Labor MP Josh Burns’ sudden romantic reversal

ALP MP Josh Burns has moved on quickly to start dating Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell, and the only reason that’s interesting is because Burns is Jewish, a Zionist, and Purcell’s an out-and-out pro-Palestinian activist.

Romance gone bad makes for toe-curling and deliciously more-ish reading. You know it, we know it, and boy does Kidspot know it.

Margin Call’s pregnancy-and-parenting stablemate published a classic of the genre last month, an anonymous cri de coeur under the byline of ‘‘A Sydney Mum’’.

ASM’s story charts a familiar track. A crowded kindergarten pick-up. A single dad she calls ‘‘Joe’’. Both were separated from their partners and soon enough were going steady.

“Joe was very upfront about wanting to have another baby with me,” she wrote. “We spoke and planned the merging of our families.

“Just two nights prior we had gone out and talked about our plans for the future. He told me that he’d never been happier and that I was everything that he’d been wanting in a partner.” He eventually met her children but first they’d spoken on the phone, “my kids getting familiar with his voice”.

But then came Joe’s sudden freakout, the ghosting, the caprice with which the relationship came to a startling conclusion.

Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell, right.

ASM was devastated, of course. When it happened, it happened over the phone. “I was upset he’d led me on, but I was furious he’d led my kids on.”

Readers were agog. Who was this caddish daddy?

Margin Call has it on impeccable authority that Joe is actually federal Labor MP Josh Burns. And let’s be clear: the guy’s single, perhaps a thrillseeking missile, but he’s not accused of anything criminal – just dumping a woman and allegedly disappointing her kids.

When the call came through, ASM writes that Burns “muttered something along the lines of ‘I think I need some time on my own’.”

Not too much time, as it turns out.

Burns moved on quickly to start dating Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell, and the only reason that’s interesting is because Burns is Jewish, a Zionist, and Purcell’s an out-and-out pro-Palestinian activist. Call that an unlikely union but, if nothing else, maybe there’s hope for peace in the Middle East after all.

Back at Kidspot, ASM posits her story as a cautionary tale for single parents trying their hand at middle-aged dating.

“As a parent we set the key example for how we treat people and how we let people treat us.”

And we put this to Burns on Thursday but he didn’t respond by our deadline.

Israeli supporters

A hefty turnout of Victorian Labor MPs for the 76th anniversary of Israel’s independence, held on Wednesday night at Melbourne’s Windsor Hotel. Always eager to placate the other side, the government announced funding of $125,000 to Palestine Australia Relief and Action that day. Call it the price of attending the event.

Much talk that Premier Jacinta Allan wouldn’t turn up but appears she did, some in the crowd trying to weigh her support next to the ever-staunch Dan Andrews, who was there too, of course, as was Deputy Premier Ben Carroll, Senator Simon Birmingham, David Southwick, Georgie Crozier and Paul Hamer who rounded out the political contingent (unless we also include former minister, now strategist Philip Dalidakis). At the head table with Allan was Jeremy Leibler, President of the Zionist Federation of Australia and a partner at Arnold Bloch Leibler. Also noted were a few justices in the form of the Federal Court’s Andrew Strum, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Ian Waller and former justice Michael Sifris (also of the Supreme Court). Singer Deborah Conway came too, fresh from her troubles in Tasmania, and mercifully no stinking protesters outside; they obviously missed the memo. Still, Opposition Leader John Pesutto told the crowd that if he had the power (“which I don’t”), then he would direct police to reach into their trick bag for move-on orders, if only to “shut down protests”.

Housing solution

Laura Tingle has had plenty to say about Australia’s housing crisis (among other remarks about the state of the country), and maybe we’re starting to understand why.

Tingle tried to sell a holiday house mid-last year that she owns in Tuross Head, about a two and a half-hour drive from Canberra. The pile was on the market for about $1.5m but failed to find a buyer. Now, servicing a mortgage with ME Bank (owned by Bank of Queensland) Tingle is renting it for up to $2000-a-week. It’s a holiday let only, though, so we can’t call it Tingle’s personal contribution to solving the affordability crisis.