".
Mack trained as an architect at the University of New South Wales, but began to take an interest in politics in 1970 after the North Sydney Council approved construction of a 17-storey office block against his back fence. He subsequently ran for election to the council in 1974 and was successful, serving until 1988. He was elected Mayor of North Sydney in 1980, holding the position until his retirement from council in 1988. During his term as mayor, Mack sold the mayoral Mercedes-Benz car, buying buses instead and instituting reforms to improve accountability.
In 1981, Mack decided to shift into state politics, and ran as an independent for the recently created New South Wales Legislative Assembly seat of North Shore. He was successful in what would normally have been a safe Liberal seat, and served as a state MP until 1988, when he retired two days before he was due to qualify for his parliamentary pension entitlements, as a statement against the excesses of public political office.
After two years of being out of politics, Mack achieved even broader fame by winning the federal seat of North Sydney in 1990, defeating incumbent Liberal MP John Spender. During his time in federal politics, Mack opposed the unilateral removal of tariffs, privatisation, Australian involvement in [[Gulf War I and the appointment of an Indonesian General as Ambassor to Australia. Mack retired at the 1996 election for the same reasons he had quit state politics eight years previously.
Mack was elected as an independent Republican delegate to the 1998 Constitutional Convention. He opposed the model favoured by the Australian Republican Movement. Along with Clem Jones, he is a director of Real Republic, and is known to be a proponent of Citizen Initiated Referenda.
Despite living nearby, for a time he refused to travel across the Sydney Harbour Bridge or through the harbour tunnel in protest at the secret contract and awarding of all tolls to Kumagai Transfield for 30 years.
