Harvey Lister one of six new inductees into the Queensland Business Hall of Fame
Events and entertainment icon Harvey Lister, fashion innovator Keri Craig-Lee and a name synonymous with eggs are three of the six new inductees into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame. See the full list
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It was a part-time job at high school that led Harvey Lister to become an events and entertainment industry legend into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame on Thursday night.
An initiative of QUT and the State Library of Queensland Mr Lister was one of six inductees into the Hall of Fame at a function at the Brisbane Convention and Entertainment Centre.
He is the chairman and chief executive (Asia-Pacific and Middle East & North Africa) for Legends/ASM Global, which operates major venues worldwide, including Suncorp Stadium, the Brisbane Entertainment Centre, and the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
He has been involved in the presentation of more than 40,000 major events across sport, the arts, and conventions and exhibitions, including Olympic and Paralympic Games, G20 meetings, World Cups, and thousands of conferences and concerts.
Through his venue management, he has presented artists to Australian audiences including Elton John, INXS, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, U2, Lady Gaga, One Direction and Taylor Swift.
And it may all never have happened, had it not been for a part-time job during high school at his local newsagency.
One day the owners asked him if he would take their daughters on a school holiday outing while they worked – a favour that opened his eyes to the sparkling world of live entertainment.
“They said ‘would you mind taking the girls – catch the tram, it’s down in Victoria Park, there’ll be a tent there, it’s called ‘Disney on Ice’,” Mr Lister said.
“We walked into this massive tent and I just sat there wide-eyed.”
After school he did a radio and TV course and landed a job as a store announcer at Myer Fortitude Valley. That quickly turned into PR jobs in the early 1970s at two shopping centres managed by Myer at the time – Brookside and Chermside.
At Chermside, he had his first direct involvement with promoters and acts. “I did a deal with the Edgleys and brought Disney on Ice to the shopping centre – the centre was jam-packed, it was extraordinary,” he said.
Those shopping centre roles gave Mr Lister many radio contacts, which led him to found the Queensland Rock Music Awards at Colour Radio 4IP and start working with concert promoters.
Brisbane’s failed bid for the 1992 Olympic Games opened another door. The new Brisbane Entertainment Centre at Boondall had been designed and built to host Olympic gymnastics events, but instead became a major entertainment venue under a consortium led by Mr Lister.
The consortium turned into venue management group Queensland Leisure and, after a series of mergers, became part of ASM Global in 2019 of which he is chairman and CEO.
“We always believe we create careers for people, not just jobs,” he said.
“We have people from Brisbane working all over the world; we’ve got a whole bunch of them in Hong Kong (this year) opening the brand new 50,000-seat dome stadium, Kai Tak Stadium.
“We’re lucky now that we’re part of a global family … 412 venues around the world, 38 of the great stadiums of the world, hundreds of indoor entertainment arenas, 86 major convention centres, and hundreds of other types of venues.”
Buderim Ginger
The ginger producer, processor and distributor was founded in 1941 by five Buderim ginger farmers in response to a global ginger shortage during World War II, when it couldn’t be imported from China.
“A group of five farmers came together to plan the rapid expansion of the ginger industry,” Buderim Ginger’s managing director, Tom Himstedt said.
“They formed the Buderim co-op in a farm shed, with the first processing occurring in a workshop on the hill at Buderim.”
Today, Buderim Ginger is the world’s only western ginger processor and produces more than 60 different ginger products from its base at Yandina in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.
It exports about half of its total production to 17 countries around the world – mostly in northern Europe and North America, but also to Asian countries such as Korea, China and Japan.
The company is also a major Sunshine Coast employer, with more than 80 people working at its Yandina facility.
It has also been a tourist attraction for decades, with The Ginger Factory now attracting 300,000 to 400,000 people each year – including notable visitors such as Prince Charles and Princess Diana in 1983.
