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Retired publican lists $12m luxury apartment

Retired publican lists $12m luxury apartment

News.com.au5 hours ago

A retired publican has listed his luxury $12m apartment in a luxury Elizabeth Bay block full of big hitters.
Ken Thompson, who sold his Blues Point Hotel to former Qantas chief Geoff Dixon for $6m more than a decade ago, has owned the three-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment with double parking and harbour views in the exclusive 'One Onslow' building since paying $5.05m off-the-plan in 2007.
He's now listed it with BresicWhitney's Romany Brooks, hot on the heels of her selling a luxury penthouse to fashion icon Collette Dinnigan for about $7.2m in the nearby Tradewinds block alongside principal Shannan Whitney.
Brooks says Thompson's apartment is well-priced, compared with other newer buildings nearby that have recently sold for as much as $60,000 per sq m.
'I feel that around $40,000 per sq m, this delivers the scale downsizers are seeking and delivers on value,' Brooks says.
She has deliberately chosen to market the apartment for sale without styling it.
'It has 3m ceilings and is 302sqm, I want buyers to feel the scale,' she said.
'If you look at the old shots with furniture it just reduces the scale and doesn't showcase the finishes.'
Thompson moved out of the second-floor apartment, which sits directly above the one Aussie Home Loans founder John Symond bought for $4.1m in 2011, after the death of his beloved wife, Elizabeth, and it's recently been rented out to the Canadian embassy at $5000 per week
Other famous owners in the nine-unit boutique block include Joanna McNiven, widow of businessman John McNiven, who bought in for $9.7m in 2011 and mining entrepreneur Nick Curtis and his wife, Angela.
Symond initially owned three units in the block, but sold two of them in 2018, including the sub-penthouse to the Curtises for $7.25m.
Rosanna Hindmarsh, the wife of Canberra's construction industry boss John Hindmarsh, sold the penthouse for $20m in 2021 to businessman and philanthropist Thomas Yim and his wife, Denise.
It had been Hindmarsh's construction firm that built the block.

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Resources Top 5: It's ‘Up There Cazaly' as gold drilling kicks off at Duke of York
Resources Top 5: It's ‘Up There Cazaly' as gold drilling kicks off at Duke of York

News.com.au

time30 minutes ago

  • News.com.au

Resources Top 5: It's ‘Up There Cazaly' as gold drilling kicks off at Duke of York

A 2000m RC drill program will test beneath old gold workings and attempt to validate historical results at Duke of York Manuka Resources intends to restart the Wonawinta Processing Plant to produce silver and gold Ausgold is busy at the Katanning gold project with drilling, a DFS and permitting Your standout small cap resources stocks for Friday, June 20, 2025 Cazaly Resources (ASX:CAZ) It has been 'Up There Cazaly' for junior gold explorer Cazaly Resources, jumping to 2.6c, an increase of 30% on Thursday's close, before closing up 15% at 2.3c. In homage to the stirring AFL song, Cazaly rose above the pack of ASX juniors after starting drilling this week at the Duke of York prospect in the Goongarrie gold project. A 2000m RC drill program will test beneath old gold workings and attempt to validate historical results. After receiving approval, drill site preparation was completed last week in order to facilitate the first phase of RC drilling, which kicked off this week. The initial phase of drilling is designed to validate historical drill intercepts including 13m at 3.5g/t and 8m at 10.7g/t. This drilling will also inform the next phase of RC drilling to further test for gold mineralisation along strike and down plunge. After Duke of York, Cazaly Resources (ASX:CAZ) plans to drill the Star of Goongarrie prospect. Cazaly's managing director Tara French said: 'I am extremely pleased to announce that drilling has commenced at Duke of York, the first of many gold targets to be tested in this highly prospective district. 'Our team has worked extremely hard to obtain approvals which places us on the ground less than three months after exercising the option to earn up to 80% of the Goongarrie Gold project with Brightstar Resources. 'It's a very exciting time to be drilling beneath historical gold workings in the Eastern Goldfields, and we can't wait to see the results of this first drilling campaign.' Previous drilling at Duke of York was completed in 2001 by Red Back Mining NL in joint venture with Goldfields Exploration, when the gold price was circa US$300. There were 23 RC holes drilled for 2,084m. In 2011 Metaliko Resources completed limited work at Duke of York with three RC holes drilled for 270m. The Duke of York and Star of Goongarrie prospects are priority target areas with anomalous gold mineralisation localised in a structurally complex zone within the Bardoc Tectonic Zone at the junction of two constituent faults. Goongarrie is in the northeastern goldfields, 90km north of Kalgoorlie, and is easily accessible via the Goldfields Highway that runs along the western boundary of the project area. The project consists of 70km2 of greenstone sequence within the Kalgoorlie Terrain. 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Final call: Optus' exploitation of First Nations customers must be the last, say advocates
Final call: Optus' exploitation of First Nations customers must be the last, say advocates

