Alex Greenwich

Early years and background

Greenwich was born in New Zealand to a Georgian father and American mother. His father, Victor Greenwich Dadianov (now the Honorary Consul-General of Georgia in Sydney), was born Prince Victor Dadianov of the princely Georgian Dadiani family but his mother changed the name to Greenwich after they moved as refugees to New Zealand from Georgia after the Second World War. At the age of seven, Greenwich moved with his family to Sydney, Australia. From his family residence in Circular Quay, Greenwich was educated at Sydney Grammar School and completed a Bachelor of Arts in Human Resource Management and Russian Studies at the University of New South Wales. From 1 December 1998 to 1 December 2012, Greenwich was the general manager of his own recruiting agency, Winning Attitudes Recruitment.

Personal life

Greenwich is one of two openly gay male MPs in the NSW Legislative Assembly; the other being Bruce Notley-Smith of the Liberal Party. Before entering politics, Greenwich was a prominent LGBT rights activist and the national convenor of Australian Marriage Equality.

Prior to running for office, Greenwich was from 2007 the national convener of Australian Marriage Equality and was named as one of Samesame.com.au's 25 most influential gay and lesbian Australians in 2010. As national convener, Greenwich was instrumental in lobbying the Australian Bureau of Statistics to count same-sex marriages in the 2011 national census. He also organised over 44,000 submissions to be made to the 2011 senate inquiry into same-sex marriage, and continues to be a prominent activist for achieving same-sex marriage reform in Australia. In May 2012, Greenwich married his German long-term partner, Victor Hoeld in Argentina, where same-sex marriage is legal.

Political career

In July 2012, Greenwich aligned himself with prominent independent Lord Mayor of Sydney Clover Moore and announced his candidacy on Moore's ticket for the Sydney City Council elections scheduled for the NSW local government elections in September 2012. This low (and therefore most likely unelectable) position on the ticket fuelled speculation that this was to increase Greenwich's visibility for a possible run to succeed Moore should she be forced to resign her state seat of Sydney in light of promised reforms by the O'Farrell Liberal/National government to ban MPs from serving on local government bodies. This legislation was subsequently passed as the Local Government Amendment (Members of Parliament) Act, 2012 (NSW) and following the local government elections in which Moore was re-elected for a third term as lord mayor, Moore resigned her seat in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, triggering a by-election.

Greenwich subsequently contested the 2012 Sydney by-election as an independent with the endorsement of Moore, comfortably defeating Shayne Mallard of the Liberal Party with a 47.3 percent primary and 63.7 percent two-candidate preferred vote. Greenwich said after the by-election that it was "very clear Barry O'Farrell's legislation has backfired – because now there are two of us". Greenwich has denied claims that he is a single-issue politician, having gone to the by-election on a platform involving a range of policy areas, including small business, the re-establishment of an inner-city public high school, and social welfare and public housing, among others.