On Sydney. Now you can't handle the truth the straight shooters. Well, if I'm a member of state, home of course is my strat here on Thursday aufternoon, David Early, have I David, does a sense emotion actually really mean anything? When it comes down to it.
It's embarrassing. But SA fifty two are the opposition's best warfare. And I mean I had them every day, I think I had. I had my own my own locker down there at the SA fifty two processing plan. I was getting them so often. But it's been embarrassing and that, of course they can use that to then springboard other discipline reaction against Penny Sharp.
But it's a bit of a slap on a wrist though is no sense of motion?
Yeah, it's like a motion and no confidence amended. She doesn't have to resign or anything, but not unless she was the premiere. But it does highlight the fact that are the concerns that were floating around Macquarie Street twolve months ago that the that Ben Franklin going to the presidency would mean that they couldn't get any sense of motions or fifty two through. That's obviously not correct and it's clear that the cross benches are not going to necessarily play ball with the government.
Well, it's quite a clear vote there is. It's twenty in favor of fourteen against. Of course, the government doesn't hold the numbers in the upper House.
That's right, and it would be and Penny would be furious that the Greens have sided with the Liberal Party over that one. I'm quite sure.
And this is where you don't have a premier censured will be very rare because what they do have for a minority in the lower House, but they have the support of the Independence So.
That's right, and that only really, I mean essential motion is embarrassing and the Premier would probably have to explain to the governor why he still has confidence in the House. I could happened to Chris Mins, but I don't think that's going to happen.
No, No, it looks the big political issue of the weekend in state politics has been the failure of the ATC to sell off Rose Hill attract majority support. And we thought this was going to happen. But it's not great for Chris Mins because he'd been very much a support of this plan.
We he has and it's back to the drawing board, but he always gave himself a little I felt he always gave himself a little bit of wiggle room. I know my side of politic things that it's humiliating for him, but I think he gave himself. But it's just as he said, he's got a plan being he needs to go to that plan. Being as I said when I was Minister for Corrections, I don't know why there are prisoners living at Long Bay Jail. I don't know why
people convicted felons are at waterfront real estate. So if he wants to look anywhere, and I saw some dribble today in the media about oh, but there's no other site within twenty kilometers of Sydney, Well there is. It's called Long Bay Jail, and Bob Carr looked at getting rid of it when he was premier and they were going to give it over to the Disney Corporation, which
I thought would have been great. But there's been a little bit of work done by Corrections to look at Long Bay Jail and I think with a light rail extension down there, it would be magnificent. Now Michael Day is completely opposed to it. He's worried too many Tories or move into his constituency. But I think if we get the balance right, we could probably start working there.
Now. I'm really glad you've raised this idea because I haven't heard this idea for years. Yeah, it's popped up in the past, but the suggestion in some of the papers this morning was there could be parts of Homebush Sydney Hpey Park that could be developed for twenty thousand home. There'll be a metro station there, and Glee Island's been discussed for new housing. But this is a cracker, So everyone just think about this. We've got the state's worst
of the worst living in waterfront property at Long Bay. Okay, when you're in your cell, you don't look out the window and cast your eyes over the ocean. But this is absolute prime real estate. And I see no reason why we couldn't invest in building a massive prison out in the back of Burke, ship them all out there and then sell off the land.
Absolutely, it's a neigh brain. And I mean, I guess there's some heritage facilities considerations around Long Bar, but you'd include that in the development. The prisoners, You're right, I mean, the prisoners can go in the peri urban districts, or they could go out to expand Baptist Jail or expand Lithgo jail, and it creates jobs in regional areas. And
it is a no brainer. And I would very much encourage Chrismians and Mark Speakman to consider go back to those plans that we had drafted up over Long Bar Jail and stop spending money on what is essentially a piecemeal prison it's and spend some money on something that is going to give them a significant value for value to And of course, when you're building new jail, you build it for the modern criminal, the modern criminal rehabilitation, and Long Bay doesn't have all those facilities.
