Bernie Hogan’s impressive CV shows he finished work as a sales rep long ago.
But the Queensland Hotel Association boss has a confession – “You never really leave sales”.
And no matter what Hogan is selling, he makes a pretty compelling case.
Whether it is advocating for extended trading hours (he was instrumental in a move by for the state government to relax alcohol trading laws for Australia’s FIFA World Cup charge), pushing back against crippling alcohol excise taxes, or bringing a voice to the heated debate about sports gambling, Hogan has an extraordinary reach across some of Queensland’s biggest issues.
Talking to the Sunday Mail for this week’s High Steaks at the beautiful Kirra Beach Hotel on a cracking winter’s day, Hogan is in his element.
He greets publican Greg Hodge like an old friend, which is how he views many of the 1500 members of the QHA whose membership fees effectively pay his salary.
He can reel off quirky stories about pubs and publicans from one end of the state to the other and after exactly a decade in the chair as CEO of the Queensland hotel industry’s major advocacy body, he remains passionate for the cause.
He joined the QHA after a wide and varied career, with jobs ranging from lobbying for the mining sector, to coaching rugby in the US and working as a sales rep for The Courier-Mail, Melbourne’s Herald Sun and before that the community news stable of Quest newspapers in southeast Queensland.
“I had a very clever person once say to me, “You never leave sales – you’re always selling something”,” he says over a rib eye fillet across the road from one of the world’s most famous surfing beaches.
“It might be an idea, it might be a trinket – doesn’t matter. You’re trying to influence something. So that’s what I do now.”
Hogan’s story starts in the tiny Queensland community of Mirani outside Mackay, the youngest of seven children whose parents were sugar cane farming teetotallers – a fact which draws a wry grin from Hogan, given his current occupation.
“It’s a bit funny,” he admits.
“Coming from non-drinking parents and I ended up running the Queensland Hotels Association.
“I’m not entirely sure why they didn’t drink, to be honest.
“I think they made some sort of pact when they were younger or something and it just was never a thing.
“They never cared about it. Plenty of the relatives, et cetera, did drink… and my mum’s father was actually a publican.”
Hogan grew up loving rugby league (and union) and while he’s too humble to brag, he did well enough at school to be accepted into university to study law.
He moved to Brisbane and Griffith University, swapping law for international business, all the while working at pubs across Brisbane.
Whether that lit some kind of secret spark which later steered Hogan towards the liquor industry, he isn’t sure, but after moving to the UK to follow that well-worn backpacker trail, he continued working in bars including the legendary White Lion in Covent Garden.
“It’s a fantastic part of the world,” he says.
“And you really learn pub culture there.
“I think we demonise drinking at times… whereas it’s often about bringing the community together, and remember their houses over there are so small, so the pub or the tavern is the front room, it’s the lounge room, it’s where they go to interact with society.”
Hogan returned to Queensland – and a job as a newspaper sales rep before moving first to Melbourne and then to Washington DC with his then-girlfriend (and now wife) Lori in the aftermath of 9-11 in 2001.
While she worked in senior roles for the Australian government, he landed a job with the Australian Embassy as security director, overseeing such momentous occasions as a visit by then-Prime Minister John Howard to George Dubya Bush’s ranch in Texas.
Outside of work he played and coached rugby union, including a period with the US governing body at a level just below the national team.
He also became familiar with the politics of one of the world’s most important cities.
“We think politics is big in Australia,” he says.
“America is just so far above that and it’s obviously particularly entrenched in a place like Washington DC.
“There are so many associations and unions and corporations and lobbyist firms… and then all the big military companies all around it… so yeah, it’s politics on steroids.”
That four-year stint helped shape the skillset which has made Hogan such a respected figure in Queensland.
“I was actually really fortunate… I had some wonderful consuls there who were my boss, the consul generals,” he says.
“You learn a lot from people who’ve made it work internationally for 20 years.
“There is a skill in working with government… and you learn diplomacy and diplomacy is basically lobbying, advocacy—call it what you want.”
