“The NSW Government will get its first openly gay female MP this week,” The Daily Telegraph shouts excitedly today.

Penny Sharpe, a 34-year-old mother-of-two, will fill a vacant seat in the Upper House on Friday.

The Marrickville councillor has never kept her sexuality a secret and is in a long-term relationship.

She
said: “Yes I am gay. Yes I have two children. Beyond that I don’t see
it as being an issue.” She said how her children, aged six and 13
months, were conceived was no one’s business.

“Beyond saying that I have been in a relationship for 12 years and I have two children, I am not saying anything,” she said.

“No other parliamentarians are asked about their families and how their children are conceived and I don’t see why I have to…”

Ms Sharpe said that it was only right in these days of homosexual rights that a lesbian was a member of Parliament…

Yawn. There’s actually very, very little that’s at all new
about Ms Sharpe and her appointment. She’s already a councillor. And
down towards the end of the Tele‘s yarn is this line: “Ms Sharpe’s partner is Jo Tilly, a former member of Upper House President Meredith Burgmann’s staff.”

In
other words, Sharpe is one of the family. A hack. Just the sort of
person the parties always park in the Legislative Council. Plus ca
change.