Ray Williams (politician)

Raymond Craig "Ray" Williams (born 27 September 1960) is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly representing the seat of Castle Hill for the Liberal Party of Australia since 2015, and the seat of Hawkesbury from 2007 to 2015.

Williams is the son of Allen Williams, a former heavyweight boxing champion of Australia and the South Pacific and Margaret Williams, the daughter of English migrants from Cornwall. His family was involved in the training of horses, and Williams followed in the family footsteps and trained horses for more than 30 years. From 1985, he worked for Glenorie Bus Company at Dural.

Williams was a panel beater and maintenance manager with the Hillsbus company. He was a councillor on Baulkham Hills Shire Council until September 2008. He was a President of the Kellyville Rouse Hill Progress Association. Williams led a campaign of roadside protests to highlight the need for the upgrade of Windsor Road.

In 2003, Williams contested the seat of Riverstone, and was unsuccessful. In an internal Liberal Party preselection prior to the 2007 state election, Williams defeated incumbent Steven Pringle. As a result, Pringle decided to run for the seat as an independent candidate. Williams won the seat in the 2007 state election with a 6.07% majority. In 2007, Williams was accused of branch stacking after a local pastor stated in a statutory declaration that Williams paid him party membership fees for churchgoers. This claim was denied by Williams, and has not been substantiated.

In 2008, Williams was ejected from state parliament by the Speaker Richard Torbay for pretending to wrestle a toy iguana, in reference to the Belinda Neal – John Della Bosca scandal known as Iguanagate.

Since his election to parliament, Williams has been appointed the Deputy Chair of the Liberal Party's Western Sydney Taskforce. In June 2010, Williams was appointed the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Western Sydney and replaced Wayne Merton who retired. He won the seat again at the 2011 state election with a swing of 29.7 points, winning 84.7 per cent of the two-party vote. At the 2015 state election, with Dominic Perrottet, they were preselected for each other's seat and both were elected, effecting a "seat-swap" with Williams elected as the Member for Castle Hill.