Queen’s Birthday Honours: For Suncorp chair Christine McLoughlin business starts early

Suncorp chair Christine McLoughlin’s first job paid 20 cents and involved germinating seeds in a saucer for her grain agent father in rural New South Wales.

Suncorp chair Christine McLoughlin’s first job paid 20c and involved germinating seeds in a saucer for her grain agent father in rural NSW.

Ms McLoughlin, who was awarded an Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for her services to business, the not-for- profit sector and women, credits her now 82-year-old father Max with giving her the first taste of the world of business.

That had allowed her to forge a career first as a corporate lawyer and later as one of Australia’s most prominent non-executive directors.

“I was about nine years old and my dad gave me this job,” Ms McLoughlin said. “I would put about 100 seeds in a saucer with some wet cotton wool and wait three days for them to germinate before showing the results to my father.

“I would get 20c which would actually buy something in those days.”

Ms McLouglin, who has gone on to prominent board positions at Suncorp, Cochlear, Whitehaven Coal and NIB, said her father’s example of community service in the Riverina town of Berrigan had served her well over the years.

“He gave so much to the community through his involvement with the local football club and Rotary,” she said.

“Growing up in a small country town there were two things to do – sport and school – and I was heavily involved in both. In those days, it was very denominational in that you went to the local state school or Catholic school.

“I went to the Catholic school but sport, whether it was netball, cricket, tennis or squash, was a way to bring the town together.”

Ms McLoughlin played competitive squash and tennis, activities that allowed her to network and make friends when she arrived in Sydney as a young lawyer in the late 1970s.

She points out that the law was still largely dominated by men but credits several male mentors with helping her progress up the corporate ladder.

“My boss at the time noticed that at the end of my first year I was not getting the pay rises the men were and so he really went into bat for me,” she said.

“When I joined the firm, six out of 30 young lawyers also coming on board were women.

“Of that cohort only two remain involved in any sort of commerce.”

Despite her belief that a “lot of business decisions are still made by men”, Ms McLouglin remains lukewarm on the need for quotas for women on boards.

“Quotas may come one day, but I think the most important thing is commitment by companies to gender and cultural diversity,” she said.

Sport still plays a big part in Ms McLouglin’s life, even though she concedes her love of squash has left her knees worse for wear.

In 2017, following the Rio Olympics, she and a group of leading businesswomen founded the Minerva Network (named after a Roman goddess), a mentoring program for elite women athletes.

Ms McLoughlin is currently mentoring cricketers Alyssa Healy and Rachael Haynes.

Ms McLoughlin said she was amazed by the development of women’s sport, noting that a recent game of Suncorp Super Netball attracted more than 10,000 people.

“If you would have told me 30 years ago women’s sport would attract that sort of crowd, I would have told them they were crazy,” she said. There are so many ­commercial and branding opportunities.”

The mother-of-three adult children said the Covid-19 pandemic had provided opportunities for changes in working life, particularly flexible work-from-home arrangements. This would benefit working parents of both genders.

She said being a mother was her most important role but conceded she never succumbed to being a “helicopter parent.” “My children loved the fact I was a working mum,” she said.