SBS Australia

time35 minutes ago

  • SBS Australia

Final call: Optus' exploitation of First Nations customers must be the last, say advocates

Optus has agreed to pay a $100 million penalty, subject to court approval, over conduct that saw many First Nations people from remote communities sold services they did not want or need. Credit: Mark Baker/AP Optus, the second-largest telecommunications company in Australia, admitted this week to engaging in unconscionable conduct when selling telecommunications goods and services to hundreds of consumers, many of whom were First Nations. Dunghutti man Mark Holden, a senior solicitor at Mob Strong Debt Help - a non-profit organisation that offers free finance-related legal advice to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities – says he hopes this is a wake-up call. 'This should be the final call now for the telecommunications industry to be able to shape up here and try to be more proactive, taking more practical steps to be able to end the harm to First Nations peoples here when it comes to the sale of an essential service," he said. Optus sold many First Nations people from remote services they did not want or need and has agreed to pay a $100 million penalty, after an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). 'Oftentimes, we find that the conduct happens in areas where there's more likely to be vulnerable people living there," Mr Holden told NITV. "So remote communities, rural areas, but even as well, in some urban areas as well too, where First Nations peoples often are targeted. 'They might come in and just be looking for a typical charge cable, and they'll be then sold a couple of phones, a speaker, a console, iPads. "And they're just being charged all these fees, that just racks up quite fast.' Optus is not the first telco fined for wrongful conduct. Telstra was penalised $50 million in 2021 for unconscionable conduct when selling mobile contracts to Indigenous consumers. 'I think that if the sales model makes money, then other people will be doing it as well," Mr Holden said. 'Because Telstra was doing it, we just were not surprised when ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) first announced that Optus was also doing this too. 'These are just two cases that we're looking at here, I wouldn't be surprised as well to if there are other telco providers here who could be doing the same thing.' As well as debt, the impact of the conduct can also lead to a lot of shame amongst mob. 'Besides the financial loss, here we have a lot of mob who are faced with this crippling debt," Mr Holden said. "And when it comes to debt, there's a lot of shame as well too. 'Sometimes there's a very, very strong fear of further action being taken against them, there's a fear of them maybe going to jail.' It's even left some people trying to access their superannuation to pay their debts. 'That's a very bit of extra harm here as well, too, that when people don't pay their debts, the telco can issue a default on the credit report, and that default can last for about five years from listing, and that can severely impact their ability to be able to take a loan, to be able to be able to support themselves," Mr Holden said. Optus is compensating impacted consumers for the period between August 2019 and July 2023, during which it agreed the alleged conduct took place. But Mark says it should go further. 'You want to be able to have a remediation program that looks at the entirety of the sales practices, so that even though we're looking at people who are affected in the period, we're looking at people who were affected before that and after that as well, too, people who've been treated the same way," he said. 'So that they also could get not only just a refund of what they paid, but also compensation with interest for the harm they suffered.' He says it should be a wake-up call for other industries too, as the pattern of exploitation isn't unique to the telecommunications industry. 'This is really a practice of exploitation, taking advantage of someone's vulnerability to their advantage," Mr Holden said. "Unconscionable conduct is not something that just telcos do. "There is a industry of exploitation where First Nations peoples can be targeted by people who might exploit their vulnerability to their advantage. 'There has to be a call to action to be able to stop this exploitation, to be able to actually start working with communities, to be able to try and provide them the products that they need for the for their communities.' Interviews and feature reports from NITV. A mob-made podcast about all things Blak life. The Point: Referendum Road Trip Live weekly on Tuesday at 7.30pm Join Narelda Jacobs and John Paul Janke to get unique Indigenous perspectives and cutting-edge analysis on the road to the referendum. Watch now

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