“Residents have raised with me their views including the need to address an equitable distribution of new homes – particularly that the plan proposes a significant amount of new homes in Marrickville, Dulwich Hill and Ashfield as opposed to on Parramatta Road and/or to the north and east of the LGA,” she wrote.
CBD hears Haylen backs the plan, and wrote to Byrne merely to do her job as an MP and highlight her community’s concern on a contentious issue.
Byrne, meanwhile, told CBD the council was working with the state government to fix the housing supply crisis.
“Our plan to deliver more than 30,000 new homes is ambitious, and the public exhibition period is the right time for concerns and amendments to be raised.”
Local submissions to council closed this month, so we can assume Byrne will be faced with far more dissenting views in the days to come.
Book club
The period following a federal election brings the inevitable flurry of political tomes by pundits. Last month, CBD revealed that formidable columnist Niki Savva (yes, she does write for the Herald) would be releasing a book, appropriately titled Earthquake, just in time to send seismic rumbles through various Liberal Party Christmases.
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Also getting in on the act is University of Western Australia politics professor and Daily Mail Australia political editor Peter van Onselen. His book, The Hollow State: Power Without Purpose in Australian Politics, is due for an October release from niche right-leaning press Wilkinson Publishing.
It feels a slight step down from Hachette, which published PVO’s 2021 book on Scott Morrison, but then again, PVO’s own recent career arc has been chaotic. He went from The Australian and Sky News to Network Ten and The Project before joining Daily Mail Australia last year as political editor.
In a curious move for a pundit, PVO has built a career out of marrying savvy analysis with being prominently wrong (his “kisses of death” were the stuff of legend).
More recently, he quit as Network Ten’s political editor in 2023, and was then successfully sued by his former employer for breaching a non-disparagement clause in his redundancy agreement (for which he trousered $165,000) by writing an article in The Australian calling the broadcaster “the minnow of Australian television”. To be fair, he got that one right.
PVO told us his new book was a project some years in the making; a lament at the hollowing-out of modern politics by both sides of the aisle he hoped would be “half scholarly, half populist”.
Any kisses of death to look out for?
“The only prediction is it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Van Onselen said.
Back to school
A mere 11 weeks after the May 3 election, federal parliament has returned. Everyone wanted to put their feet up after that gruelling election campaign, we guess. Or hike the Great Wall of China.
The pollies have slowly begun to trickle back to Canberra, and on Sunday night, CBD’s spies spotted Labor frontbenchers Murray Watt, Jenny McAllister and Tim Ayres enjoying a pre-sitting dinner at Compa in the Canberra Centre. Expect more of that.
During the downtime CBD brought you several updates about the great staffer exodus, and had some sport at the expense at the PM’s chief of staff Tim Gartrell, for what we thought was his weirdly school prefect attitude to his underlings oversharing happy snaps with the prime minister on social media. Obligations under the ministerial staff code of conduct or something.
But maybe he had a point: word has reached CBD of a former staffer whose profile on the dating app Hinge once included a selfie with … the prime minister.
Anthony “Aphrodisiac” Albanese? Somehow, we don’t think so.
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