Broken guarantees, retreat drama… and the enemy inside: The three dangerous omens clouding Harry and Meghan’s Australia journey that might make it the ‘royal tour’ from hell
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s four-day quasi-royal tour of Australia is in full swing – and already there are plenty of red flags flapping in the easterly winds.
Prior to their arrival, Team Sussex tried to stipulate the parameters and purpose of the trip. The visit was described in their own spokesperson’s words as a mix of ‘private, business and philanthropic engagements’.
But as I will explain, jamming all that into just four days won’t be easy. Something has to give. Our money is on Meghan’s guest appearance at a private women’s retreat being less ‘star attraction’ and more ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’.
Before we get there, let’s rewind to Tuesday morning.
The budget-conscious, self-funded nature of the tour was reaffirmed from the outset, with the royals jetting in on a commercial Qantas flight QF94 from LA to Melbourne.
Things kicked off on Tuesday soon after touchdown with Meghan and Harry stopping by the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, before the Duchess donned an apron to help serve lunches at a women’s homeless shelter.
Wednesday’s schedule highlights included Harry visiting the Movember organisation at Western Bulldogs HQ, and then hightailing it to Canberra to visit the Australian War Memorial, meet Indigenous veterans, attend a reception for Invictus Australia, and take part in the Last Post Ceremony.
Due back in Melbourne on Thursday, April 16, the Sussexes are set to take part in the Scar Tree Walk, led by the Koorie Heritage Trust, and then will attend an event at Swinburne University with the mental health organisation Batyr.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrived in Australia on April 14, and were greeted by a crowd at their first stop: the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are currently in Australia on a trip that’s a mixture of ‘private, business and philanthropic engagements’, according to their spokesperson
That evening is also Harry’s moment to shine as a keynote speaker on the line-up at the InterEdge Summit.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are then northbound for Sydney on Friday, April 17, where they will be joining Invictus Australia sailing around the famous harbour. The evening will see the couple attend the NSW Waratahs v Moana Pasifika rugby match.
And then comes the pièce de résistance: Meghan’s much-hyped headline appearance at the Her Best Life retreat.
Touted as a ‘girls’ weekend like no other’ – and strictly a commercial venture not included in the Sussexes’ official itinerary – the intimate 300-person weekend event hosted by ‘Her Best Life’ podcast host Gemma O’Neill will include the highlight of ‘an in-person conversation with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’.
Bar the two commercial speaking engagements, this visit could almost be mistaken for a royal tour – and it certainly ticks all the usual boxes.
If only they were still working royals.
But cosplaying as royalty can make things complex, as Australians made one thing clear weeks before Harry and Meghan arrived: if the Sussexes aren’t ‘official’ royals, we should not be ponying up a single cent of taxpayer funds for their trip.
It’s something Team Sussex are acutely aware of, indicated by their preemptive statement that this would indeed be a private trip. In fact, they planned to make a profit from it.
The Sussexes were introduced to CEO & Executive Director Communications Kog Ravindran, Chief Executive Officer Dr Peter Steer, and Professor Christine Kilpatrick at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne
Yet this promise already seems to have been broken – not through any fault of the Sussexes, I might add – after it was confirmed that taxpayers would be on the hook for the couple’s policing costs.
And before the right-wing tabloids are blamed for pushing this narrative, let’s state for the record that it was the Sydney Morning Herald – editorially close to the UK’s Guardian – that broke the story about the expected policing costs of Harry and Meghan’s visit.
The SMH report explained that while Team Sussex had continuously insisted the trip would be privately funded, Australian taxpayers would still end up paying for policing costs in Melbourne and Sydney.
So while the Sussexes did not ask for special treatment, our police forces have a duty to protect them – and that doesn’t come for free.
For those already turning up their noses, it was bad omen number one.
But there’s more.
Since closing the door on their life as working royals, Harry and Meghan have found themselves walking a precarious tightrope: they want to hold onto the well-intentioned and philanthropic endeavours that Harry in particular is renowned for, but they must now also make a living.
As a result, we’ve ended up with a hot mess of an itinerary that stitches together worthy charities with money‑spinning appearances that make your eyes roll.
And coming hot on the heels of an actual royal tour doesn’t help matters.
Our most recent regal visitors to Australia, Queen Mary and King Frederik of Denmark, checked several of the same boxes as the Sussexes: paying their respects in Canberra, taking part in Indigenous ceremonies, and even punting a ball on a sports oval. Tick, tick, tick.
The moment private, commercial events are folded in – as the Sussexes have done – the whole thing starts to unravel, muddying the waters and making the entire endeavour feel somewhat cynical.
On April 14, Meghan helped out serving lunch at the McAuley Community Services for Women, a women’s homeless and family violence shelter in Footscray, Melbourne
Which brings us to bad omen number two: Meghan’s headline appearance at the Her Best Life retreat.
By far the biggest story in the lead-up to the Sussexes’ arrival has been the particulars of the exclusive ‘girls’ weekend’ at the InterContinental Coogee Beach – starting with the surprising announcement that Meghan was the major drawcard.
Then came the eye‑watering ticket prices, setting participants back between $2,699 and $3,199 for the privilege of attending.
Those who snagged one of the 300 apparently limited tickets were promised ‘an intimate luxury weekend by the ocean designed to bring women together for powerful conversations, relaxation, laughter and unforgettable experiences’, per the website.
The Mail obtained a leaked itinerary for the retreat, which includes a women’s coaching session with therapist Dr Justine Corry, yoga, sound healing, time by the swimming pool, lunch, dinner and a ‘disco night’.
The tickets include two nights’ stay at the new InterContinental – but even this element has attracted scrutiny. For one, photos taken only weeks ago showed the pool was still under construction.
