Article by Andrew Hornery courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Brittany Higgins and Australia’s wealthiest citizen Gina Rinehart have both been the subject of big and difficult news stories of late, albeit for very different reasons, though their shared aversion to red carpets and flashbulbs is hardly surprising.
On Wednesday, two magazine awards nights with very different guest lists were getting under way in Sydney. Marie Claire’s Women Of The Year Awards took place at the swanky Rockpool in the city and in Pyrmont at Doltone House, it was CEO Magazine’s more soberingly corporate affair.
Higgins and her partner David Sharaz avoided the red carpet at Rockpool, bypassing cameras as they quietly assumed a position in a corner of the room after making a pitstop at the caviar station. The former Liberal staffer sat on the same table as Grace Tame in a room studded with some of this country’s most influential and inspiring women.
Higgins’ old pal Lisa Wilkinson was a late scratching, unable to get back from a work trip to Melbourne in time.
Not only did Wilkinson miss out on crossing paths with Higgins, but also hearing the impressive Teela Reid. The Sydney lawyer and Indigenous activist had not prepared a speech when she was named joint recipient (along with the fabulously eloquent 23-year-old disability activist Hannah Diviney), of the Voices of Now honour.
Instead, Reid opted to deliver a moving and memorised recital of 2017’s Uluru Statement From The Heart, which she had been instrumental in creating. Even the chefs in the kitchen downed pans to listen intently.
Meanwhile, things weren’t quite as poetically poignant at the CEO event. Rinehart, dripping in a million-dollar pearl sapphire necklace and matching earrings (which she’d also matched with her jaunty bejewelled cocktail thongs) made a stealth arrival at 9pm, avoiding photographers outside and informing minders she was strictly there to support her Hancock Prospecting CEO Garry Korte, who received the highly commended award in the CEO of the year, in the $100 million+ turnover category.
