Don O’Rorke puts annual EOFY party on ice but promises it will be back in 2023

One of the Brisbane property industry’s biggest events has been shelved for another year but the big names behind the annual party promise it will be back in 2023.

Property developer Don O'Rorke and builder Scott Hutchinson. Picture: Glenn Hunt / The Australian

THE Queensland property industry’s annual night of nights has been put on ice for a third year in a row but organiser Don O’Rorke has promised it will be back next year – albeit a bit different.

The Consolidated Properties Group boss kicked off the End of the Financial Year knees up in 1996 but because of the Covid pandemic the event was shelved for the first time in 2020 and then again in 2021.

O’Rorke says they’re having another break this year and he and good mate Hutchinson Builders chairman Scott Hutchinson will “reinvent the format” for 2023.

“It’s run in its current format for years and it’s time for a change and I will be talking to Scott about it,” he says.

“I don’t know what the format will be but we will do a bit of navel-gazing so watch this space.”

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman, Scott Hutchinson, Don O'Rorke and Gadens chairman Paul Spiro at the Hutchinson Builders/Consolidated Properties Group 2019 EOFY party at the Fortitiude Music Hall.

The first EOFY party was at Brett’s Wharf at Hamilton and it then moved to Friday’s Riverside in the CBD. Hutchinson got involved and it was moved to his live music venue The Triffid in Newstead and then on to the new Fortitude Music Hall where 900 revellers turned for the last big bash in 2019.

O’Rorke says they still want to mark the end of the financial year and bring people together with “common interests”.

“We were never weighed down by expectations. The reason we’re changing is a positive, not a negative,” he says.

“You should always examine the way you do everything and evolve. Unless you evolve you become extinct.”

SAND DEMAND

Belgian mining giant Sibelco has ramped up its Queensland presence with a deal to take a stake in Diatreme Resources and help develop its far northern silica sand project.

It has committed to invest almost $50m which will give it a 15 per cent stake in Diatreme and a 26.8 per cent stake in the company’s Galalar and Northern Resource silica projects, which neighbour the world’s biggest silica sandmine at Cape Flattery in Far North Queensland.

Brisbane-based Diatreme chief executive Neil McIntyre said the deal was a vote of confidence in the company and its strategy.

“Having access to Sibelco’s world-leading technical, processing and marketing expertise is a step change for Diatreme that propels us onto the global stage, enhancing the successful development of our projects,” he said.

“Sibelco is a natural partner for us to unlock the value of our world-class silica sand deposits for the benefit of both companies and all of our stakeholders, including our First Nation partners and other local communities.”

Sibelco’s former sandmine on North Stradbroke Island.

Sibelco is currently rehabilitating its leases at Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) after the State Government officially ended sand mining on the island at the end of 2019 after being one of its main economic drivers since the 1950s.

A report from market research firm Imarc Group said the global silica sand market is expected to reach $US20bn (A28.8bn) by 2024 with the commodity needed in wide variety of applications from concrete and glass making to cosmetics, paint and coatings, chemicals production and it is also in mobile phones and silicon chips.

LOGAN HEROES

Treasurer Cameron Dick boasts Logan Central Plaza has the highest concentration of treasurer’s in the world. Both Dick and Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers have electorate offices in the shopping centre in Brisbane’s south.

“All I have to do is knock on the wall and a big window opens up and another billion dollars appears,” he told an address to CEDA at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.

Queensland treasurer Cameron Dick.