in the Electoral division of Elwick
.
He was first elected in May 2004 as a member of the Australian Labor Party
but was expelled from the parliamentary Labor party after crossing the floor
to vote against a bill concerning a pulp mill. He then sat as an independent.
Prior to entering parliament he had been Mayor of Glenorchy
since 1990. Even after he was elected to parliament he remained in this role until after local government elections in October 2005.
On 30 October 2009 Martin appeared in the Hobart Magistrates Court charged with having sex with a twelve year old girl.
Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.
It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.
It’s the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It’s a quality to be proud of. But it’s a quality that many people seem to have neglected.
Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.
One cannot develop taste from what is of average quality but only from the very best.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
People of quality know everything without ever having learned anything.
So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.
The measure of your quality as a public person, as a citizen, is the gap between what you do and what you say.