Voice on fast forward, she’s chatting cheerfully with food and beverage manager Scott Gledhill, who has personally sought out two of the finest pieces of sirloin in the state which will soon meet with the approval of Kate Jones, ARLC commissioner, Tech Council of Australia executive director, mother, wife, former Queensland cabinet minister and newly appointed Paralympics Australia vice-president.

The Beetson is a league hotel, owned by the National Rugby League and a favourite of out-of-town fans who use it as a home away from home when they descend on Suncorp Stadium for the big games.

It’s also named after late rugby league veteran, Roma-born Artie Beetson, who once devoured 11 hot dogs as the match warmer for an official team dinner in 1973.

So the pub’s food and beverage manager does have a certain standard to uphold when it comes to the satisfying the appetites of patrons and Scott doesn’t let Artie, or us, down, serving up platters of melt-in-the-mouth wagyu sirloin, rough cuts chips and plates of greens.

“We’re giving this 10 out of 10,’’ I murmur after the first mouthful without consulting Kate.

But she only nods her head in furious agreement, predicting, with an insider’s knowledge, that there are plans afoot to make the Beetson truly shine as a world-class hotel, if it isn’t rated as one already.

Kate has sport on her mind, permanently now given she’s just joined Paralympics Australia.

She always loved sport, which was fortunate given she grew up with five brothers who could grow melancholy in those months between the end of the cricket season and the start of the footy season.

But her promotion as Paralympics vice-president has her thinking of the broader implication of sport and its role in an increasingly fractured world where we not only have ceased watching the same television shows and talking about them at work the next day, but can’t even agree what the “news’’ is any more.

“I just think sport, increasingly, has a disproportionate role to play in that idea of bringing people together,’’ she says.

“It’s one way we all come together and we say, ‘I don’t care what your politics are, we’re all united right here.’ ’’

It’s undoubtedly true, if slightly paradoxical given sport is that one human institution which insists individuals and groups divide into opposing teams to compete with one another.

Sport’s powerful unifying dynamic is on display here in Queensland every year as State of Origin games approach, and strangers are suddenly united in those quick, shorthand conversations played out in pubs or taxis or amid quick retail transactions.

“That’s exactly what I am talking about,’’ Kate says.

“You know State of Origin has just recorded record numbers, even Victorians watched those games more than ever before,’’ Kate notes.

Kate sees the 2032 Olympics, and more specifically for her the Paralympics, as taking that unifying notion to another level.

She notes the Parisians at last year’s Olympic Games embraced the Paralympics with genuine enthusiasm, refusing to vacate the arenas after the first segment of the games had finished.

That has, regrettably, happened occasionally in the 77 years since Dr Ludwig Guttman marshalled a group of military veterans with spinal cord injuries to compete in a few games on the same day the 1948 London Summer Olympics opened, and gave birth to the modern Paralympic Games.

But in the 21st Century the world has come to embrace the Paralympics as perhaps the most elevated example of that pursuit of excellence, that discipline, that “overcoming of the odds’’ theme which stir the hearts of spectators in every sporting contest.

As President of Paralympic Australia, Grant Mizens OAM, (the man who called her a “force of nature”) says, Kate will have her work cut out for her as the organisation works towards the 2026 Paralympic Winter Games and then onto LA in August 2028.

But her credentials as a Queenslander will become crucial as we move towards 2032.

“She is a Queenslander which is critical for Paralympics Australia as we build towards Brisbane 2032 and build a long-term legacy for the city and the state.”

The challenge won’t daunt her. She’s faced down enough already.

One was that low water mark in Queensland Labor history in 2012 when the political tsunami named Campbell Newman arrived, and swept Kate and most of her colleagues off the rocks.

They were reduced to the “Tarago Party”, named in honour of the Toyota Tarago that could have not only housed all Labor members of the Queensland House of Representatives, but transported them off to the political oblivion which some then suspected was the destination of the Queensland Labor Party.

Campbell, her great nemesis whom she gets along with fine these days given their shared interest in the world of hi-tech, was on top of the world in 2012.

Kate was on the bottom.

“They were horrible days, undoubtedly horrible – we lost our jobs and were pretty much unemployable,’’ she remembers.

So horrible were those days that, when she watched television coverage of the 2015 contest which heralded Labor’s triumphant return, she felt a genuine pang of sympathy for now Premier David Crisafulli who had to concede his seat of Mundingburra after just one term.

“I distinctly remember watching him on that night in 2015 – I didn’t even really know him – but I really felt for him,’’ she recalls.

“But I sometimes think the best politicians are the ones who have lost and have come back.

“You come back tougher, but you also come back with a sense of what does matter and what doesn’t matter.’’

How she could contemplate entering the fray again after such as drubbing resulted from the influence of another rugby league hero – Alfie Langer.

Kate knew she could not properly care for a dog while serving as a politician but, without the burdens of office, she bought a cavoodle pup that seemed to be able to find the smallest gaps in fences, slip through and sprint off at high speed.

“So I called him Alfie.’’

Down at the Ashgrove Dog Park Alfie was a hit, and so was Kate as constituents started haranguing her about all that was wrong with the new LNP government and its Premier who now happened to be the local MP.

“You remember that time!’’ she tells me.

“There were the doctors who were angry, then the lawyer, it was these waves of anger that you guys (at The Courier-Mail) were reporting in the paper, and it was all playing out down at the dog park.’’

She was back in 2015, dropping her young boy at Prep on a morning just days after the election, and returning to pick him up in the afternoon as the newly accredited state education minister.

The following two terms were deeply satisfying, she says, but she knew the end had come by 2020.

“When that idea pops into your head you might want to leave politics, it’s very hard to get rid of it.’’

Today she finds tremendous enjoyment in life, loves learning the joys of technology and artificial intelligence on the Tech Council, and even takes some pleasure in being a political ecumenical.

She attended a wedding recently where LNP Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie was celebrant and former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull a guest.

“And yes, of course, we all had a great time.’’

Sirloin steaks.

Rough cut chips.

Greens.

10/10