What’s real reason behind Tattersalls female move

AS Brisbane’s Tattersalls Club continues to talk about allowing female members, inside sources have raised questions about the motive.

A women’s day lunch at the Tattersalls Club in Brisbane’s CBD. File picture

BOTTOM LINE

TATTERSALLS president Stuart Fraser is continuing to hold consultation meetings on the idea mooted last month that the male bastion include women as full members.

Stuart Fraser.

Our spies deep inside the workers’ commune tell us the talk over the late-night port is whether the club can remain viable if it continues to disallow women members.

Powerful women around town are increasingly blackballing the club for functions, given they are not deemed to be good enough to be included as full members.

“This issue of embracing women members is not some light-bulb moment of the Queen Street Workers Club politburo,” one spy says.

“It reeks of bottom-line financial and economic necessity that is indeed dire. Unless more corporates like law firms, Big Four accounting firms, major consulting firms and not to forget local government, Queensland Government and Federal Government agencies start using the QSWC for functions in the function rooms, the economic bottom line for the club will sink in a rather dramatic southerly direction.”

Fraser, meanwhile, has told members the club has reduced its core debt and is in a “strong and enviable position”, but now is the time to establish a sustainable operating model while it has the resources to do so.

GIRL POWER

THE Queen Street Workers Club (aka Tattersalls) continues to drag itself into the late 1880s as it mulls the inclusion of women as full members and a possible name change to the Queen St Working People’s Club.

Chaps dragged along their female offspring last night for the annual Tattersalls Father Daughter Evening where the guest speaker was former journalist turned blogger Nikki Parkinson.

We are told that Nikki blogs at award-winning fashion, beauty and lifestyle blog, Styling You and is the author of a book Unlock Your Style.

Nikki’s recent blog posts have included “What to Do At Brisbane Airport’s International Terminal” and “Where to stay and what to do on a Byron Bay girls’ weekend”.

The message is clear girls: you, too, can hold dreams of being a member of a stuffy, old fashioned club and also unlock your style as a modern, confident woman.

THINK GREEN

IT’S not often that a mining company can burnish its green credentials, but Carpentaria Resources managing director Quentin Hill took a stab at the company’s annual general meeting earlier this week.

Quentin Hill, managing director of Carpentaria Resources. Picture: AAP/Steve Pohlner

You might recall Brisbane-based Carpentaria is planning to mine high-quality iron ore from its proposed Hawsons Iron Project near Broken Hill. Much of that will be shipped to China where major population centres remain heavily polluted.

When a shareholder asked Hill about expected greenhouse gas emissions from iron ore mined from Hawson, he replied that mainland steelmakers could cut emissions in half by using the company’s high-concentrated product. China is attempting to cut pollution by using high-grade iron ore that requires less coking coal to smelt steel, so Hill’s confidence could be well placed.

 

CHINA BOUND

STILL on resources, and Brisbane-based bauxite operation Metro Mining is ramping up production at Weipa.

Metro says it has shipped to five different Chinese customers from its Bauxite Hills mine in the September quarter, including to foundation client Xinfa Group, one of the mainland’s biggest aluminium producers.

Production of 822,000 metric tonnes was more than double that shipped in the June quarter.

 

MAX FACTOR

BRISBANE biotechnology company Factor Therapeutics is obviously hoping for a payday.

The ASX-listed company has announced it has appointed corporate advisory firm Taylor Collison to “assist with ongoing partnering discussions” and advice on “transactional options” as it awaits the results from a second phase of testing of its wound-care gel for leg ulcers.

For the sake of the local biotech industry, fingers crossed things go well, as the sector is notoriously risky.