Piper grew up in the Lake Macquarie suburb of Kahibah.[citation needed] He has three children and five grandchildren.[citation needed] In his teenage years, he attended St Pius X high school in Adamstown. When Piper finished school he worked in Steelworks for a year. When he did not see a future there he took a nursing job at Morisset Hospital, where he worked for 26 years.[2] He now lives on the Morisset Peninsula in Mirrabooka, near the Westlakes suburb of Morisset, with his wife Lyn.[3]
Political career
Piper was first elected to the City of Lake Macquarie Council in 1991 as an independent councillor and was deputy mayor through 2000. He sat on and chaired numerous committees. Piper held the position of chair of the Lake Macquarie Estuary Management Committee and the Lake Macquarie Project Management Committee since the establishment of each. He was also on the Hunter Waste Management and Planning Board for a number of years including a period as chair.[3] He was directly elected as the mayor of Lake Macquarie in March 2004 and again in September 2008, where he received 60% of the first-preference vote.[4]
Piper was elected as the member for Lake Macquarie at the 2007 general election. He sat on the Legislative Assembly's rural and regional Broadband Committee from June 2007 to November 2008 and was a member of the Standing Committee on Natural Resource Management (Climate Change) from 2008 to 2011, in addition Piper has also been a member of the Committee on Transport and Infrastructure from June 2011 to June 2013, State and Regional Development Committee from March 2013 to March 2015, Standing Orders and Procedure Committee from March 2013 to March 2015, Public Accounts Committee from March 2013 to March 2015 and from May 2015 to March 2019, Select Committee on the Motor Vehicle Repair Industry from November 2013 to July 2014, Joint Select Committee on Companion Animal Breeding Practices in New South Wales from May 2015 to August 2015, Standing Orders and Procedure Committee from May 2015 to March 2019.[3]
According to his web site, Piper describes his politics as "left leaning, socially progressive, fiscally cautious", Piper goes on to mention that he is staunchly independent and has never been a member of a political party.[8]
^"About Greg". gregpiper1.com. Archived from the original on 22 July 2024. Retrieved 22 July 2024. Greg worked as a nurse in mental health and developmental disability at Morisset Hospital for over 25 years, a grounding that helped develop a strong sense of social justice. He describes his politics as generally left leaning, socially progressive and fiscally cautious.
