By Kishor Napier-Raman and Stephen Brook
Women’s media mogul Mia Freedman is quite the striver.
Last year, she was played by Asher Keddie in Strife, a small screen adaptation of her memoir Work, Strife, Balance that aired on Foxtel-owned streamer Binge.
To a couple of cynics like us, nothing screams “strife” quite like a $12.75 million mansion in Point Piper, where Freedman happens to live with her husband, Jason Lavigne.
Media entrepreneur Mia Freedman and her husband, Jason Lavigne, are planning to renovate their $12.75 million house in Point Piper. Credit:
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing for the Mamamia founder. Freedman and Lavigne bought the Point Piper abode only after getting evicted from their $12 million Bellevue Hill trophy home, Fintry. The couple had moved into the home five years earlier, with an option to buy the property, but settlement negotiations fell apart, leading to a dispute before the NSW Supreme Court that ruled against the Lavigne-Freedmans.
Fintry was subsequently bought for $16 million by management consultant Andrew Charlton, who soon decided he was actually a westie, and traded the sweeping harbour views for Parramatta, where Labor parachuted him in as the party’s new MP.
Freedman and Lavigne meanwhile suffered another setback recently. Their plans for a $3.9 million renovation of the Point Piper home were rejected by Woollahra Council. But strivers never quit, and last week, the pair lodged another $3.9 million development application to demolish and rebuild the property.
If at first you don’t succeed, strive, strive again.
Freedman was contacted for comment.
Room with a view
The three-bedroom brick house at 74 National Circuit, Deakin, in Canberra, is not one of Australia’s most famous addresses.
But it does happen to be right opposite one.
The closest house to The Lodge is now up for sale.Credit:
The closest residential home to the prime minister’s official residence of The Lodge in Canberra is up for auction.
“You can’t get any closer. The corner of the block is directly opposite the rear gate,” says retired anaesthetist Arne Schimmelfeder, who has owned the home since 2011 and has lived in the neighbourhood since 1999. He has occasionally encountered our elected leaders and observed their differing styles as the rear entrance to The Lodge is across the road from his front garden.
“John Howard used to get up very early to do his little walk. Before 6am,” Schimmelfeder told CBD.
“I didn’t see a lot of him.”
US President George Bush’s visit in 2003, and his successor Barack Obama’s 2011 trip, had the biggest impact in the neighbourhood.
“They blocked off the whole area. When Obama came, there was even more security,” Schimmelfeder said.
“They airfreight the security cars in. For Bush, there was about six or eight; for Obama, about a dozen.”
Agent Peter Walker of Ray White said the guide price for the 1948 house was above $3.5 million.
“I think it is important to point out that it’s not heritage listed, so it’s a blank canvas for people if they want to build their own home,” Walker said.
Never one to miss a trick, the real estate agent has stuck a slogan on his sign: “If you buy this home, you can’t get voted out of the neighbourhood!”
The auction is scheduled for November 16.
Schimmelfeder said the rear entrance, rather than the more famous entrance on Adelaide Avenue, was always busier.
“When Kevin Rudd was prime minister, the Commonwealth car basically roared down the street at a great rate of knots because he was always in a hurry.
“When Julia [Gillard] took over, the Commonwealth cars were considerably slower.”
Golden ticket
As more politicians performatively tear up their Qantas Chairman’s Lounge memberships to protest against a sickening culture of corporate largesse, some of their colleagues have only just gotten a foot in the door.
Spare a thought for Malcolm Roberts, the One Nation senator from Queensland with a soft spot for just about every conspiracy theory under the sun. Just this month, Roberts declared receiving access to the Chairman’s Lounge, accompanied by the following note:
“Early to mid-July 2024 (estimate only – it’s a very recent gift).”
Poor Malcolm. While Qantas keeps membership of the Chairman’s Lounge the closest of trade secrets, it’s generally expected that all MPs and senators are invited. And indeed, when Roberts was first elected to the Senate in 2016, he was a member. But then, a year later, the High Court ruled that Roberts hadn’t effectively renounced his British citizenship, and disqualified him.
But when Roberts was returned to the upper house after the 2019 election, his invitation never came. Instead, the senator was kept waiting until a few months ago, when his golden ticket mysteriously arrived.
Nobody can figure out why he was made to wait, though sources close to Roberts speculated about whether his forceful criticism of former Qantas boss Alan Joyce led to the senator being frozen out, before a new regime at the airline decided to extend an olive branch. This of course sounds nothing like the Alan Joyce we know and love.
Qantas declined to comment on this theory: the airline’s first rule of the Chairman’s Lounge is it does not talk about the Chairman’s Lounge. But according to a Qantas source, Roberts’ snub was an administrative oversight, which was rectified once the airline realised. Then it re-invited him.
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