The former Premier of NSW
Bob Carr once described him as "
the Rumpole of the Lower Traffic Court"- colourful barrister
Malcolm Duncan has passed away suddenly at the age of 54.
Duncan was a regular sight around Kings Cross and Potts Point where he was born and lived his entire life.
Taking on what some said were lost causes, he regularly tackled in the city courts issues that he saw as 'attacks on democracy' . One of his regular targets was the Sydney Lord Mayor
Clover Moore who Duncan told
the Shuttle was"
out to turn Sydney into a bureaucratic nightmare where one will have to file a form in triplicate to the appropriate council office just to cross the road"
Duncan, a conservative was an adamant opponent of the Kings Cross Medically Supervised Injecting Room but despite this he attended the launch of a book about the centre by it's director
Ingrid van Beek.
Earlier in the week he had unsuccessfully attempted to obtain an injunction to prevent it's publication. The book described him in less than flattering terms during the very public political battles to keep the injecting room open. Malcolm was particularly miffed at being described as 'florrid' in the tome. but he couldn't keep away from the party and on spotting Clover Moore there he said "
does she have the appropriate planning permission to be here !"
Despite his professed conservatism Duncan moved in many circles, supported the new nightclubs and discos springing up in the Cross with their extended drinking hours, successfully railed against Town Hall plans to redesign Fitzroy Gardens and wrote a blog on the left wing writer
Margot Kingston's
Webdiary where he described former PM
John Howard's 11 year term as
The Howard Drears and filed amusing chapters on his two books-The Great Australian Novel and The Chronicles of Nadir.
Duncan will be sorely missed-certainly by his political opponents who begrudgingly put up with Duncan's regular measuring of their campaign posters. Perched perilously atop a ladder in the busy Kings Cross streets during elections with a tape measure Malcolm would check the posters adhered to the rules and more often than not, would place his own above theirs at the same time.
Malcolm stood as an independent at almost every state and Federal election usually getting around 500 votes. He'll miss the appointment he had early next month with the private eye
Frank Monte to give him some of his election tips for the March 2011 state election and next week the political rally he was staging in Kings Cross against the ruling Labor Party.
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| Oliver and Roxy |
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| Anthony & Terry |
They were both at the recent
Hermes beach party and they have just announced their engagements. Shoe designer
Terry Biviano has told the world she and her current beau the Sydney Swan's footballer
Anthony Minichiello will be getting hitched . Terry is also due to join the cast of the new Foxtel reality TV show
WAG Nation which will follow the daily lives and adventures of sportsmen's wives and girlfriends.
And the effervescent boss of top PR firm
Sweaty Betty Roxy Jacenko was sporting a sparkler on her hand that our diamond adviser says "
looks like 5 carats to me!" when she arrived at the bash with her fiancee stockbroker
Oliver Curtis. Perhaps these two should get their honeymoon in early. The
Shuttle's legal mole says Curtis may soon be called to appear before some sort of official body over the affairs of his friend
John Hartman who was jailed recently after being found guilty of insider trading.
