Originally from Scotland, Craig emigrated to Australia in 2003.  He has been a City of Rockingham rate-payer for the past ten years, and a sitting Councillor since October 2019.  Elected on a platform that included promises to keep rates below CPI, to introduce live streaming of Council meetings, and the direct election of the mayor, Craig has spent the past two years working to achieve each of those goals, and if now asking for the support of the local community to take his common sense approach further, as Mayor of the City of Rockingham.

 

Craig has enjoyed gainful employment as (in no particular order), a civil servant, a naval reservist, a barman, a bouncer, a university accommodation manager, a political speechwriter, and once, for the space of 36 hours in the middle of a particularly harsh winter, a burglar-alarm salesman on the streets of Dundee.

 

He is 49 years old, and is married to Claire, a local primary school teacher.  With the kids having flown the coop, his home life is now governed by two cats (indoor, de-sexed, and fully registered, thank you very much for asking).  The cats effectively own the house; Craig and Claire just pay the ever-increasing rates bill, and do their best to keep their feline masters in high-end food and creature comforts.

 

Craig has been a strong, long-time proponent of the Cape Peron Coastal Park Plan, and served as a member of the Ministerial Advisory Panel which presented its recommendations to the Planning Minister in September 2020. Craig considers Class A status for the Cape to be key to improving the tourism industry here in the Rockingham area, while at the same time boosting our local economy.

 

He is an avid reader, a regular book reviewer for The Big Issue Australia, and an occasional columnist for The Spectator, New Matilda, and The Big Issue Australia, amongst others.   A fan of the benefits of life-long education, in December 2019 he graduated from the University of Western Australia with a Ph.D in certain obscure facets of nineteenth-century Scottish literature.

 

Craig describes his political philosophy as “small government, rarely interfering, yet always available at need,” and welcomes any questions that local residents might have for him.  To ask them, just fill out the form on the Contact page, or hit him up on social media.