Ex-senator swaps Canberra for cold ones at a country pub
Hollie Hughes, who recently made her last Senate speech after losing Liberal preselection earlier this year, has shifted direction with the purchase of the Hotel Alexander in Rydal.
The former New South Wales senator bought the pub with husband Richard Gordon. Settlement is due next week.
The Alexander is classic country-pub fare: sausage rolls for $5, plus mid-week specials where schooners run $6 on “Reckless Wednesdays” and “Thirsty Thursdays”.
Cost-of-living crisis or not, that’s a crowd-pleaser.
No grand makeover plans have been flagged yet, and there’s no word on whether Hughes has designs on a political comeback — federal, state or otherwise. For now, the front bar could double as a handy backdrop for her semi-regular Sky News appearances.
If nothing else, a stint running a regional local is a masterclass in voter sentiment. A few years pulling beers and swapping yarns with the regulars might teach more about the national mood than any focus group ever could.
That said, as Enoch Powell once put it: “All political lives, unless they are cut off midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that’s the nature of politics and human nature”.
Jonathan Jackson, 14th October 2025
