By Stephen Brook and Samantha Hutchinson
The local economic recovery will be, we are told, patchy. But the revival of the celebrity economy received a substantial shot in the arm on Wednesday with the launch of season five of reality-television guilty pleasure The Real Housewives of Melbourne. The venue was the modernist Carousel function centre on Albert Park Lake, which was fittingly, as host Joel Creasey reminded us, “the same venue where Rebecca Judd got married”.
With another instalment of the program (which was halted by the COVID-19 shutdown) resolutely focused on the rich, bored and surgically enhanced, the resumption of filming can be taken as a sign that Melbourne’s recovery has reached its next level. This follows the successful revival of the Australian Open, Melbourne Food and Wine Festival’s World’s Longest Lunch, the Melbourne Fashion Festival and Malthouse Theatre’s world premiere last week of Because the Night, its immersive theatrical update of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
Of course, centuries earlier the Bard himself had a precursor to the franchise with The Merry Wives of Windsor. He also showed a keen appreciation of what makes the series tick when he wrote: “Two women placed together makes cold weather.”
Gold Coast sums
Pleasingly, the Real Housewives proceedings commenced with news of a property deal courtesy of founding cast member Janet Roach, partner of Chemist Warehouse chief executive Sam Gance.
Not quite sure how the show sits with the notoriously private Gance and Verrocchi families, owners of the $16 billion pharmacy chain. But we digress.
During lockdown, like so many of the wealthy, Roach and Gance found themselves on the Gold Coast, and attended a party in an apartment at the Palazzo Versace, where a three-bedroom condo sells for more than $2.5 million. The couple were so impressed they immediately bought a Versace apartment for themselves.
Gasps were evinced by the crowd at the surprise return of psychic Jackie Gillies, wife of Silverchair drummer Ben Gillies, who had quit the series to undergo IVF treatment.
And it was confirmed glamour barrister and series mainstay Gina Liano would not be returning. As Foxtel programming boss Brian Walsh explained, it was not because she loved Real Housewives less, but because she loved the law more and was getting much fulfilment from helping clients.
Thus it seems churlish to mention the counter-narrative, which CBD overheard whispered among the audience, that producers had tired of Liano and they parted ways.
But let’s face it, as regular readers know, the Victorian Bar needs all the help it can get, so Liano’s focus on the law is welcome. Gina for president?
Lyons’ share
Scott Morrison copped another pasting on Wednesday for not doing enough to support women when he stopped short of offering Christine Holgate an apology for her unceremonious punting from the nation’s post office. But more quietly, there’s work being done behind the scenes inside the party to boost the number of women in its ranks.
Former Liberal Party politician Kelly O’Dwyer.Credit: Joe Benke
Step forward former finance minister Kelly O’Dwyer, who has just had a symbolic win for the fund she set up to support Liberal women in politics. O’Dwyer’s Enid Lyons Fighting Fund has been named as the key recipient of cash raised from the party’s upcoming Federal President’s Dinner in late May. The event, headlined by the PM, draws both members and big-spending corporates and is one of the highest-profile events in the party’s calendar.
The fund was set up in 2018 in the same month sitting Liberal MP Jane Prentice was dumped in a preselection race in favour of Brisbane councillor Julian Simmonds. O’Dwyer, the former Victorian MP whose decision not to recontest the 2019 election was dubbed a “shock”, is frank about its purpose. “When women put their hands up for preselection in the Liberal Party, they need to know that they will have the financial firepower behind them to run effective campaigns,” she said.
The fund distributed more than $150,000 to female members and candidates ahead of the 2019 federal election, of which O’Dwyer personally chipped in $90,000, while former foreign minister Julie Bishop contributed $50,000. It’s a drop in the ocean compared with the party’s campaign spend of $15 million for the last federal election.
It’s worth noting distribution decisions are made by federal director Andrew Hirst in conjunction with female cabinet ministers, and so the latest reshuffle means that there are now seven women in cabinet who will have an input. Not perfect, but it’s something.
Balanced portfolio
It’s been a busy month for O’Dwyer, who on Monday was named as a director inside Guy Fowler (and soon-to-be Matt Grounds’) Barrenjoey Capital investment bank. O’Dwyer was appointed to the board alongside former UBS legal counsel Annette Spencer as the newly minted investment house attempts to address a gender imbalance on its top rung large enough to make the Liberal Party look like an equal opportunity employer of choice.
Chief executive Brian Benari said the company has its work cut out for it “transitioning ... the directorship to ensure the appropriate balance of internal and independent directors, backgrounds and gender”. At least he’s prepared to admit it.