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<\/p>\nBrisbane couple Quentin and Kylie Birt have donated more than $100 million to charities in the past two years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite this, the pair say they do not want to be known as philanthropists.<\/p>\n
They recently made a $40 million donation to Neale Daniher’s FightMND foundation at the Big Freeze event in Melbourne, inspired to give big after reading Mr Daniher’s book.<\/p>\n
“We said if we can do it, we will,” Mr Birt said.<\/p>\n
“We had lunch with the bank and the rest is history.”<\/p>\n
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Mr Birt said he and his wife were inspired to donate to FightMND after reading Neale Daniher’s book. (Supplied: Kylie Birt)<\/p>\n
Mr Birt said they had intended to keep the donation anonymous, but plans went awry.<\/p>\n
To him, the couple’s offering was not “such a big deal”, he said.<\/p>\n
“A little kid that decides to save up bottle tops and donates $22 or whatever, you might consider it’s the same,” Mr Birt said.<\/p>\n
“He’s done what he could, and I’ve done what I could.”<\/p>\n
Mr Birt has also seen the impacts of MND firsthand.<\/p>\n
One of his employees died within a few weeks of being diagnosed, and another of his friends battled a similar degenerative disease, he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s an awful thing in the respect that at this stage, there’s no option except the obvious,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Who knows, around the corner, maybe they will get a cure.<\/p>\n
“The people that are going to solve this are not doing it for money.”![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/45560c2f003764c904fdb79e489ca9e0.jpeg\")
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Quentin and Kylie Birt intended to keep their donation anonymous, but say plans went awry. (Supplied: Kylie Birt)<\/p>\n
Growing up ‘very poor’<\/p>\n
Quentin Birt funds his charitable donations through the success of his civil construction company, Q H & M Birt, but came from a humble background.<\/p>\n
The 86-year-old grew up “very poor” on a dairy farm north of Gympie and, with encouragement from his father, became the first child in his district to go to high school.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t a particularly bright student, but I got to appreciate the fact that if you open your mind, have a look around, that was something that we would never have done on the farm.”<\/p>\n
After graduating, Mr Birt took a job as a cadet railway engineer in 1957.<\/p>\n
“I wanted to get back on the farm and have fun, but [my father] insisted that I take the job available.”<\/p>\n
By 1973, Mr Birt wanted to hit out on his own and started his business as a challenge to himself.<\/p>\n
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Quentin Birt founded his civil construction company Q H & M Birt in 1973. (Supplied: Q H & M Birt)<\/p>\n
He arrived at a job site in Brisbane’s south that year with a station wagon, wheelbarrow and a shovel to complete his first contract \u2014 building a carpark in Moorooka for Australia Post.<\/p>\n
He received $10,000 in return.<\/p>\n
Since then, his company has grown into Australia’s largest civil construction fleet, with more than $2 billion of work completed in the last decade.<\/p>\n
‘We’re not wandering the planet trying to be philanthropists’<\/p>\n
Quentin and Kylie Birt’s donation to FightMND was not their first major philanthropic investment.<\/p>\n
The pair became involved in charity about seven years ago, when Mr Birt visited the School for Life facility in Uganda, founded by Australians Annabelle Chauncy and David Everett.<\/p>\n
Mr Birt said the organisation’s work “blew him away”, and he had been supporting the cause ever since.<\/p>\n
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