Well, this should be fun. It wasn’t that long ago disgraced media entrepreneur Antony Catalano’s $28.7 million plans to build a mega-mansion in the exclusive Byron enclave of Wategos Beach proved so controversial he ended up in a scuffle with a local jeweller.
And that was before Catalano got the conditional green light to proceed with the controversial two-home rainforest compound on appeal, after his development application was initially knocked back by Byron Shire Council in late 2024.
So if only the prospect of the development was enough to get Byron jeweller Giovanni D’Ercole all worked up, as The Australian Financial Review reported last March, we can’t imagine how he must be feeling now. (We weren’t able to reach him on Monday.)
Earlier this month, the NSW Land & Environment Court upheld Catalano’s appeal of Byron Shire Council’s initial decision to knock back the proposed development following conciliation talks between Catalano and the council, allowing him to go ahead with his proposal if additional conditions are met.
In its initial refusal, Byron Shire Council rattled off a string of issues. There was council’s concerns over the development’s failure to protect “environmental assets” and insufficient steps to protect nearby rainforest.
Also of concern were the impacts on native vegetation and, crucially, the “bulk, scale and size” of the development and its impacts on the “surrounding coastal and built environment”.
That built environment would presumably include Catalano’s neighbour, D’Ercole, who reportedly owns the adjoining block. How much we’d love to be perched nearby to witness their next interaction. After all, it may not be that long before they run into each other in the flesh.
Just days before the Land & Environment Court made its decision on the development, this masthead reported that Catalano had been granted varied bail, allowing him to travel to see his wife, Stefanie Catalano, in Byron Bay, despite facing charges he assaulted and threatened to kill her.
Bill’s World
It’s been about 18 months since Bill Shorten walked away from politics to take up his new role as vice chancellor and president of the University of Canberra. And, in that short time, it would seem the former Labor leader hasn’t met anybody he doesn’t fancy as an adjunct professor.
The recruitment drive has been rapid. Since Shorten arrived at UC, he’s overseen the recruitment of all manner of former ministers and public servants to deepen the university’s bench on politics and government. The latest hire is Dr Simon Jackman to lead UC’s School of Government from July.
Among the new recruits are former Labor MPs Linda Burney and Warren Snowdon, and Scott Morrison’s former home affairs minister Karen Andrews, as well as Rachel Noble, the former director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate, and former Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner Mike Phelan.
Also recruited are former Liberal MP Michael Sukkar, and his former Liberal colleague Julia Banks, who we’d imagine have sage advice for students on the politics of irrelevance. Joel Fitzgibbon, the one-time defence minister turned lobbyist, has also been tapped in a move sure to deliver practical advice on how to, er, parlay a decades-long stint in public office into a lucrative lobbying career.
Then, for a bit of balance, there’s Ben Oquist, former executive director of the left-wing think tank the Australia Institute, and recovering Daniel Andrews head-kicker turned TikTok shill Sabina Husic.
KPMG’s hallucinations
To say that KPMG has a lot on its plate would be an understatement. If its ongoing whistleblower scandal wasn’t bad enough, the big four firm has since been forced to reckon with the fallout from the release of a 2025 report on the adoption of AI by businesses across the world, which was littered with AI hallucinations.
The errors were flagged in analysis released by the AI research firm GPTZero this week, and included dubious claims and inaccurate citations related to the way a number of the world’s biggest firms are using AI, including the Swiss investment bank UBS, and our very own Bunnings.
The mangled Bunnings citation, according to GPTZero, got wrong the date and title of the text used to support claims made in the report. But on balance, the clanger wasn’t among the worst errors in the research, which also included false claims about the UK’s NHS and Transport for London.
When we contacted KPMG Australia with questions about whether the firm has had any feedback from Bunnings, which has since been removed from the company’s websites, a spokeswoman said they were reviewing the report’s publication.
“KPMG International takes the accuracy and integrity of its published content seriously,” KPMG said in a statement. “The report has been removed and we are reviewing the circumstances surrounding its publication. We expect all our people to follow our guidelines on the responsible use of AI, including human oversight to validate content and verify independent sources.”
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John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
