Incoming Queensland governor Jeannette Young’s multimillion-dollar property portfolio
A move to Queensland’s heritage-listed Government House estate is just par for the course for the state’s chief health officer turned Governor-designateJeannette Young, the latest in what has been a string of attractive property moves for the long-term public servant.
While she doesn’t officially become Queen Lizzy’s Queensland representative until November, she’s already taken the title of “the people’s governor” as bestowed by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Quite the title indeed, especially given the multimillion-dollar property portfolio she owns with husband and fellow doctor Graeme Nimmo.
The jewel in the crown is none other than the couple’s luxury three-bedroom apartment with private foyer and lift access in East Brisbane the couple bought for $2.9m back when Queensland was fighting the previous (swine) flu outbreak of 2009.
Real estate flyers from the time described the unit, with travertine flooring and fully equipped marble kitchen, as having “the elegance and style of New York”, even going so far as to draw parallels to Manhattan’s Park Ave in terms of convenience and style.
According to property records, the two don’t spend much time sipping cocktails on their riverside with views to the Storey Bridge, however, with the unit rented out for a cool $1370 a week.
Then there is the $1.1m Mooloolaba weekender bought in 2015, just a street back from the beach, with uninterrupted ocean views from the living room and private balcony.
That also generates rental income for the duo as holiday accommodation.
Which takes us then to just where the state’s head health honcho rests her head after a hard day enforcing Queensland’s tough coronavirus border regime.
This perhaps is what has earned Young the people’s moniker – her regular residence a much more modest brick home in Brisbane’s south.
The long-held Holland Park home has been in husband Nimmo’s name since the 80s, when he bought it for just $210,000. Like the rest of their portfolio, it also has been a good investment, its most recent valuation sitting in the realm of $1.1m.
On Margin Call’s back-of-the-envelope calculations, that’s about $6m across the three homes, not even taking into account the booming property market in the burgeoning Brisvegas.
Public service doesn’t seem so bad after all.
Our Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young receiving her award for outstanding public service to Qld Health. pic.twitter.com/5gYKp8Tdyz
— Queensland Health (@qldhealthnews) September 23, 2015
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Joyce’s staff issue
Reinstalled Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce may have been plotting his return to the Nationals leadership for close to three years, but that doesn’t mean the Member for New England was ready to hit the ground running by the time of Monday’s coup.
Repeated calls and emails to the office and representatives of the new Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Affairs Minister by Margin Call throughout Tuesday and Wednesday have so far gone unanswered.
“We don’t have a media adviser,” a young staff member awkwardly declared on Wednesday, begging the question whether Joyce’s partner, mother to his two young sons Sebastian and Thomas and former media adviser Vikki Campion, should muck in for a while until her old boss can get his act together.
So what were we so interested in? Like many others, we found the 54-year-old father of six’s parliamentary disclosures confusing.
Before hasty register updates on Tuesday, we’d worked out that the former Joyce family home in Loomberah, a suburb of Tamworth that the politician still owns with his former wife Natalie Abberfield, was no longer his residence and instead was occupied by his first wife.
Joyce had already told the parliament that he and his second family, as of April last year, were living in Woolbrook, which Margin Call understands is in a home on his elderly parents’ property at Woolbrook.
Having pawed over Joyce’s disclosures to previous parliaments, it also looked to us like the new Minister for Transport’s previously listed properties at Warrumbungle (there are three) and Gwabegar (there’s one), all in north eastern NSW, had been lumped under a new disclosure of “rural property, Baradine”.
We wondered if the amalgamation had anything to do with the ARTC’s unfolding massive inland rail project proposed to run from Melbourne to Brisbane and right through the guts of the Warrumbungle Shire via the Narromine to Narrabri Project, which is one of 13 projects that, when combined, will make up the new infrastructure.
And things are getting to the pointy end of the process towards state and federal approvals for the 306km section that’s near the Joyce holdings, with a fresh Environmental Impact Statement now in circulation as part of the process towards final approval.
Warrumbungle Council, for one, has in recent weeks responded and, while in favour of the new rail project, has serious reservations about many aspects of the development plan.
Funny, in Question Time this week Joyce, as Deputy PM, twice raised the infrastructure project in his answers, on Tuesday describing it as “the corridor of commerce” and then on Wednesday saying: “Jobs are important, we see it in the inland rail.”
One to keep an eye on.
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Hutch wild on Cats
The Larry Kestelman-controlled National Basketball League’s unfolding grand final series will take on an added dimension come Friday when Melbourne United faces off with the Perth Wildcats at Melbourne’s John Cain Stadium.
For now the teams are rivals, but soon may be stablemates as the Craig Hutchison-controlled Sports Entertainment Group settles into exclusive and what are said to be advanced negotiations to buy the Wildcats – the NBL’s most successful team – from its millionaire owner Jack Bendat.
Perth businessman Bendat is a long-time associate of billionaire Kerry Stokes and has been trying to sell the Wildcats for some time.
The sale is now back on the boil thanks to the interest from Hutch’s group, formerly known as Pacific Star Network and which previously ate up the one-time Herald Sun and Nine Network reporter’s Crocmedia.
With the former sports journo Hutchy as CEO and Craig Coleman as chair, the highly acquisitive Sports Entertainment is already part-owner of basketball league rival Melbourne United and wants the Wildcats as part of its “whole of sports” strategy.
Sports Entertainment is worth just under $55m on the market, with biggest shareholder Hutchy controlling about 22 per cent of that (almost 50 million shares), which are worth $11.4m.
In return for running the whole operation, which includes national sports radio network SEN, Hutchy was paid almost $625,000 last year, along with a further $400,000 for being the talent himself.
The 46-year-old also has 2.1 million options over Sports Entertainment shares that expire in September next year, the exercise price of which is unclear but which are subject to performance hurdles.
But the savvy Melbourne media chief doesn’t have all his balls in the one code.
Hutchy also seems to like real estate, several weeks ago taking ownership of a brand new apartment in inner-city Cremorne for which he paid $1.3m.
He also owns a townhouse in Prahran, with both properties mortgaged to NAB.
The Wildcats might be the icing on the cake.
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