The Sauce: MP asks court for mercy over triple parking hit
The Sauce: Wentworth MP Dave Sharma’s parking problems; why one beer-maker loves the federal Opposition Leader; and what journalist Annika Smethurst asked AFP officers as they raided her home.
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Wentworth MP Dave Sharma knows how to navigate the public service — so successfully that he has held government positions such as the ambassador to Israel.
So it’s a mystery why the doctor turned politician couldn’t figure out how to get a temporary parking permit from Sydney City Council to avoid getting fined for parking outside his eastern suburbs house.
Sauce correspondent Brenden Hills tells us Sharma turned up to the Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday to plead for leniency over three parking tickets rangers stuck on his car and scooter out the front of his Paddington home.
Rangers gave him two tickets on January 24 and another on February 2 for exceeding the one-hour time limit. Sharma admitted to the three tickets but appeared in court to offer an explanation.
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In a letter tendered to the court, he said he and wife Rachel Lord applied the day they moved into the house on January 20 for parking permit stickers that allow them unlimited parking.
“These permits were granted on 22 January, though were not physically received and hence able to be displayed on our vehicles until 3 February,” he wrote.
In that time, they received three fines totalling hundreds of dollars.
Magistrate Megan Greenwood dealt with the politician under section 10A, meaning he was convicted of the parking offences, which is not a criminal conviction. He received no other penalty and did not have to pay the fines.
We called Sydney of City Council, who told us Mr Sharma had a number of options to get a temporary parking permit, which included walking into the council and showing them his new land title or changing his address with RMS ahead of time and showing them that.
A spokesman for Mr Sharma said it was an “oversight on his behalf and he was thrilled with the result”. Fair enough.
ALBO’S OFF TAP
Anthony Albanese’s rise to Labor leader has been good for beer sales — in particular, Albo Corn Ale.
Pat McInerney, one of the founding members of craft brewers Willie the Boatman, said sales increased by more than 100 per cent in the days after the federal election.
Six local pubs even contacted the brewery on the day Albo took over the Labor leadership, to request more kegs and cans to sell.
“Albo has been a great local member so I said ‘we have to name a beer after him’.
“Since he has become opposition leader sales have gone up. It’s going to go crazy if he becomes PM,” McInerney said.
COPS PHONE IT IN
As police raided the home of The Sauce’s own Annika Smethurst this week, officers faced a few questions about consistency.
Smethurst was interested to know whether the force was as thorough when looking into alleged hacks against Cabinet ministers.
In December 2017, Health Minister Greg Hunt asked the AFP to investigate a hack of his Twitter account after it “liked” a hardcore porn video.
The attack on Hunt came just months after former defence minister Christopher Pyne’s account also liked a gay porn video.
Officers were tight-lipped as Smethurst fired a few questions of her own about whether they would also examine the phones of Hunt and Pyne.
We don’t expect it to happen any time soon.
Got some Sauce? Contact:
linda.silmalis@news.com.au
miranda.wood@news.com.au or
annika.smethurst@news.com.au