Jimmy Barnes underpaid $20,000 for private 50th birthday bash in Harbour Agency booking error

Jimmy Barnes was short-changed $20,000 to play a private 50th birthday bash at an exclusive island resort in a bungle that took three years to recover.

Rock singer Jimmy Barnes, who was underpaid $20,000 for a private acoustic performance on Hamilton Island in November 2018 that took three years to recover. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Rock singer Jimmy Barnes was short-changed $20,000 to play a private 50th birthday bash at an exclusive island resort, in a bungle that took three years to recover.

The discrepancy was identified during a recent investigation into workplace culture at Sydney-based live music booking firm The Harbour Agency, which resulted in major music company Mushroom Group cutting its longstanding ties to the group.

In August 2017, Barnes was booked to play an acoustic concert with his band at the luxury six-star Qualia Resort on Hamilton Island, as part of 50th birthday celebrations for businessman Jamie Pherous, the managing director of Corporate Travel Management. According to the booking agreement, seen by The Australian, the hour-long acoustic gig ­before 100 guests was booked at $150,000 excluding GST, with the deal including accommodation for Barnes on location at Qualia on November 3, 2018.

Yet in a series of emails from 2017 seen by The Australian, booking agents at The Harbour Agency told Barnes’s long-time booking agent Frank Stivala that the performance fee was $130,000 excluding GST.

The $20,000 discrepancy in performance fees was unexplained, and the shortfall was discovered only late last year when music company Mushroom Group sensationally split from The Harbour Agency, which was established in 1978.

In an exclusive statement issued to The Australian on December 7, a Mushroom spokesperson said the split was a result of historical allegations about management behaviour and workplace culture, following an external investigation into complaints made by former employees.

In response to questions from The Australian about the Qualia fee discrepancy, a spokesperson for Jimmy Barnes said: “Last year a mistaken underpayment on a one-off 2018 booking was reported to Jimmy by his booking agent, Premier Artists. The matter was resolved quickly and amicably.”

A spokesperson for Mushroom Group provided the exact same statement in response to questions from The Australian.

In an interview with The Australian, Frank Stivala – managing director of Melbourne-based booking agency Premier Artists, which remains part of Mushroom Group – said: “I didn’t read any malice into it. There are honest mistakes, and there’s always the possibility of dishonest mistakes. But in this case, I firmly believe it’s an honest mistake.” Mr Stivala is also a director of The Harbour Agency alongside Philip Jacobsen and the estate of Michael Gudinski, the Mushroom Group founder who died in March last year, aged 68.

“Did Jimmy get ripped off? I firmly believe he didn’t,” said Mr Stivala. “I’ve been dealing with Jimmy for 35 or 40 years; we’re ­almost like family. I trust him, he trusts me, and if I thought he was being abused, I wouldn’t stand for it.”

In response to questions from The Australian, The Harbour Agency’s senior booking agent, Tony Grace Guarrera, said in a statement: “Frank Stivala made me aware of the underpayment late in 2021 as a result of findings within a directors report.”

Asked whether he was concerned about the duration of time that passed between the discrepancy occurring and being detected, Mr Guarrera said in an email, “Of course I was concerned the error was undetected for three years. But please understand the contributing circumstances; there were several changes in the agency accounts personnel and then two years of dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, which has done nothing but cause havoc for our normal routines.

Asked whether underpayments for the agency’s artist bookings go beyond the 2018 instance with Mr Barnes, Mr Guarrera said, “As a result of the Jimmy Barnes error, we have conducted a full internal review of our accounting systems. We discovered one other anomaly which has since been rectified also.”

“We acknowledge human error can lead to mistakes and are confident that our continued efforts to improve our systems will prevent any underpayments or overpayments to occur in the ­future,” Mr Guarrera said.

A spokesman for Mr Pherous confirmed that the Corporate Travel Management chief had booked Barnes to perform at his 50th birthday party on Hamilton Island for a performance fee of $150,000 excluding GST.

For the chart-topping singer and Cold Chisel frontman, the booking at Qualia came near the end of a fruitful and productive 2018.

At the time, Mr Barnes’s second memoir, Working Class Man, had recently been named biography of the year at the Australian Book Industry Awards for the second year in a row, while his first memoir Working Class Boy had been adapted into a film of the same name which saw its cinematic release in August.

While Mr Barnes is no longer listed as part of the artist roster on The Harbour Agency’s website, the Sydney-based firm represents live music bookings for acts including Missy Higgins, Guy Sebastian, Daryl Braithwaite and Kate Miller-Heidke.