With this new skillset, he returned to Australia and took on a number of jobs focusing on advocacy, lobbying or government relations, before a mate “tapped me on the shoulder” about the QHA post made vacant by the retirement of long-serving CEO Justin O’Connor.
“It probably entwined a lot of things that I really enjoyed… There is a skill in working with government, in advocating for an industry,” he says.
“I was very lucky to take over a wonderful team, too.
“They’ve been high-performing well before I turned up.”
Hogan’s role covers a wide range of issues for an industry vital to the economy, but often seemingly performing with one hand tied behind its back.
He takes particular exception to restrictions on trading hours – an issue which raised its head during the FIFA World Cup when Hogan successfully lobbied for special exemptions allowing licenced venues to sell alcohol during Australia’s knockout match against Egypt in the early hours of the morning.
It’s a core component of the push to revitalise Queensland’s night-time economy, which made headlines this week with the release by the state government of the night-life economy action plan, a blueprint designed to steer the state’s hospitality sector towards the 2032 Olympics.
The action plan “endorsed or noted” 50 of 62 recommendations made by a committee headed by former Powderfinger bass player and prominent Brisbane music identity John “JC” Collins.
It’s a start, but Hogan says it’s well short of his goal for 24-hour trading for licenced venues across the state.
While naysayers and doomsdayers are quick to point out potential pitfalls, Hogan is more pragmatic and believes that even if every venue was “allowed” to serve booze around the clock, it doesn’t mean they will.
Instead, he’s advocating for the removal of restrictions, so that if the pubs of Mount Isa want to trade all night during the town’s iconic rodeo festival (or Brisbane pubs during the Ekka for another example), they should be allowed.
While the Commonwealth Games hasn’t exactly inspired the kind of fanatical fervour demanding pubs open at 4am for blockbuster contests, Hogan believes there are many perfect opportunities over the coming years and he is adamant we don’t want to be still tinkering with the laws come 2032.
“We’re inviting the world here in under six years now,” he says.
“The Brazilians and the Spaniards aren’t going home at two in the morning – they’re not even going out till 11… so we need to get better at this.
“Like any skill, you’ve got to practice.
“So I’d like to see us be smarter about it… when the Rugby World Cup’s on next here for instance – we’ve got over 10 games in Queensland – let’s start working around those.
“And I’d like to see it across the state.
“In Mount Isa there’s a rodeo that goes for three days – that’s their biggest time of the year probably, so why don’t we allow them to be open later? Let them make hay while the sun shines.
“The Melon Festival at Chinchilla, the Dirt and Dust Festival (Julia Creek)? The Vision Splendid out in Winton. Why not? They’re the kind of events we should be looking at and if people want to stay open, they will.”
Hogan believes such changes are long overdue.
“The Liquor Act was written in 1994 by people who grew up in the ‘70s… who were informed by their parents in the ‘50s,” he says.
“My kids both work in hospitality and I look at them and go, “You guys will never experience the fun that we had”, because there’s so many more constraints on it of what you can do, how you can do it, when you can do it.”
He is a strong advocate for personal responsibility and doesn’t believe an entire industry should be punished for the drunken violence or other mistakes of a small few.
“We still want responsible service of alcohol, we still want adequate security and safety, but times have changed,” he says.
“We used to have cab lines 300 people long and that was where a lot of the violence happened – now if you want to go home you just jump in an Uber.
“The economy has shifted too.
“There’s over 800,000 Queenslanders working between 6pm and 6am – they should have every right to knock off and have a beer after work whether it’s 7 at night or 8 in the morning.”
Hogan says society and rule-makers tend to “demonise” drinking at times, with links to violence, crime and financial hardship, but he sees the benefits of pubs too.
“Especially in regional or rural communities, the pub is often the de facto mental health clinic – they’re where people go to connect,” he says.
“They’re a congregating [place]… people get to share their woes and to celebrate their joys and I think that’s really important.
“We’re getting less and less of that in the modern world.”
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