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In June, Sydney power couple Paul Christie and his wife Nicola Mace made headlines after they settled a deal to snatch a six-bedroom compound in Bellevue Hill for a cool $41 million.
It looks like the pair have wasted no time making it their own. Just this week, the couple submitted a development application with Woollahra Council looking for a $12 million renovation.
The compound already has a “grand circular drive”, according to the sale listing, and a refurbished garage for up to 16 cars. Then there’s a tennis court, a mosaic-tiled waterfall pool and manicured gardens. That’s all before factoring in the property’s 270-degree views across Sydney Harbour.
The development application’s supporting documentation has yet to be made available via the Woollahra Council website. But the application listing summarises the proposed work as the “demolition of existing building demolition”, “new dwelling house demolition” and the “construction of a new dwelling”. The estimated cost of the works, according to council, is $12,094,078.
Christie is a former investment banker who worked stints at RBS in London, before taking jobs at Merrill Lynch and Nomura in Sydney. In 2015, the New Zealander founded the Delnorth Group, a roadside safety supply company which was acquired by infrastructure supply company Jaybro in 2021. Christie sits on the Jaybro board.
Mace, meanwhile, spent the early 2000s working in consulting at EY and Deloitte, before going on to found the Sydney-based offshoring consulting business optiBPO in 2014. The firm was sold to Australian cloud-based workforce firm Cloudstaff in early 2023.
We tried reaching Christie and Mace via the project management firm they’ve brought in to oversee the renovations, and were asked not to write about the matter, before being told the couple was seeking legal advice to respond to us. We look forward to seeing the renders.
From Rosny to State Council
Card-carrying members of the NSW Liberal Party would surely rank the creation of the Independent Commission Against Corruption as one of the worst things the party has ever done to itself.
The thought would surely have crossed the minds of some party supporters when invitations went out on Tuesday to the party’s State Council meeting on September 19, by which point we’d be curious to see who the ICAC leaves standing.
The Liberal Party earlier in the week invited members and donors to observe the State Council meeting in the grand ballroom of the Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park.
Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane used her appearance at last year’s meeting to rally the troops before the 2027 state election, acknowledging the task ahead was “huge”.
After the blockbuster scenes we’ve seen at the ICAC’s Operation Rosny inquiry this week, we couldn’t agree more. In fact, much of what Sloane said late last year has taken on a new meaning.
“We have a monumental task ahead of us in the next 15 months, and we will need every one of you by our side. This year has been challenging – one of the hardest,” Sloane said back in November. We bet.
Hanson’s little orange book
Early morning commuters in Melbourne found themselves on the receiving end of some “wisdom” from Pauline Hanson on Wednesday, when a little orange book of the One Nation leader’s missives was handed out at train stations around the city.
But it turns out the book was not a product of One Nation. Rather, the book was the novel idea of the Victorian Trades Hall Council to remind voters of Hanson’s war on workers.
The book, titled Quotations from Pauline Hanson, was an orange rendition of Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book.
The Little Book of Hanson offered up some of the senator’s greatest hits: “A lot of workers are no-hopers”; “Right across the board, get rid of penalty rates and I’d also say get rid of the 17 per cent leave loading”; “You can’t sack people these days. They’re on their phones, they don’t work, they don’t turn up, they actually are lazy”; and “Why wouldn’t I listen to Gina Rinehart?”
Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari explained the book was rolled out to try and cut through Hanson’s spin.
“We should believe her when she says she wants to cut penalty rates, make the minimum wage even lower, and end paid parental leave,” Hilakari said.
One Nation predictably dismissed the stunt as a sign Labour was spooked.
“You can tell they’re worried when they try on these tactics,” a spokesperson told CBD. “It’s easy to take comments out of context and put them into a little booklet. I’m very happy to return serve and publish a ream-size booklet of lies told by the Labor federal and state government.”
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John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
Fiona Byrne is the CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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