Qukes are hot — just ask billionaire Harvey

Cartoon: Rod Clement.

Billionaire Gerry Harvey says schoolchildren love cucumber “qukes” in their lunchpack.

He calculates he has around 30 per cent of the baby cucumber market in Australia.

“I’ve got a hot product,” he boasted on Thursday.

Measuring between 85mm and 110mm long, the mini-cucumbers are grown at Peats Ridge by his Family Fresh Farms enterprise, which distributes them through the Simonetta family’s Perfection Fresh Australia.

Harvey ordered the production system from Holland for his artisanal hydroponic operation.

“No one does it better than Holland and this goes way back to the tulips,” he told a BDO agtech webinar.

“Since 1650 or whatever when tulips were then worth more than gold,” he added, just 15 years out on the tulip mania.

Harvey said he’d researched school playground dietary habits by putting a tomato, a cucumber, a grape and whatever else into a food box for lunch.

“And whatever comes back the kids didn’t eat. I know the cucumbers they all love.

“They never come back. So, I go, I’ve got it!

“And so when Mum goes to the grocery shop, the kids go ‘Don’t forget the qukes, Mum!’.”

On its best day he’s had a 30 tonne harvest.

“So you’ve got 4000 packs to the tonne that sells for $2.99, $3.99 or $4.99, depending on where you buy it.”

Nay to neighs

It seems Gerry Harvey has familial succession issues, as he ponders what will happen to his 1000 or so thoroughbreds. Not that the octogenarian billionaire is going anywhere.

“I’m alive and well,” he told Thursday’s BDO agtech webinar hosted by Agrihive managing director James Walker.

The issue is none of his four children are interested in his thoroughbred enterprise.

Not even his 26-year-old showjumping daughter Georgie, who is in Holland training to get into the next Olympics along with her showjumper fiance, ­Oliver Lazarus . “We’ve built her a stable complex over there … 28 stables.”

He said her Valkenswaard stables were “just magnificent — there’s nothing in Australian as good”.

“She tries, tries and tries to get that champion horse. But she hates thoroughbreds.

“I said: ‘One day, Georgie, you’ll come into thoroughbreds’. And she said: ‘No, I won’t’. I said: ‘Why don’t you like?’… ‘It’s boring’, she said.”

All she wants to do is ride a horse, compete with a horse.

“But what I am trying to do is breed champion racehorses.

“And, one day I’m hoping she’ll try to walk in.

“She’s the only one that’s got any real interest in horses.

“If I drop off the cliff … she doesn’t want to do it. Nor do the other three kids. So I’m going to talk her into it!”

Albanese’s spin doctor

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has appointed the highly experienced government relations operative Alex Cramb as his senior press secretary. Until earlier this year, Cramb had spent close to a decade advising GRACosway’s
clients specialising in the defence, infrastructure, transport and professional services sectors.

He previously held a number of senior roles in both state and federal politics, including communications director for Kevin Rudd’s 2007 federal election campaign. Cramb, Mark Arbib, Tim Gartrell and Simon Banks made up Rudd’s national media unit based in Surry Hills.

Before his direct involvement in government, Alex ran his own inner-city publishing business, The News of Pyrmont and Ultimo, and enjoyed a brief stint writing property yarns in the Sydney Morning Herald in the late 1980s.

Golf, Andrews?

Rumour has it Victoria Premier Dan Andrews got in some golf last weekend.

The self-confessed golf tragic ranked among the golf devotees forced to abstain in Victoria, under his own ruling, during the heightened COVID-19 restrictions. Off course, other states played through.

The whisper was Andrews played at St Andrews Beach Golf Course on the Mornington Peninsula.

The state has been rife with Andrews’ rumoured rounds, but there was no confirmation. Shaun Phillps, his media adviser, asked Margin Call whether the latest rumour referred to St Andrews in Victoria or St Andrews Links, the home of golf in Scotland.

If only! And then Phillips asked twice to provide the intended context of its column mention.

Andrews profoundly declared in April that “playing golf is not worth someone’s life”.

Fletcher’s day out

Paul Fletcher, the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, so enjoyed the hospitality at last year’s Melbourne Cup that it slipped his mind to pop it on his pecuniary interests register.

He updated his records this week to confirm the tickets he and his jeweller wife Manuela Zappacosta had at Flemington last November.

He was a guest of race broadcaster Paul Anderson’s Network 10 and spent some time at David Attenborough’s Tabcorp marquee.

Both are stakeholders in Fletcher’s ministerial portfolio.

Their big day out saw Zappacosta among the winners having picked the trifecta in Vow and Declare’s victory.

Fletcher has updated his pecuniary interests seven times since the race that stops the nation, and was quick to note the hospitality he and Zappacosta were given for the Australian Open in February as a guest of Hugh Marks’ Nine for the semi-final, and then Jayne Hrdlicka’sTennis Australia for the men’s final.

It seems the latest disclosure came voluntarily and no one was fossicking around the disclosure lapse.

“The Minister became aware that, due to an administrative oversight in his office, he had failed to update his entry,” his spokesman advised.

“Upon becoming aware of this, he moved to correct the error at the earliest available opportunity.”

Fletcher has held the ministry since last May, when he replaced Mitch Fifield.

Briggs’ home for sale

The recently retired king of the polls, David Briggs, is forecasting a street record price when his Roseville home goes up for auction next month.

He’s predicting the 1930s art deco home will sell for more than $3.15m under the hammer in mid-July.

That street high was set in 2017, toward the end of the Sydney-wide price boom, when a four-bedroom home, which sits on 2125sq m, one of the biggest blocks on the street, was offloaded.

The land was originally home to Cromla Estate, one of the oldest buildings in Roseville — built in 1889 for pioneer grain merchant John Campbell.

David and wife Helen bought for $530,000 in 1995 when David was Newspoll’s general manager, a post he held until 2004 before he founded the independent market research and strategy firm Galaxy Research.

He had been the company’s managing director until his retirement in December, which also saw him step back as a consultant at Rutnam Advisory.

McGrath Castle Cove agent Craig Ireson,who has the listing, says Briggs prediction is “somewhat bold when there is so much uncertainty”, however he added that the six-bedroom home presents excellent value.

David and Helen are downsizing to a home on Manly’s Fairy Bower.

Aspen’s key investor

The Singaporean investment firm Brahman Capital Management has finally come out of the woodwork over its holding in the ASX-listed Aspen Group.

Shareholders in Aspen had been told last week that the biggest shareholder wasn’t participating in the $20m bookbuild, and had engaged Moelis to sell their 19 per cent stake.

At the time, Aspen couldn’t get hold of Brahman’s Ashley Feuerheerdt to verify their position.

But they’ve actually done nothing.

Some clarity came this week through the requisite change in shareholding advising their revised bookbuild stake now stands at 16 per cent.

“We have not heard from Brahman other than the SSN it released which shows it did not participate as a buyer or seller in our bookbuild,” joint chief executive David Dixon told Margin Call.

Legg Mason Asset Management advised its increased holding yesterday.