Glen Norris

Queensland’s long-suffering taxpayers appear to be giving some public servants a nice little holiday under the guise of reproductive leave.

Mike Henry loves Brisbane. The globetrotting boss of mining giant BHP tells your diarist he spent a couple of years in the river city while helping to set up the BHP Mitsubishi Alliance in the early 2000s. “I lived at a couple of places including Kenmore Hills and Newstead,” the Canadian-born mining executive said on the sidelines of the BHP annual general meeting in Brisbane earlier this week.

Suncorp shareholders will have to wait a bit longer for promised lolly from the $4.9bn sale of its banking business to ANZ.

Rio Tinto says it will partner with the Queensland government to ensure the financial viability of its Boyne aluminium smelter in the industrial city of Gladstone.

Glass manufacturer Orora, which this week rejected a $3.4bn bid from US private equity firm Lone Star, has flagged the sale of its North American packaging business to concentrate on supplying high-end liquor bottle to brands including Glenfiddich and Hennessy.

Brissie medtech firms aim for global expansion

Forget solar panels, semiconductors and batteries – apparently it’s cheap Australian-made laundry detergent that consumers are crying out for during this cost-of-living crisis.

High-profile hotel developer Michael Malouf has picked up a prized stretch of beachfront land at Noosa for $16.2m after a bitter legal battle that forced out a Queensland farming family.

When Queensland farmer Ian Cameron reaped a bumper wheat crop back in 1979, he headed to the then burgeoning tourist town of Noosa with a pocketful of cash.

Billionaire Gerry Harvey could have hired a private jet complete with champagne and caviar on his way back to Sydney after a successful Magic Millions on the Gold Coast earlier this month. Instead, the notoriously frugal Harvey (illustrated) was spotted in economy on VA 512 as it winged its way back to the Emerald City. “He could buy the entire airline,” a city beat spy on the same flight told us. Harvey and his wife Katie-Page Harvey are the co-owners of the Magic Millions, which bills itself as the southern hemisphere’s biggest yearling sale and horse racing carnival. Harvey told horse lovers at the Magic Millions this year that both horse sales and sales of fridges and televisions were holding up despite challenging economic conditions. “Trying to predict the market all the time whether its horses or fridges is never easy,” Harvey told Sky Racing at the annual thoroughbred auction at the Magic Millions.“With horses, the sale last year was a boomer and I thought that this year we can’t get the