In this edition we report Liberal MP Simon Kennedy's failure to declare where he lives and Labor MP Claire Clutterham's rapid rise up the property ladder.

Plus we examine the late disclosures of senators Richard Colbeck and Sean Bell, why Eddie Obeid always paid his printer on time, and bring you highlights from Bob Carr's book launch.  

If you've got a tip, send us a message on Signal.  

Simon won’t say where he lives

Scomo 2.0 

We are seeing a trend of MPs no longer disclosing to the interest register the suburb where they own properties, despite a requirement that the location of any real estate be declared.

The latest instance comes from Scott Morrison’s replacement in Cook, Simon Kennedy, who recently declared the purchase of a residence in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire without revealing which of the shire’s 42 suburbs his pile is in.

The disclosure of a property's location is important for assessing an MP's financial position because it provides a much clearer picture of a property's value than a declaration of a property’s local government area.

The Shire, as locals like to call it, is a big metro LGA - 370 square kilometres - with wide disparities in real estate prices. At the top end are the suburbs of Cronulla and Burraneer, where waterfront homes can go for over $20 million, and away from the water are more affordable neighbourhoods like Engadine, close to the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, where the highest sales are just over $2 million.

Hence Kennedy's disclosure is largely meaningless. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is another MP who makes minimalist real estate disclosures. In 2024 he declared he’d bought an investment property with Jodie on the Central Coast north of Sydney. The Central Coast LGA is 1,681 square kilometres and has around 153 suburbs and localities, ranging from wealthy beachside suburbs through to ones with severe socioeconomic disadvantage.

Thankfully the media dug into land title records to reveal the happy couple had purchased a $4.3 million clifftop home in Copacabana, one of the Central Coast's most expensive suburbs. 

Why Obeid always paid his printer

Obeid about to eat porridge. Mug shot supplied. 

Former NSW Labor minister Eddie Obeid is not just the most corrupt politician in Australian history but by all accounts a truly awful person to do business with - he and his family left a trail of unpaid suppliers and creditors over the years. The Obeids even tried to stiff the lawyers who defended them in a civil litigation case. 

So we were surprised to hear there was one supplier Obeid always paid on time: Marrickville Print and Design, an offset printer which printed his Arabic language newspaper El Telegraph in the early 2000s.

This was not a come to Jesus moment for the Maronite Christian. Hell no. Al Sutton, a former employee of the now defunct printer, tells Open Politics that in the printing game publishers had to play nice to ensure the printing presses kept rolling. If Obeid hadn’t paid his bills there would've been no next edition of El Telegraph. Obeid’s company Media Press, the publisher of El Telegraph, used to printed the paper in house but a string of suspicious fires at the company’s Marrickville premises appear to have weakened its production capacity.

Sutton added that Marrickville Print and Design was owned by Trotskyist political party the Socialist Labour League, known these days as the Socialist Equality Party (SEP). He chuckled at the thought that Obeid’s prompt payments helped fund the Trot's mission of a world socialist revolution. 

Open Politics tried to seek comment from Obeid but we had no idea how to reach him. Anyway, he's probably tied up with his lawyers preparing for his latest trial for misconduct in public office. Hopefully the lawyers insisted on payment up front.

In brief

Three houses and no mortgages!

Claire Clutterham, Labor Member for Sturt in South Australia, declared this month that she's bought a residential property in Barton, Canberra. For every night she stays there on parliamentary business she'll get a travel allowance of $322. This is Clutterham's second house purchase since becoming an MP at the last election - she bought an investment property in Millswood, Adelaide in November 2025. She also owns an investment property in Grange, Adelaide. None of her properties have a mortgage. 

Parliament's racist in residence 

Senator Pauline Hanson was busted this month by The Guardian for not declaring three free flights with Gina Rinehart Airlines in August and December 2025. And in February the snoops at The Grauniad caught Hanson out for not declaring two flights on Gina's jet in October. 

Meanwhile Hanson used her recent declaration of a Daruma doll gift from an Australian businessman based in Japan to describe the country's new hard right prime minister Sanae Takaichi as "equally courageous". Does Pauline see herself as courageous?

Tasmanian Liberal Senator Richard Colbeck failed to declare a free ticket to the Ashes Boxing Day Test from Cricket Australia within the required 35 days. The hospitality was not declared till 19 March, nearly seven weeks past the deadline. 

Nowhere Man Simon Kennedy failed to declare complimentary tickets to the Australian Open from Tennis Australia within 28 days. The tickets were not declared until on 19 March. 

One Nation's Queensland-based Senator for NSW Sean Bell went on one of Hanson's Rinehart flights in December but didn't declare the freebie until March 2026, more than two months after the 35 day deadline.  

Assistant minister Patrick Gorman declared that his wife Jessica Bukowski received tickets to a West Coast Fever netball game from Andrew Forrest's mining company Fortescue. Gorman noted in his declaration that his wife was provided with the tickets in her "professional capacity" as head of the WA branch of the McKell Institute, a Labor-friendly think tank.

Last month Gorman declared his wife accepted two tickets to the 2026 AFL State of Origin from Labor-linked lobbying firm Anacta Strategies. He attended as a guest. 

The skinny on Bob Carr’s book launch

Open Politics snuck into the recent launch at the NSW Parliament’s theatrette of Bob Carr’s latest book, Bring Back Yesterday, a beautiful memoir about his love for his late wife Helena, who died suddenly in 2023 from a brain aneurysm while they were on holidays in Vienna.

The former NSW premier and foreign affairs minister writes that Helena was his ‘co-conspirator’ and wonders whether he's 'cracked' without her. He describes taking long walks through the streets of Sydney and crying as he went. Going to cafes and the movies by himself, having to learn how to cook, how to use a washing machine, and pay bills. Helena and Bob were clearly everything to each other.

NSW Premier Chris Minns gave a good intro speech (if only he could govern that way) and the Member for Cessnock Clayton Barr did a fine job emceeing.

We spotted several NSW Right warhorses at the launch - former NSW premier Barrie 'Cardigan' Unsworth, ex-NSW and federal minister Laurie 'Botany Affair' Brereton, and one time House speaker Leaping Leo McLeay.

Seated in the second row was former NSW general secretary and political mastermind John Della Bosca with his not-better half Belinda ‘Don't you know who I am?’ Neal. (Everyone certainly knew who she was after the Iguana bar incident.)

We also saw Paul Keating’s ex Anita Keating and Amanda Richardson, the widow of crooked ex-federal minister Graham Richardson.

We spied a couple of big names from the Left: former NSW and federal minister Linda Burney and ex-defence minister John Faulkner, who was heard muttering about Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran.

No sightings of the Left’s most senior member, former Carr staffer Anthony Albanese. Whatever relationship the two once had is no more. Carr touches on their differences in the memoir, writing that a polemic he penned on the AUKUS deal in 2023 “may put a line through any relationship with the Albanese government. I had little anyway.”