Then there’s the fact that a ‘standard’ ticket for $2,699 only gets attendees into a twin-share room, meaning you’ll be bunking with a stranger for double what the average Sydneysider earns in a week.
Oh, and then there was another left-field revelation when it emerged that British former paparazzo and OnlyFans documentary maker Joshua Fox was involved in the social media side of the operation.
Meghan is the headline act at the Her Best Life retreat scheduled for this weekend. The website was recently updated to confirm that ‘additional rooms’ are still available to purchase for the ticketed weekend event
Of course, any questions over the worthiness of the event could be swiftly brushed aside if it had been an instant sell-out.
But… red flags. Just days out from the event, the Her Best Life website showed a curious seven-word update: ‘A handful of additional rooms just released.’ At the time of publication, this message was still emblazoned across the site’s homepage.
Questions over how in-demand the event actually is were compounded on Reddit, where one ticketholder recounted how after buying a standard ticket, they received an email urging them to upgrade to a VIP ticket before the opportunity was snapped up by someone else.
The VIP tickets – priced at $3,199 – offer the additional perks of a group photo with Meghan, an exclusive goodie bag, a premium solo room, and all weekend inclusions.
But despite being encouraged to buy now or risk missing out, the ticketholder said they had checked the VIP ticket availability daily and there were still plenty available.
In fact, according to an April 14 screenshot, there were still 24 VIP tickets left.
The Mail also conducted its own research on the website and found there was still the option to purchase up to 24 VIP tickets. Standard tickets were no longer available.
A ticket holder shared this screenshot on Reddit, which appeared to show that there were still 24 VIP tickets available for the Her Best Life retreat
The Mail has contacted the organisers of the Her Best Life retreat for comment on the availability of both VIP and standard tickets.
And then there’s the other report to emerge this week about would-be attendees who paid the price of admission, only to be denied entry because they work in the media.
Ariana Pezeshki, a commercial writer for 7News who isn’t involved in general news reporting, detailed how she bought her ticket, only to be refunded and denied entry at the last minute because she was technically a journalist.
This is despite her insistence that she was attending in a private, non-work capacity.
In her words: ‘For an event built on empowerment, the whole thing left me feeling less like a supported woman and more like a screened liability.’
The Mail contacted Her Best Life’s organisers for comment on the screening process.
The fact the event hasn’t been an instant sell-out and is still trying to flog tickets days out from the opening night is worrying when there is already so much riding on it.
For Meghan, there is the risk of having loaned her name and reputation to the event. We also couldn’t help but notice the overlap between the retreat and her official itinerary, which begs the question: how long will she really be spending with the guests before darting off for other engagements?
Event organiser Gemma O’Neill also has a lot on the line.
From the moment the retreat was announced, O’Neill, a former radio producer turned talent manager, was thrust into the spotlight. Her association with her star client, Jackie ‘O’ Henderson, right as the embattled radio host’s $100M contract was terminated, became intertwined with the Her Best Life narrative.
And as reporters started digging, it came to light that O’Neill didn’t have an entirely clean sheet after her talent agency went into liquidation at the end of last year, owing hundreds of thousands in debts – including $543,548 sum to the taxman.
Her Best Life co-founder Gemma O’Neill will host the live ‘Conversation with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’ on the first night of the retreat
Will the event sell out? Will it make a profit? The jury’s out.
Which brings me on to the other, less discussed commercial speaking engagement lined up for this trip: Prince Harry’s appearance at the InterEdge Summit.
As per their website, the event ‘is a professional development summit designed to equip leaders, practitioners and changemakers with the knowledge and tools to create mentally healthy, safe and high-performing workplaces.’
It all seems like worthy stuff and theoretically in line with Harry 2.0.
The Duke is said to be earning about AU$68,000 for the appearance, which sounds impressive but is a step down from the AU$1.4million he reportedly commanded at a JP Morgan event in February 2020, a month after he stepped back as a senior royal.
But perhaps press-averse Harry should have taken a closer look at who else he’d be sharing a stage with in Melbourne before accepting the pay check.
Esteemed panellists at the summit include former tennis star Jelena Dokic and social psychologist Dr Amy Cuddy (appearing virtually)… and then there’s Jonathon Moran – a showbiz editor for a News Corp newspaper.
The InterEdge Summit note speaker line up sees Prince Harry alongside the likes of Dr Amy Cuddy and Jelena Dokic
News Corp tabloid showbiz editor Jonathon Moran is also speaking at the summit. He recently released a self-help book called Mental as Anyone, and also hosts the similarly-named podcast.
Moran is a seasoned tabloid operator. How that squares with Harry’s well-documented loathing of that branch of the press is an open question.
Of course, Moran has reinvented himself more recently as a mental-health warrior who wears his heart on his sleeve – and kudos to him for that.
But that doesn’t wipe his slate clean. A quick Google search turns up a video of him excoriating the Sussexes on Sky News Australia in 2020, shortly after they’d left the UK for Canada with their then-baby son Archie in tow.
When the Daily Telegraph reporter was asked for his thoughts on Queen Elizabeth II being separated from her great-grandson, he called it ‘cruel, nasty and bitter’.
‘Nothing is left to chance here, it was a cruel and nasty move to stop the Queen from seeing her great-grandchild,’ he said.
That should make for some frosty cross-stage glares with the King’s second son…
We’ll call that bad omen number three.
With the Meghan and Harry show now in full swing, there are already signs that the commercial side of their visit may not be entirely seamless.
In a few days’ time, we’ll have a clearer picture of whether the trip has scored some much-needed PR points for the Sussexes, or whether it has amounted to something closer to an own goal.
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