'I’ve made peace with bowing to authority'

Until a couple of weeks ago, very few people had heard of NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson. 

Sadly for Jackson, that is no longer true. Following a disastrous November 11 interview with Hamish Macdonald on ABC Radio Sydney, in which she said that "a couple of hundred bucks" was a reasonable rate at which to rent a two-bedroom flat in Sydney, Jackson has become a figure of derision online.

Jackson’s response has not helped. Rather than issue a stock-standard apology and go to ground, Jackson has been posting through it, claiming she didn’t say what she said (she did; you can hear the original exchange with Macdonald in full here, starting at 6:20), leaving lengthy comments on posts criticising her, and recording videos about how “it's important that we're just all a bit kind to each other”.

As a young woman in NSW Labor’s historically old, white, male caucus, she’s occasionally made headlines for things like supporting marijuana decriminalisation, campaigning against private prisons, describing her own party as "too white, sexist [and] homophobic” and reading the phrase "sashay away" into Hansard.

But this isn't the first time Jackson's self-styled progressive image has clashed with her record. As Shadow Housing and Homelessness Minister, Jackson voted against temporarily banning the eviction of tenants across the 2021-22 holiday season during the COVID crisis. In 2022, Jackson championed the Minns Government's laws bringing in harsher sentences for protests.

During debate on that bill, Jackson described the climate activists who blockaded the Spit Bridge as “rogue individuals who are going out there and doing things that are so unbelievably destructive not only to our society generally, obviously, and our economic productivity, but also to the causes that we believe in”.

That attitude was on display again on Sunday, when the Daily Telegraph published a long and excruciating puff piece with Jackson as part of its 'High Steaks' series, where Sunday Telegraph reporters take their interview subjects out for steak (I know).