ACT Liberal parliamentarian Steve Doszpot has abandoned a commitment he made in 2008 to seek only two terms, throwing his hat in the contest to seek a third term at the October ACT election.
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During the 2008 election campaign, Mr Doszpot said he would apply the common commercial practice of limited five to seven-year contracts at senior levels.
"I intend to maintain this philosophy that has served commercial organisations so effectively," he said, writing in 2008. "I have declared my intentions that (if elected) I will commit to two energetic terms as an MLA then step aside."
But Mr Doszpot said last week it had become clear to him after his first term that the promise had been "naive", and he now intended to "keep going until my body tells me otherwise".
"I've learned a lesson. I'm not going to make any predictions. But certainly, I'm very keen to pursue the next four years whichever way that goes, hopefully in government but if not in opposition."
Mr Doszpot, 67, is the son of refugees who fled Europe with his family when he was just eight after his father was imprisoned by the communist regime in Hungary. Soccer leadership played a big part in his life before politics.
He was not so foolhardy to repeat his two-term commitment in his inaugural speech in 2009.
In that speech, he traced his political journey to 1983, when he studied political science at the Australian National University where Gough Whitlam was an adjunct professor and lectured the students. "It was a privilege, and perhaps it was only coincidental that during this period I became a strong advocate of the principles of Robert Gordon Menzies and the Liberal Party," Mr Doszpot told the Assembly almost eight years ago.
Now 67, he is the only sitting Liberal candidate in the central seat of Kurrajong. The other four candidates are newcomers, leaving Mr Doszpot to lead the Liberal campaign in the inner north and inner south.
Mr Doszpot said he sensed considerable anger in the community about government decisions that people found "very hard to fathom" – the tram, the Yarralumla suburban expansion, now scaled well back, the high-density housing planned for Red Hill, and the high-density Manuka Oval proposal.
In the inner south and inner north, people were also upset about the increase in rates, which was pricing people of "modest or sometimes reasonable means" out of the area they had lived in for many years.
Rates bills have increased most markedly in the inner north and inner south suburbs that Mr Doszpot represents, with the average bill in Red Hill up about $1700 in four years, to $4330, an increase of 64 per cent. In Yarralumla, where Mr Doszpot lives, the average rates bill is $3800, up about $1500 in four years.
As to his decision to stand again, Mr Doszpot said while he had thought it important to step aside to allow renewal, renewal happened naturally anyway as parliamentarians left, and he now recognised the importance of experience.
After eight years in the Parliament, he wanted the chance to put into effect the work he had done in government.
"I realise there's a heck of a lot to learn and there's a lot of good use that experience can be put to," he said.
"... It's a big investment on the community's part as well to elect people and if people aren't willing to shoulder the experience that they gain and put it to good use then I guess that's a loss.
"It was my rather naive expectation back then that just having fresh faces coming in all the time is possibly better, to be tied to a definite term, but when you look at it, it should be the community that decides how long people stay in for."