It's an absolute no brainer and I can't believe it hasn't been on the agenda. Just think about it. You've got how many people be in Long Bay? How many prison a couple of hours one thousand, I'd say, okay, so you've got a thousand. You've got a thousand living in prime Sydney real estate. Is the argument against doing it that the families of the prisoners would have a long way to travel to go and visit them.
You do have that, but you know, but when they place a prisoner, they don't necessarily think about where mum's coming from to come on Saturday afternoon to bring a cake with a file in it. I mean, it's where we It's where the prison, the prison officers live. And when I've been down there when I was a prison's I spent a lot of time at Long Bay Jail. But I interviewed the prison officers when I had this in the back of my mind, and most of them
are commuting from Woo, commuting from Campbelltown. So if you said to them, you know, we're going to put it in, you know on the outskirts of Sydney that nobody had complained about it.
And that's a pretty big area there. You could build a lot.
Of units there and it's got and just extend the light rail.
Which is a lot cheaper than an underground metro.
A lot cheaper than a metro.
Take Stewart Airs came out today, your former colleague in his new capacity, and he said, look, we made a mistake by not having a metro station between Sydney Park and Parramatta. What is your view.
I'm not accepting that because when we made that consideration, we didn't think that rose Hill would be developed, so it wasn't a mistake at the time. In hindsight, if rose Hill was going to go ahead, well then we could say, yeah, we made a mistake. We probably should have put this on the radar in the beginning, but it was never It was never a consideration when we were dropping the stations on that metro.
The issue that's really got you angry this week is Chris Bowen eating during Mass.
And I'm not Catholic, but I got that photo on Saturday Sunday night from people that were there, and my blood boiled. I thought that was the most disrespectful thing anybody could do. He would not do it in a mosque, and he certainly wouldn't do it in a temple, or he certainly wouldn't do it in a synagogue. But he feels that he can do it in front of the Catholic community in his own electorate, who I'm pretty sure won't let him forget about it. Now. I've seen that
invitation that he received. It clearly says eleven am Mass, at twelve o'clock, there'll be there'll be light refreshments. So if he was hungry, he could have been like everybody or the rest of us just wait until after the search service was finished.
I've got the invitation here in front of me, Club Marconi commemorating Italian Republic Day, eleven am Commemorative Mass, twelve pm opening serony followed by light refreshments. And it's not like the event was being held. The mass was being held at meal time.
No, that's exactly right.
I mean, maybe he's used a very early lunch at eleven o'clock.
But this is the Hubris that you and I spoke about on the election night, and Chris Bowen is going to be I don't know him, I've never met him. I'm in the Jason Clair fashion of the Labor Party when it comes to Southwestern Sydney. I think he's one that should be given the tough jobs. But I just feel that what Chris has done and his lame excuse that he didn't know that was a mass, well, you
were sitting there in front of a priest. And again I'm not jumping on the high horse because I'm not a Catholic, but I do have enough respect for people's faith to think that a member of Parliament, Minister of the Crown not less, would not only treat his constituents like that, but then try to lie about it, which I thought was disgraceful.
We spoke about Hubri's on election that this was the big danger. So that's one example. I'll just play you this. You may not have heard this. This is another example I think of Hubris.
Just a fun fact that's been drawn to my attention is that there are more women whose name begins with A in the Labor Party caucus in the House of Representatives. Ten then there will be nine coalition women in the floor on the floor of the House of Representatives, in the Liberal Party and the National Party combined with Anika Here, Anna Lee, Ailey France who's here, Alisha Payne, Alice Jordan Baird, ash Amberja Paha and Stanley Alison Burns, ann Erkkart and Amanda Rishworth.
That's an example of humorous.
Yeah.
Well, I mean the lovies for Labour are going to stand up and say, is this fantastic? You know, we've got more women than the opposition have got at twice as many, but they've also got more than twice the number of seats that the coalition's got. So let's marry it all up. And I think I think, I mean, the proof's going to be in the pudding for a lot of those a lot of those new MPs and
new ministers. I wouldn't be putting playing the gender card too close because I think that he's going to find that some of those people embarrassing.
