David Shoebridge

Early career

After a brief stint as a cellarman and superintendent for the Royal Agricultural Society, Shoebridge started his career as an associate to Family Court justice Eric Baker.

Shoebridge then went on to become a lawyer and worked six years as a solicitor at Taylor and Scott, a union law firm, and more than seven years as a barrister at Denman Chambers, with a focus on employment, discrimination, industrial and tort law. While no longer practising, he continues to hold a practising certificate as a NSW Barrister.

Political career

Shoebridge was elected to Woollahra Municipal Council in 2004 and reelected in 2008. He served one term as Deputy Mayor.

He was the Greens candidate for the state seat of Vaucluse in the 2007 state election, outpolling the ALP candidate in the seat held by the then Liberal party leader Peter Debnam.

He was preselected to the first position on the Greens' upper house ticket for the 2011 state election despite not having served in parliament but, after Sylvia Hale resigned from the Legislative Council in September 2010, he was deemed eligible to take her position which allowed him to contest the election as a sitting MP.

On 2 June 2011, Shoebridge took the record for longest speech in the NSW Legislative Council while talking continuously for over five hours and 58 minutes against NSW government legislation which drastically affected public sector wages and conditions, including capping wage rises at a rate less than inflation.

Shoebridge has campaigned to curb the use of police drug sniffer dogs and stun guns, and called for independent investigations of police when officers are involved in critical incidents and members of the public are killed or seriously injured.

In 2012, Shoebridge advocated against proposed changes for workers rights as the NSW government made sweeping changes to the workers compensation system in NSW. Accompanied by the first general strike by fire-fighters since 1956, Shoebridge and the Greens helped secure amendments to the legislation meaning that fire-fighters and paramedics retained the same cover as police officers.

Shoebridge called for an inquiry into victims of sexual abuse, asking for a Royal Commission into sexual abuse by the Catholic Church and other institutions, and proposing legislation to overturn the Ellis defence.

Shoebridge campaigned successfully in July 2013 for the abolition of the Game Council NSW by the NSW government. This followed the findings and recommendations of the Dunn Report into the Game Council's governance, called after senior Game Council figures were suspended after allegations of illegal hunting.

Waverley Council report incident

In 2017, a report on an incident involving Waverley Council Mayor Sally Betts and meeting votes by councillors became a matter of debate in the NSW Parliament. Greens MP David Shoebridge filed a parliamentary motion that detailed the report's findings, and called on Mayor Betts to issue an unreserved apology and resign as mayor. Shoebridge's motion was met with opposition from Liberal MPs and triggered the intervention of Tim Hurst, the chief executive of the Office of Local Government. Mr Hurst wrote to Mr Shoebridge asking him to "exercise caution before using Parliament to publicly disclose confidential information about matters being considered under a council's code of conduct".