Woollahra mayor said ‘I don’t own a house’ … but she does own three units
It looked like Woollahra’s Liberal mayor Sarah Dixson had pulled off the ultimate “gotcha moment” when, amid an extraordinary general meeting last week, she outed Sydney YIMBY chair Justin Simon as someone who “certainly could afford to” buy in the eastern suburbs.
It was an uncalled-for allegation – no offence to the good folk of the east. Such a claim would no doubt be welcome news to plenty of Sydneysiders, but given the heated recent debate was over plans to add 9400 homes in the area, the mayor’s interjection turned the YIMBY versus NIMBY policy arguments into something far more personal.
Dixson went all Title Deeds on Simon ahead of the council meeting by looking up the cost of his Summer Hill home and sharing the details with everyone.
The revelation clearly delighted Jon Adgemis’s former chief financial officer-turned-councillor Alexander Andruska, who was seen on camera falling about in laughter.
Simon responded by asking Dixson where she lived and how much her home was worth.
“I don’t own a house,” said Dixson, who with her mother, Judy Swan, runs Swan Lawyers out of the family’s Bellevue Hill home and has clients such as Melissa Caddick’s husband Anthony Koletti.
To be clear, Dixson does not own a house .… but she does, in fact, own three apartments.
There’s the one-bedder in Centennial Park, picked up for $710,000 in 2020; and a two-bedder in Darlinghurst for $725,000 in 2023; and as of last month, a two-bedder in Darling Point purchased for $1.1 million with her husband, former Coalition staffer Andrew Dixson.
“The properties are small apartments in older blocks and all heavily mortgaged,” Dixson said when contacted by CBD. “I’ve worked hard to buy them and will keep working hard to pay them off.
“More importantly, I’ll keep working to show how the government’s rezoning plans will see genuinely affordable units bulldozed to make way for $5 million apartments very few people will be able to buy or rent. It’s a sham and no one is buying it.”
With a portfolio like hers, if Dixson gets too miffed about possible high rise in her ’hood, she can always sell up and move to Summer Hill.
Jemima Khan’s Aussie marriage
It was arguably the society wedding of the year – and we almost missed it. Belated congratulations to filmmaker Jemima Goldsmith and Irish-Australian media scion Cameron O’Reilly, who tied the knot a few weeks ago.
The scoop was left to the Goldsmith family, with a post on Instagram from the bride herself a couple of days after the intimate ceremony with all the must-know details.
The bride wore Oscar de la Renta, Goldsmith’s stepdaughter Tyrian White was maid of honour, and walking her down the aisle were her sons, Sulaiman and Kasim Khan, whom she shares with former husband, cricketer and former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan.
Khan was jailed three years ago on corruption charges his party say were politically motivated, and his sons have been lobbying for his release since.
O’Reilly, son of the late Irish media baron Tony O’Reilly, was best known among the Sydney press pack for running APN News and Media in the late 1990s and now calls the Swiss alpine resort of Verbier home.
Barrister AI goes awry
Point Piper’s beleaguered party hostess Di Maloney has scored a win-win in the Federal Court care of Justice Nye Perram. First, he set aside a bankruptcy notice over a $121,000 legal bill and then he offered a free bit of cautionary legal advice.
Maloney is no stranger to the law. She claims to be a lawyer, although she is not registered, and isn’t afraid of resorting to legal proceedings when she thinks she’s been overcharged.
So it is that as liquidators crack on with the business of selling her most lucrative investments – the Plaza Hotel in the CBD and her Tamarama party house – in pursuit of $100 million in debts, Maloney has been disputing the legal bill from one of her most recent lawyers.
The bankruptcy notice was set aside by Perram after the District Court dismissed the judgment debt, adding a note to his decision to warn of the hazards of using artificial intelligence after documents to the court were prepared with a tool called Barrister AI.
Among the many errors listed was the wrong judge’s name credited with a judgment; passages and legislation that were quoted and then left out; judgments, footnotes, page and paragraph numbering was incorrect; and the reasons in another judgment were reduced to headings. In other words, AI slop.
“While AI can be a useful tool and the creation of documents such as bundles of authorities may well be an appropriate use of AI for court purposes, practitioners should take care to ensure the content produced is accurate,” Perram noted.
Both sides of the dispute have denied they were the AI user.
The judgment was just in time for Maloney’s latest celebration at her Point Piper home on Saturday, starring her DJ son Ryan Maloney and hundreds of 20-somethings.
Alas, the storm that swept through Sydney at dusk did no favours to the extravagant staging on the tennis court, but Maloney assures us it was a temporary delay and didn’t stop the party. The doof-doof of the DJ was cranked up soon after the storm blew over.
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