“The tourism side started in the late 1940s when the people of Buderim were curious about this agrifood business and the company used to open its doors on Friday afternoon,” Mr Himstedt said.
“And ever since then, the story of the factory, the story of the processing, has always been a part of the overall brand story. The tourism park tells the story of ginger.”
Mr Himstedt said the product that ‘really built the company’ was crystallised ginger, which is now marketed under the name Naked Ginger.
Their range also includes sushi ginger, pickled ginger, ginger jam, ginger cordials, and a very popular ginger beer.
Betty Byrne Henderson
The pioneering businesswoman was a trailblazer who made a groundbreaking contribution to the automotive industry and made significant contributions to philanthropy and the community.
Betty Byrne Henderson died earlier this year, aged 93.
Her daughter Louise Fleury and son Paul Byrne described her as tenacious, generous and relentlessly positive.
From humble beginnings as a 15-year-old “office girl” to one of Queensland’s most respected businesswomen and philanthropists, her life was one of quiet revolution.
Ms Byrne Henderson’s journey into the motor industry began when her husband, once a Holden executive, took a leap of faith to open a Ford dealership in Brisbane’s Chermside.
When her husband passed away in 1977 after a short battle with cancer, Ms Byrne Henderson stepped into leadership at Byrne Ford, defying the norms of a male-dominated industry.
“I don’t think there was any real mourning time,” Ms Fleury said. “Mum threw herself right in.”
Offers to buy the dealership came quickly, but the family stood firm.
There were 35 employees at the dealership when Ms Byrne Henderson took over. As the business grew, so did the team and, during its peak, there were more than 140 employees at the dealership.
With strategic thinking and strong people skills, Ms Byrne Henderson modernised the business, introducing performance incentives and creating a culture of mutual respect.
“She had not only the experience, she had the support and she certainly had the team around her. I think that was a real quality of Mum’s; she was able to gather the right people around her, to treat them well and in return they respected her and did a great job,” Ms Fleury said.
Outside the showroom, Ms Byrne Henderson soon became a public figure in Queensland. Her determination in a male-dominated industry resonated with many women and she turned to philanthropy.
Her tireless work led to the introduction of the travelling mammogram which serviced remote and Indigenous communities across Queensland.
Keri Craig-Lee
With almost five decades in the fashion industry, Keri Craig-Lee is tightly woven into the fabric of Australia’s fashion history and has now been inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame.
Born into a Brisbane fashion family, Peter and Dianne Craig had been dressing Australian women for generations through their exclusive label Fifth Ave Frocks, Keri grew up in a world of fabric bolts and cutting tables, doing her homework after school in the family’s Fortitude Valley factory and offering opinions on her parents’ designs.
“Fashion was always just a part of life,” she said.
After graduating high school at St Margaret’s Anglican Girls School, she spent a formative year in the US as a Rotary exchange student.
She describes the exchange student experience as life changing and back in Brisbane, she launched her own eveningwear label at just 19 years old. With 36 garments, it had national distribution from day one.
At 21 she won her first RAQ Fashion Design Supreme Award. By the age of 28, she was the inaugural inductee in the Retail Association of Queensland Hall of Fame. To this day, Keri remains the only female designer in the RAQ Hall of Fame and the only recipient of its Award of Excellence.
But it was a surprise encounter that catapulted her label to international heights, drawing a celebrity clientele from around the world.
“The day Elton John walked into my store in Double Bay, well, that was my lucky day,” she said. His bride-to-be, Renate Blauel, commissioned Keri to design her wedding gown, bridesmaids’ dresses, trousseau, flowers, Elton’s boater and bow tie and decorate the church and cars – no mean feat considering it was on Valentine’s Day.
After several boutiques in Brisbane and one in Sydney’s Double Bay, she opened the Keri Craig Emporium in the Brisbane Arcade in 1983. It remains an iconic part of Queensland’s fashion history.
