Ben Wyatt

Benjamin Sana "Ben" Wyatt (born 1 April 1974) is an Australian politician who is the current Labor Party member for the seat of Victoria Park in the Legislative Assembly of Western Australia.

Born in Wewak, Papua New Guinea, to Australian parents, Wyatt moved to Western Australia at an early age, where he attended Aquinas College in Perth. He went on to receive a law degree from the University of Western Australia, later attending the London School of Economics on a scholarship. Wyatt returned to Australia in 2002, where he worked as a lawyer. He was elected to parliament in 2006, at the Victoria Park by-election, replacing Geoff Gallop, a former premier. Wyatt currently serves as Shadow Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, amongst other portfolios.

Biography

Wyatt was born on 1 April 1974 in Wewak, a town on the northern coast of what was then Territory of Papua New Guinea. His parents were both school-teachers on an exchange program—his father, Cedric Wyatt, was originally from the Pilbara, and his mother was originally from Newcastle, New South Wales. Wyatt has Yamatji heritage through his father, and his cousin, Ken Wyatt, was the first member of the Australian House of Representatives of Indigenous Australian descent. His family returned to Perth, Western Australia, in 1976. Wyatt grew up in regional Western Australia, with his parents teaching in various locations in the Goldfields, including Laverton and Kalgoorlie. He returned to Perth to attend high school at Aquinas College, and later studied at the University of Western Australia, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree. He also attended the Royal Military College, Duntroon, graduating as an officer in 1996, and later received the Australian Defence Medal. After working in law firms in Perth and Sydney, Wyatt received an Ambassadorial Scholarship in 2001 from the Rotary Foundation, allowing him to study comparative politics at the London School of Economics.

Ben Wyatt (Parks and Recreation)

Sir Benjamin "Ben" Wyatt, OBE is a character portrayed by Adam Scott in the TV series Parks and Recreation. The character guest starred in two episodes of season two and was upgraded to a series regular in season three. Ben is a state auditor who comes into Pawnee with Chris Traeger to evaluate the town's funds at the end of the second season. Compared with the exuberant Chris, Ben is very serious and straightforward, willing to tell the truth no matter how harsh; the two used to do budget meetings individually, but it didn't work out because Chris would never get anything done and Ben received multiple death threats. Ben began dating Leslie Knope in the season three episode "Road Trip" and married her in the season five episode "Leslie and Ben."

Character biography

Ben is from Partridge, Minnesota. When he was 18, he ran for mayor and won on the strength of, in his words, "anti-establishment voter rebellion." However, being so inexperienced, he quickly ran the town's finances into the ground and was impeached after two months. His signature failure was spearheading the development of a winter sports complex called Ice Town which bankrupted the town, leading to the newspaper headline "Ice Town Costs Ice Clown His Town Crown." Ben attended Carleton College, where he was the host and DJ for a swing music college radio show called Zoot Suit Wyatt".