I have a lot of feedback here to the idea, to the proposal to sell and it's not actually on the agenda at the moment. We're just raising it this afternoon, but to redevelop Longbow Jail for housing Michelle and the text and says I do have a family member that is in cars rated. He is in Grafton, which is a six hour drive. If you want to visit an inmate, you will travel. That's right, okay. Harry is a former Ranwick counselor diet I Harry good.
He how are you going good? Yeah, that's good. Look Back in twenty thirteen I raised this issue in council and we wrote to Greg Smith at the time, who was the Attorney General here in New South Wales, and I mentioned to him that this would be a very very good idea. We're talking about ninety acres of prime real estate right in the heart of or very close to the city center. And you know, I mean, I
agree wholeheartedly with what David raised. I raised these issues earlier that you know, why would you give them prime real estate, would you? Why wouldn't you relocate the jail into regional areas and create more jobs out there, you know, I mean, I think it's a no brainer. You know, we're talking about you know, a lot of heritage buildings there which could be preserved. You don't necessarily have to go massive high rise there. I mean, I don't understand
why labor got rid of It's Henry. You know, why would you get rid of a hospital that's been used primarily by everybody and not get rid of the jail.
So a long time ago Prince Henry disappeared.
But agree, Yeah, well, Harry's right. And the political problem that Chris had was that Chris Men's had everybody loved Rose Hill, which in western Sydney a lot of people do. Nobody loves the prison. Nobody loves so he's not going to have any He's not going to be facing.
Well, the prison's way be given a vote, will by.
No that won't be given a vote on it. With the exemption of Michael daily who loves it being there for various reasons. Nobody is going to be chaining themselves to the front gates of Long Bay Jail saying let's let's save the jail.
Fair point here from Angela. On the text line, Angelo says, I'm a prison officer. We can't get staff to go out west, but Picton would be a.
Good vitue because they do. They can do the long shifts and they you know, and I mean most prison officers that I work with are very, very dedicated to their job and if they get posted somewhere which is a little bit longer to commute, they'll do it because they are you know, they're company people.
Shadow Ministry announced yesterday by Susan Lee. What are your impressions, listen, I mean it's early days, bumby start. I did take offense to the fact that Michael McCormack was removed. I thought that he had a three percent swing to him at a time when people were having double digit swings
against them. But I got to say, as a proud Westy, giving a millionaire, middle class senator like Andrew Bragg, who as the homelessness portfolio doesn't sit comfortably with me and this is the guy that campaigned on quotas for women in Parliament and then knife Holly Hughes to get his spum back into the Senate. I'm not comfortable with it. I'm hoping that I'm going to be wrong, but you know, horses for courses here. But you know, I think having
I think Andrew Hasting and Home Affairs is good. Love seeing Alex Hawk back. If they listened to him a little bit more during the campaign, we wouldn't have lost as many seats and vote in Western Sydney. And of course I think you know Susan has proven herself to be a very even keeled candidate for the prime Mishi, We're almost at a time tomorrow your column the Telegraph will feature the best country towns.
Best Country Towns tomorrow. I've been English once and I've spoken as Steve Camper, who's given me permission to quote him. And we're going to spend the long weekend next weekend in regional New South Wales. And I've got a saucy little story about Tamworth when I went there.
And saucy story, A little saucy story.
Because I went out there to Tamworth with Kevin Anderson once and I was at a function that started mouthing off and boasting about I had a teenage romance in Tamworth and I loved coming to Tamworth with those memories. And it turned out it was old mates, missus since since since I'd lost communication with that young teenage lady, she'd married the bloke I was boasting about. So just goes to show. My mother said, never talk about six politics of religion, and we've done all three of them today.
Mates, we'll read about it tomorrow. And the Telly