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Kylea Tink in kitchen reno ‘climate crime’
Myriam RobinColumnistEarlier this month, PR executive turned independent federal member for North Sydney Kylea Tink sold her residential property, at double the price she paid a decade ago.
Her six-bedroom house at Northbridge changed hands for $6.35 million the weekend before last. The listing noted it generated 10 kilowatts of solar power, which is entirely appropriate for a rider of Sydney’s teal wave.
Other parts of the property, however, are more incongruous.
Zoe Daniel, who didn’t want to kick off a GST debate, with Kylea Tink, who cooked with gas. Alex Ellinghausen
There’s the recently renovated kitchen, complete with gas stove. The heating, with a picturesque gas fireplace. Even the pool, one would-be buyer was told, is gas-heated!
This from a woman who blasted NSW Premier Chris Minns′ recent decision to not ban gas connections for new builds.
If, according to Tink, the NSW premier’s unwillingness to add green tape to every new build in the middle of a housing crisis is a “climate crime”, what does Tink call it when wealthy home owners in long-established suburbs renovate their kitchen and install a gas cooktop over induction?!
Ahead of the federal budget, Tink urged for federal assistance to households electrifying their homes and vehicles, lamenting the “significant decisions and upfront financial outlays” facing households considering “replacing gas appliances with efficient electric ones”. We didn’t realise the struggle was quite so close to home.
Meanwhile, fellow teal Zoe Daniel is finding out how shifting circumstances make mincemeat of the best intentions.
The former ABC foreign correspondent was elected to Goldstein after telling The Age in May last year she had no plans to “kick off” a debate about the GST or the stage three income tax cuts, urging only for a sweeping, “good faith review” of the tax system.
So much for that.
In April, she called on the Albanese government to scale back or abolish the stage three tax cuts, citing a survey of her constituents. And on Sunday, she was one of six teal MPs (including the aforementioned Tink) to urge a broadening of the GST.
In making their comments, it appears the six teal MPs hope to start a debate on much-needed tax reform. This would be fair enough, were it not for Daniel’s explicit commitment to do no such thing made days before the last election.
Daniel’s base politicking doesn’t undermine her broad commitment, made at the same time, to be fiscally conservative. Promises about tax cuts or the GST must have been, ahem, non-core.
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