Susan McDonald, a former CEO and successful businesswoman, epitomizes the intersection of agriculture and politics. Driven by her deep connection to north-western Queensland, she embarked on a mission to represent the interests of her community in the political arena.Susan McDonald, a former CEO and successful businesswoman, epitomizes the intersection of agriculture and politics. Driven by her deep connection to north-western Queensland, she embarked on a mission to represent the interests of her community in the political arena. Her family’s extensive involvement in the cattle industry and the challenges faced by small businesses inspired her to bring a unique perspective to the national level. McDonald firmly believes that without food production, we cannot survive, making agriculture a primary focus of her political efforts. As a senator, she tirelessly advocates for the development of Northern Australia, emphasizing its potential as a source of food, minerals, and access to Asian markets. Her appointment as Special Envoy for Northern Australia by the former Morrison government further reflects her dedication to the region. While acknowledging the importance of addressing environmental concerns, McDonald does not subscribe to the idea of an impending apocalypse due to global warming. Instead, she expresses confidence in humanity’s ability to find solutions to the problems we face through creativity, resourcefulness, and ingenuity. Despite her recent political endeavors, McDonald remains a well-respected figure within the Queensland beef industry. Her former association with the Brekky Creek Hotel serves as a testament to her approachability and the positive impact she has made within her community.
She is the former CEO of Super Butcher and runs a family business with 150,000 head of cattle on a piece of land the size of Belgium. Susan McDonald could have chosen a life of leisure instead of politics.
And Senator Susan McDonald, former CEO of Super Butcher, knows her steak from field to plate.
She has ordered a delicious piece of Porterhouse, (weird) chips and vegetables and has not even finished two bites before she compliments the chefs at the Spanish Garden restaurant of the Breakfast Creek Hotel.
“Beautiful, perfect!” she exclaims.
“Look, you don’t even have to write a story if you don’t want to, my day is not wasted, this is just the perfect lunch for me.”
Steak was, in a not-so-exhaustive way, the reason this Townsville senator wanted to enter politics.
She was highly successful in business and had no real need for a new career in politics in Canberra, where she arrived in 2019 as a newly elected senator for the LNP.
She could also have chosen a life of peace.
Susan McDonald ordered the 350g Darling Downs Porterhouse with red wine jus, Idaho baked potato and coleslaw. Photo Lachie Millard
Fortunately, we do not have aristocrats in Australia yet. Otherwise, Senator McDonald would have to be among their ranks.
The family’s presence in Australia goes back almost two centuries. Her father, Don McDonald, was state and federal chairman of the National Party in the 1990s and the family business, MDH Pty Ltd, is one of Australia’s largest beef companies with approximately 150,000 cattle across 14 properties covering a land area almost the size of Belgium and is the product of seven generations of the McDonald family’s involvement in Australian agriculture.
To bolster the family’s already solid financial reputation, Senator McDonald also helped establish a hugely successful small business, Super Butcher. She took over as CEO after the death of former CEO, her brother Zanda, in 2013.
When she was given responsibility for over 100 employees across five stores, she gained insight into both the joys and the struggles of the people who form the basis of the national economy.
She believes that people who are involved in representative politics and have not run a small business are at a significant disadvantage compared to those who have.
“If you’ve never run a small business, I don’t think you’ve known the joy of the wins and the pain of the losses, the possibility of losing your home, finding out you have to pay your staff before you pay yourself, you know, that sense of responsibility to something bigger than yourself,” she says.
Yet, even amid her success, she became increasingly alarmed that the northern half of Australia, where she grew up (and where much of our food comes from), was being marginalised and perhaps even ignored by successive governments.
Reporter Michael Madigan has lunch with Senator Susan McDonald in the Spanish Garden of the Breakfast Creek Hotel Photo Lachie Millard
Her unabashed romanticism about north-west Queensland, clearly her spiritual home, was evident in her 2019 Maiden Speech:
“I come from a great country,” she told the federal parliament.
“I am a Cloncurry woman. I am made from the red earth of north-west Queensland. The minerals flow through my veins and the blue sky fills my eyes.”
She felt that someone had to stand up and give a voice to the great country she loves so much, so she decided that it had to be her. Now that she is in the tent, farming is her main focus.
“Food production is simply the most important thing happening in this world,” she says.
“Everything else may be important, but without food we cannot survive.
“We need good quality food, food that is nutritious and that grows the brain and the body.”
The panic that creeps through a community when supermarket shelves become empty, as it did a few years ago in the early days of Covid, puts everything into perspective, she says.
Sri Lanka recently experienced this when there was a push to use only organic fertilizers, resulting in crop failures.
“Once people get hungry, they become very focused.”
It was not so much the practical nature of food production as the business side of the equation that captured her attention in her early years at the remote Devoncourt Station outside Cloncurry
In the 1970s, there were some jillaroos in addition to the jackaroos, but livestock farming was essentially a male affair.
While her mother tries to keep her and her two brothers focused on their lessons at the School of the Air, rural children like the senator and her two brothers, James and Zanda, often don’t want to escape from home and enter the compound.
“We took every opportunity to get out of school. Someone would come to the door or the phone would ring and my brothers and I would just disappear.”
Yet she also discovered that she had an affinity for bookkeeping in what was essentially a large, small business.
When she went to Stuartholme in eighth grade to study boarding school in Brisbane, she found herself a little confused by the team sports and intrigues of teenage life. But not by business studies.
“It was a great school and I enjoyed my time there,” she says.
“I showed up and found that I had received a great education thanks to distance learning.
“But I had no idea how to play team sports or, you know, the social bickering in the classroom.
‘That was all new to me.’
What she did not find new was accounting. She took a degree in accounting and economics at the University of Queensland, where she also joined the Toowong chapter of the Young Nationals, mainly for the social life it offered.
After running a small business, getting married and having three children, she was ready for a challenge in Canberra, including being appointed Special Envoy for Northern Australia in the final year of the Morrison government.
The appointment followed the publication by the Abbott government of the first ever White Paper on the Development of Northern Australia. This book contained a number of promising plans for the north, including a study of new dam sites, new meat roads and improved airstrips.
Senator Susan McDonald enjoys lunch with Michael Madigan in the Spanish Garden of the Breakfast Creek Hotel Photo Lachie Millard
It’s been almost a decade since the White Paper was published, and many northerners may be wondering exactly when all that new infrastructure will arrive.
But Senator McDonald still believes there is a political will to develop the north, which is not only rich in potential mineral and agricultural resources, but also close to Asian markets.
She remains confident that good things are ahead, not just for the North but for Australia in general, provided we continue to grow and develop with an eye to preserving our first world way of life and our environment.
She does not believe in the idea of an impending apocalypse due to global warming.
During her lifetime, a looming apocalypse was always around the corner, from nuclear winter to chronic pollution, a looming ice age, the depletion of the ozone layer to a “population explosion” that would allegedly see the world wipe itself out to the point of extinction.
“It’s like scary movies, we love to be scared,” she says.
“Just look at the air pollution in our cities in the 1960s. We invented technology to clean up cities, to clean up the fuel, the air, the rivers.
“I truly believe that people are creative, resourceful and ingenious and can identify and solve the problems we face.”
After the meal is over, Senator McDonald gives it a solid ten, while a staff member approaches the MP to gripe about the meal.
All this attention has nothing to do with her role as an elected representative, but is a result of the senator’s celebrated role in Queensland’s beef industry and her long association with the Brekky Creek pub.
“Is she a politician now?” the employee asks, somewhat surprised.
“Well… she was always nice.”
