Dave Sharma is back

NSW’s newest senator will be Dave Sharma to replace Marise Payne in Canberra.

Yesterday, the NSW parliament formally voted to allow Mr Sharma to take up the Senate seat vacated by Marise Payne the Liberal senator who has retired.

Dave Sharma stunned most NSW Liberal members on Sunday, after he managed to outnumber former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance by 251 votes to 206 and was preselected to fill the vacant spot.

Other candidates contesting the preselection included Pallavi Sinha, Monica Tudehope, James Brown, Nim Rutnam, Lou Amato, Zed Seselja and Jess Collins.

Most bets were on Andrew Constance with Dave Sharma publicly supported by seemingly much smaller cohort.

A moderate in the Liberal Party, he also beat former ACT Senator Zed Seselja, who was backed by Peter Dutton.

Dave Sharma’s proud wife Rachel Lord and two of his three daughters, Estella and Daphne, watched from the gallery.

A former Australian ambassador to Israel, Dave Sharma is a very smart, capable and ambitious politicians. In that sense, he is a welcome addition to the Dutton team in this point of time of the political cycle. It is particularly important when the Albanese government is, figuratively speaking, falling apart with its anchor only skin deep in wet sands.

As far Dave Sharma, he is already hoping for a slot in the shadow front bench.

“I would like to thank the Party members for the opportunity to hold the Albanese Government to account in the Senate over its many missteps and wrong decisions, and to fight for the many households across NSW struggling to deal with Labor’s cost of living crisis,” he said in a statement.

“I believe strongly in the need to safeguard Australia’s future for our children, and so I have always been drawn to public service. 

“The opportunity to serve in the Senate will allow me to fight for our nation’s national security interests in a time of greater global turmoil.”

Dave Sharma is a former MP serving for a couple of years from May 2019 to May 2022 elected to the federal parliament from the electorate of Wentworth, the seat of former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

As a former ambassador to Israel and member for Wentworth which has a large number of Jews, Dave Sharma has publicly defended Israel’s right of self-defence saying, “Israel exercising self-defence does not make it guilty of war crimes,” much to the chagrin of Sydney’s Hamas supporting Muslim population.

Dave Sharma has proposed that the ABC and Australian Universities be required to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism, that means any criticism of Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights and atrocities committed by Israel will be labelled antisemitic.

“The way this Israel-Hamas conflict ends, and civilian lives are spared, is for Hamas to release the hostages and surrender or be defeated militarily.

“Yes, humanitarian support should be provided to the people of Gaza, and civilians should be allowed to leave via Egypt.

“But a pause in hostilities or a ceasefire is both wholly unrealistic and will only prolong this conflict. Hamas will use it to regroup and put more civilians in harm’s way,” he wrote in the Australian on November 4.

He has also criticised Senator Penny Wong for not doing more to ease find solution to the Israeli-Hamas war.

In the preselection battle, he also defeated a fellow Indian Australian, Pallavi Sinha, a lawyer with more than 20 years’ experience in leadership positions; Pallavi is a former Vice-President of Australia India Business Council (AIBC) and is a Co-Chair Liberal Party Friends of India.

It is good to see so much enthusiasm from within the Indian Australians who are putting their hand up and want to claim their due in the decision-making top echelons of their now home Australia.

I am sure Pallavi Sinha’s time will also come.

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