For @greaterbrisbane.org’s submission to the Fortitude Valley Sustainable Growth Precinct Plan, I wanna better articulate my theory of “the right to a good night out gone bad” and that dulling the dangerous edge of the 24 hour economy instead of just minimising harm kills cultural precincts.

How am I meant to do TikTok influencing if I can’t even take a selfie on our walking tour.

Updated now with reax & additional detail from the report – which was not made available before the minister's presser Of 3 three options, govt took the one described w most risk. Critics have, again, accused the LNP of favouring ideology over evidence www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/que...

My life's mission is to destroy the STAR method.

Australia should make everything dark blue and above a public holiday if we haven’t already.

“I made the decision that I felt I was forced to make,” Daile Kelleher said of her May resignation – 1y into her 4y term “I fundamentally believe that [govt] specifically gave the ultimatum knowing that my only option would be to resign from my board role” www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/que...

A few months ago I went to a discussion on rising antisemitism in Australia – and how it relates to but is distinct from in both form and response from Islamophobia, First Nations hate and other forms of hate. It was a very insightful and important discussion. But something after struck me.

There would be less than ten thousand people Australia wide that have a legitimate business reason to keep a firearm in their home. The vast majority of people who need firearms for work would access them through a managed armoury. Why do we have 4 million registered firearms in Australia?

If anyone hears about public vigils being organised in the wake of the terrible attacks at Bondi, please let me know.

Good year for movies imo

I’m a single issue voter and my issue is that those busses that bend in the middle should make accordion noises

Pray for me. For the first Christmas lunch of the season, i decided to make pizza dough for the first time in my life. I’m making Stromboli.

At some point with the Americans you have to say, sure, you do have the most intensely car-centric urban configurations in the world, and that does have effects on social geography, but the way you’re going on about it, maybe you just *like* to drink drive

There’s simply no greater joy in life than catching the bus to go to the cinema by yourself (don’t pathologise this)

After another campaign got a previous transit-oriented mixed use development torpedoed and turned into a surface carpark hellscape of a detached supermarket – and the plumbers yard across the trainline nearly got blocked from being turned into housing and greenspace earlier this year – I went ham

The best part of magazine articles is getting photoshoots with legendary fashion photographers. For Housing Wars, I got shot by the incredible Trent Mitchell. My already way too big ego didn't need this right now.

In the fight that generates infinite content, I'm in the AFR Magazine this weekend talking about generational housing conflict. Truly unhinged comments from anti-housing activists – and as a bonus you can see me focusing so hard on Standing Normally. Come for the Content, stay for the Fashion.

Anyone got any recs for interesting writing/critiques of 'legal tech' as an industry?

Ben's doing some fascinating work on parliament expansion and this one makes a key point. The 1948 expansion was a big moment for the urbanisation of Australian politics, but that's done. Now it's a way to get more compact country seats without malapportionment.

Years ago @osmanfaruqi.bsky.social did a hot take that Twitter [as it was then] should be nationalised because it was too valuable a piece of social infrastructure to remain in private hands, and time has proven him right beyond all expectations

Last night, the Planning Amendment Bill 2025 passed the Legislative Council. This is an astronomically impactful reform. Congratulations to @australianlabor.bsky.social, @greens.org.au, @davidlimbrick.bsky.social, and @animaljusticeparty.bsky.social for forming a cross-partisan, pro-housing bloc.

All these damn kids need to get off they dang phones and play some FOOTY.

I just got Albobucks slashed off my HECS debt so I only have 12 more years of payments to pay it off. 😍

FINALLY a significant parking reform in Australia! "Apartments in areas across the state considered to be serviced by high-frequency public transport will no longer have a minimum parking requirement." cc @parkingreform.org

I’ve seen a lot of articles recently about “discontent” with Labor’s under-ambition — whether from voters or backbenchers — but other than on gambling reform, I’ve seen no concrete evidence that Labor’s direction is anything less than wildly popular from both groups. Is this wishful thinking?

The One Gentleman’s Bar Tab (OGBT) is a flexible accounting quantum. It’s any sum that, if you had to pay yourself, you’d say ooof that’s a lot of money, but just doesn’t matter to any decently large organisation. Annika Wells’s problem is an OGBT problem. Four grand come on.

