By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
Eastern suburbs media personality Mia Freedman has done pretty well for someone whose family became very rich only while she was in high school at Ascham.
The entrepreneurial brains behind a vast, widely adored women’s media network, is set to get the small screen treatment, with Foxtel-owned streaming service Binge turning her 2017 memoir into an Asher Keddie-led dramedy called Strife – something we’re sure the resident of a $12.75 million Point Piper home knows a thing or two about!
This is your life: Mia Freedman and Steve Hutensky.
Freedman is a co-executive producer on the project, which started filming this week, along with Keddie, and Steve Hutensky, a former entertainment lawyer who helped Harvey Weinstein secure secret settlements with women he’d allegedly sexually harassed.
Hutensky is co-founder and chief operating officer of production company Made Up Stories, along with his wife Bruna Papandrea (also producing Strife), which prides itself on producing stories with “intelligent, multifaceted female characters” and is the recipient of millions in Screen Australia grants.
But in a past life, he spent decades as a Miramax lawyer, and his work for Weinstein earned him the nickname “the cleaner-upper”. While Hutensky’s work with Weinstein was well documented in American reporting, it’s rarely discussed in a domestic film industry where Made Up Stories is a very big player.
While we’re not suggesting Hutensky was involved in any illegal acts, or knew the extent of the allegations against Weinstein (who is now sentenced to 39 years in prison for sexual assault), the whole connection just doesn’t sit well with Freedman’s pop feminist girlboss schtick.
Neither Freedman, nor Hutensky responded to CBD’s comment requests.
Murdered on the dancefloor
It’s fair to say John Barilaro isn’t taking the Coalition’s weekend election loss too badly, even if he probably wishes he was in New York by now.
On Sunday, while many of his former colleagues were off wound-licking, Barra was spotted boogie-ing away to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor at lobbyist Michael Kauter’s Mosman pad.
Kauter, who bought the $9.5 million home with his kidney doctor husband David Gracey last year, has been a generous past donor to Barilaro’s Nationals. Now he’s better known as the face behind Strategic Political Counsel, the firm helping another Nats donor, British American Tobacco, in its fight to keep the government away from your vapes.
Kauter’s also quite the socialite. Joining Barilaro at the shindig was a rather motley crew, which included conservative pundit and anti-Voice campaigner Warren Mundine, heiress Ros Oatley and James Flynn, a self-described innovator who worked as a campaign advisor to anti-trans crusader Katherine Deves during her run in Warringah last year.
Obama no sell-out
When we brought word in November that former US president Barack Obama was coming to town for a couple of speaking engagements, we thought the events would be sell-outs, not least because tickets to Julia Gillard’s shows a month earlier were gone within minutes.
We want you: Tickets are still selling for Barack Obama’s appearance with Julie Bishop.Credit: John Shakespeare
Back then, it looked like former progressive national leaders were a sure-fire hit for event promoters. Now we’re not so sure.
For Obama, it looks like a tale of two cities, with plenty of tickets left for Wednesday night’s show at Melbourne’s John Cain Arena, MC’d by former foreign minister Julie Bishop, where you can still get in for just $195.
Things are a little tighter for Tuesday night’s show in Sydney, where there were still plenty of spots available on Monday but mostly at the pricier end of the room, costing upward of $345.
Either way, there are plenty of empty seats – and we reckon making your cheapest tickets nearly $200 might have something to do with it.
We asked the show’s publicists how they thought things were going. We haven’t heard back.
Home truths
For a field that is utterly mystifying to the average punter, guys in private equity manage to rake in eye-watering sums of money.
This being Sydney, a fair bit of that money winds up in harbourside property. In 2018, Quadrant private equity managing partner Jonathon Pearce and wife Zoe Pearce spent $8.8 million on Kharkov House in Bellevue Hill.
For another $7.9 million, the couple planned to raze the residence and put up a new five-storey mansion complete with pool and underground garage. All that stood in their way was those meddlers at Woollahra Council, who last year rejected the Pearces’ development application.
The couple silked up, and with the help of Ian Hemmings SC, took matters to the Land and Environment Court, which happily resolved things in their favour this week.
A court-supervised conciliation session between the parties this month clearly proved fruitful, with Pearce and the council reaching an agreement whereby the renovations will go ahead.
Clearly, it sometimes doesn’t hurt getting the lawyers in – if you can afford it.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.