Josh Frydenberg has been talking with me of late about our idea of creating a women’s only house. Much earlier in the year he inquired of the St John’s, Camberwell folk in regards to the potential use of their Old Vicarage for community housing purposes – like us he received a big, fat ‘not interested’ as the answer!

Josh called me late last week to ask if Servants would be happy for him to try to get some money to Servants for purposes of setting up some women’s only housing – a pre-election promise kind of arrangement. We talked it through a bit, I wrote his office a simple letter requesting some financial help to assist us in getting this project off the ground …………. and much to my surprise he phoned me today saying he had been approved to get $300,000 to Servants for this purpose ……… and he would like to have a media opportunity at Romana next Tuesday to announce this news alongside Julie Bishop – apparently she holds a fairly significant position, but I don’t know a lot about these things.

I confess to feeling more than a little out of my depth on this issue of politicians and $$$$. Warren and I have been talking through the scenario of receiving said money from Josh and we believe it to be an appropriate course of action.

I appreciate that there will be many questions that will require answering at committee level.

In the meantime Josh has asked that Servants keeps this info to ourselves for the time-being, and I think we should honor this request.