There’s a lot of things that are too niche or expensive for any one household to have but not so significant that you need a professional to do it for you and what I mean by that is I really wish one of my mates had somewhere I could detail my own car

Come hang out and watch me get angry at charts!

I just published a new working paper with Melbourne Law School's Electoral Regulation Research Network building on the work I've been doing on the appropriateness of Australian legislatures' sizes. Give it a read maybe??

I just published a new working paper with Melbourne Law School's Electoral Regulation Research Network building on the work I've been doing on the appropriateness of Australian legislatures' sizes. Give it a read maybe??

I ditched Spotify this year (please clap) so I don’t have a full Wrapped but I can guess it’s about the same as it’s been for the last five years 1. Miles Davis 2. John Coltrane 3. Talking Heads 4. The Presets 5. either Parquet Courts or Fela Kuti (you may clap a second time)

ABC Radio Brisbane is having a "debate" on immigration this afternoon. The panellists have been broadly supportive and having a nuanced debate but the interviewing direction is really pushing people to take anti-migration positions including a bafflingly hard line against New Zealand migration?!

While there’s obviously a problem with appointments processes, there’s a much bigger (and underdiscussed imo) problem with talent identification and recruitment. At their most benign, political appts are a network effect that introduces you to candidates outside the risk-averse board careerists.

And because of political choices that lock 78% of Brisbane’s walkable catchments and 40% of Brisbane’s inner city as single family Queenslanders, this growth is all going to places like Yarrabilba with no public transport or social infrastructure where people face hours long commutes every day.

Has anyone seen a graph of changes to income support payment rates over time controlling for indexation as the moving base (ie excluding indexation)? I'm sure someone would have produced this but I can't for the life of me find it.

My argument for more public holidays to be gazetted 👇 #auspol

The best part of mowing the lawn is the hour after when every bird in the neighbourhood swings by to check out the newly exposed bugs

As an organiser, I’ve been banging this drum for a decade now — but more and more the data backs my gut up. The AES and Macquarie post-election studies for both 2022 and 2025 have shown just how stark a cleavage housing tenure is.

The objective should be 100 million people in the capital cities, next question

Some absolutely STUNNING designs in the new NSW Mid Rise Pattern Book. The smaller designs can be built on lots as small as 13 metres wide, smaller than the average lot in Brisbane! There’s no reason why these shouldn’t be permitted by right everywhere in Brisbane too. (well except flood zones)

A new report out this week from Swinburne University and Housing for the Aged Action Group shows that older renters are falling through the cracks, stuck in poor-quality homes they can’t afford, and desperately need stronger protections. You can find the full report here: tinyurl.com/yeywsbth

Senator Thorpe criticises the government for ignoring these 100+ experts and groups to sneak the amendment through "without any scrutiny" "I'd be putting my head down in shame too, Minister"

I realised that most people wouldn’t remember Queensland Labor’s (unfunded, unactioned) 2012 Southbank extension proposal in the dying days before their wipeout at the hands of Can Do Campbell. A good plan that I supported and still support but never amounted to more than a fancy map and brochure.

Today in local development antics, West End's rallying against the sale of the Visy Glass recycling site under the banner of Save Southbank 2.0 (named for a loose plan to extend Southbank around Kurilpa peninsula that was never more concrete than vague aspirations twenty years ago).

Isn’t (workplace) democracy beautiful? Join your union and run in union elections.

The solutions follow-up is definitely more interesting. Nothing much new by way of solutions but at least it tracks some of historical reasons why previous attempts at federation reform failed (ulterior motives, political incentives, short windows of opportunity, irreconcilable material interests).

This makes the Victorian Liberal leader and deputy leader nearly 40 years younger than their average member.

In case you missed my latest last week 👇👇👇

It's also the most '90s Third Way-ish policy idea imaginable, which is why it is both bemusing and frustrating that so many leftists embrace it with such vigour. "Let's solve affordable housing with technocratic, market based incrementalism" really isn't all that progressive!

The SMH is doing a new long form policy series (good) on federation reform (great) but today’s first edition feels a little like an uncurated list of grievances political elites have litigated for decades. Tomorrow’s solutions article sounds promising but I struggled to find new insights in today’s.