Incumbent Kiama MP Gareth Ward has been asked to attend court on Tuesday to formally enter pleas over the historical sexual and indecent assault charges which have been hanging over his head for the past year.
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The earlier-than-expected court date comes as he fights for his political life, with the vote count in his southern Illawarra electorate remaining too close to call.
On March 22 last year, Mr Ward was charged with three counts of indecent assault, one count of sexual intercourse without consent and one count of common assault.
Police allege he indecently assaulted a 17 year old boy at Meroo Meadow in February 2013 and sexually abused a 27-year-old man in Sydney in September 2015.
Mr Ward has been on bail since the charges were laid and strenuously denies the allegations.
However, the criminal proceedings led to him being suspended from both the Liberal Party and from state parliament last year.
Despite this, Mr Ward retained a significant amount of support when ran as an independent at Saturday's election, with the seat of Kiama remaining to close to call.
He was ahead of Labor's Katelin McInerney in first preferences by about 1100 votes on Monday at 4pm.
However, Ms McInerney was ahead after preferences, with her projected two-candidate preferred vote sitting at 51.14 per cent.
The large early voting booth in Nowra, where Mr Ward had significant support as a Liberal MP in 2019, remained uncounted at 4pm
The ongoing court case means, even if he does win the seat, he could remain suspended from parliament.
In the lead up to the election, both Dominic Perrottet and Chris Minns said they would not accept his vote if they needed it to form government, and also pledged to continue his ban in parliament until the criminal proceedings are finalised.
Mr Ward has questioned what the attempt to keep a recently elected MP out of parliament says about the presumption of innocence.
"How dare the major political parties tell our electorate who they can and can't elect, and I don't think they're going to get their way," he said last week.
Pleas for his court case were expected to be entered next week during an arraignment in the District Court in Sydney, but in a surprise development the case was listed in Nowra's District Court for March 27.
Mr Ward's lawyer Rob Foster told the court the matter was listed for Sydney next week, when issues including a prosecution application to change the venue and a defence application to separate the matters into two separate trials were to be discussed.
"I'm here, there's a judge here, can't we progress the matter in some way?" he said during the callover in Nowra.
He ordered the matter to return to court on Tuesday for an arraignment.