Off the catwalk, Keri Craig married Trevor Lee in 1986, and she assisted her husband in growing Australian Country Choice to become Australia’s largest privately owned beef and cattle vertically integrated company.
They are the first married recipients to be inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame for their leadership in different sectors.
Euan Murdoch
The pharmaceuticals entrepreneur who made Herron paracetamol a household name, became ‘Head Goanna’ of the iconic Goanna Oil brand, and is now aiming to disrupt global cattle breeding technology.
The youngest of six children, he grew up in rural Victoria and wanted to be a farmer like his dad.
But the family farm ‘wouldn’t split six ways’ after his father suddenly passed away in his last year of school, so instead he enrolled in a vet science degree in Melbourne.
That plan didn’t work out either so, after moving to Brisbane with his wife Kaye, he studied commerce at the University of Queensland and discovered a passion for entrepreneurship.
While still a student, he started several businesses including a portable children’s highchair, veterinary products and dental products.
“The philosophy then was I wanted to have a few different businesses so that if one fell over, at least I’d have something else going,” Mr Murdoch said.
In 1972, he founded Herron Industries and in 1982 he bought the iconic J.C.Marconi – manufacturers of Goanna Oil liniment and salve – and Herron Pharmaceuticals was formed.
The purchase prompted him to develop a Brisbane factory to manufacture the oil, which would later also make Herron paracetamol.
“And Herron just grew and grew and grew. Our goal was to try and knock Panadol off in grocery in Australia … it took us 15, 20 years to get there, but we did,” he said.
“We sold product in Europe and sourced technology from the United States and by the mid ’90s we were manufacturing 400 or 500 different products.”
In 1999, Mr Murdoch founded Imaginot, a technology innovation arm, to develop fast acting pain relief to Herron’s best-known product, Herron paracetamol. Imaginot has licensed its intellectual property to several global pharma companies.
“When we decided to sell the company there were literally millions of Australians every day who would reach out and touch Herron … That’s what we built,” Mr Murdoch said.
Mr Murdoch sold Herron to Sigma Pharmaceuticals in 2003, and he and Kaye bought the property Nindooinbah, near Beaudesert.
But the move didn’t mean retirement. Instead, Mr Murdoch applied his learnings from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, and his various roles at UQ, to the beef and dairy industry.
He is now co-founder of agtech start-up Nbryo, which is working to improve global food resilience by developing technology that enables affordable transfer of genetically-advanced embryos that have improved disease resistance and climate tolerance.
Funding partners for the research include Meat & Livestock Australia and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Sunny Queen Australia
The smiley-faced egg company started with a few hundred chickens scratching around in rural Queensland is the nation’s largest egg company, working to reimagine what an Australian food producer can be.
Sunny Queen Australia began life as the Queensland Egg Board in 1930, initially focused on the marketing and distribution of eggs, before the business eventually became privatised by the Hall and McLean families.
Australians currently consume an average of 266 eggs per person per year, of which the Sunny Queen team supplies more than 1.5 billion. It is the leading supplier of eggs in Australia.
CEO and Managing Director Julie Proctor sees the scale as a privilege.
“Pretty much everywhere you would anticipate an egg being consumed would be part of our customer base,” she said.
To meet that demand, Sunny Queen has expanded far beyond the humble carton, now developing and selling more than 60 products across three product pillars: shell eggs; liquid eggs; and a ready-to-eat meal range that is redefining how consumers enjoy nutritious egg-based meals on the go.
Innovation has always been a key factor in the growth of the business, with Sunny Queen investing heavily in cage free and free-range production facilities and transparent practices.
In 2009, the company launched Sunny Queen Cage Free eggs which quickly became a market leader. It has since also become a leader in free range and organic as demand for these eggs in Australia continues to grow.
Sunny Queen’s biggest selling eggs now come from hens with access to pasture, and its online ‘Chook Tracker’ lets consumers watch hens roam live.
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Originally published as Harvey Lister one of six new inductees into the Queensland Business Hall of Fame
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