LABOR candidate for Dubbo Stephen Lawrence would not be drawn on who he preferred to lead Labor into next year's state election but vowed to make John Robertson's replacement aware of pressing local issues and to enlist his or her support for the Labor campaign in Dubbo.
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John Robertson resigned as NSW Labor leader just hours after moves began to dump him over revelations he signed a letter of request for Lindt siege gunman Man Haron Monis, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.
His decision to quit came after senior colleagues made him aware they had planned to visit him at 5pm on Tuesday in a bid to resolve the leadership issue.
The decision means the ALP will elect a new party leader only three months before the March 2015 state election. The new leader was likely to be chosen by a ballot.
Mr Lawrence told the Daily Liberal the leadership was exclusively a matter for the parliamentary party and as a candidate he had no role in choosing the leader.
"My focus is, as it has been since I announced my candidacy, on local issues," he said.
While he did not comment on his preference for a future leader, Mr Lawrence said there were "a number of really impressive individuals who are being spoken about in the media as potential Labor leaders".
"All of them are seen to have the essential qualities," he said.
Meanwhile Mr Lawrence described Mr Robertson's resignation as "a sad situation".
"It's very clear that when he signed that letter on behalf of a constituent he had no idea who he was and could not possibly have known what he would go on to do," he said.
"From all reports it seems to have been a routine piece of correspondence.
"Politics is a tough game and he (Mr Robertson) has paid the price for what this awful individual went on to do.
"It's not the first time a politician has written a letter for a constituent and it's come back to bite them. And it won't be the last.
"As a state member you have to represent a whole range of people and sometimes those people have histories that it's impossible for you to know about and they might go on to do things you can't possibly predict. That's the reality. The outcome isn't always fair. It's always a political outcome, and it seems things became untenable."
Time would tell, Mr Lawrence said, whether Mr Robertson's resignation had an impact on the party's outcome in the 2015 state election.
