"The Bondi Pavilion is your pavilion," Labor candidate John Wakefield intoned in a YouTube video two years ago. "We don't need any more high-class restaurants. We don't need any more commercial activity in Bondi."

Wakefield's complaints about the Sydney beach icon - backed by outraged celebrities and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union - won him control of the beachside suburb at the expense of Liberal councillors who had wanted to turn the smelly, leaking building into an attractive destination for visitors and residents.