Sh!tcanned with extreme prejudice

We’ve all been fucked over at some time. It is a profoundly human experience. I imagine that’s why Jenny West’s story resonates with so many people, well beyond Macquarie Street.

Jenny who?

The well-regarded, high-performing overachiever from Investment NSW who was bumped from a dream posting to New York in favor of John Barilaro - the state’s National Party leader who was, let’s say, somewhat less well-regarded.

Indeed, Jenny West wasn’t just bumped aside. She was shitcanned with extreme prejudice, not simply losing the job she had been offered but also the one from which she’d been promoted.

Almost as though it was embarrassing to have her around.

What the fuck were they thinking?

‘They’ being the dopey munters of the NSW state cabinet who rubber-stamped this fiasco.

Probs, they weren’t thinking about anything other than Gladys Berejiklian’s wondawful circle of love with spectacularly bad boyfriend Daryl Maguire, which, at that moment in late September, threatened to implode the coalition government.

For sure, they weren’t thinking about what it would look like when the timeline was laid out. So let’s do that for everyone who’s ever been fucked over at work by someone less capable, less qualified, but higher up the food chain.

In November of 2020, John Barilaro, then NSW Trade Minister, announced the creation of five trade commissioners for the state. It’s a bit weird that this was a state thing when a whole federal government department is devoted to doing the same job, but sure. Whatevs. Knock yourself out, champ.

By August 2021, Investment NSW has finished recruiting for the roles and was ready to announce some appointments.

On August 12, one of those successful applicants, Jenny West, a deputy secretary at Investment NSW, gets a text from her boss, chief executive of Investment NSW Amy Brown, confirming her new job.

“Congratulations,” Brown sent her, “This is one to frame.”

She added emojis of the Statue of Liberty and a champagne bottle.

🍾🗽

Brown also attached a briefing note confirming her appointment, signed by Gladys Berejiklian.

Jenny West started calling friends and family, booking removalists, and planning her move. Two days later, on August 14, Amy Brown approved all of her requests regarding the contract terms.

But the contract didn’t come.

West started to chase it up. That’s what good public servants do. They stay on top of the paperwork.

But the more she chased this paper, the more elusive it became.

There were complications with US tax advice, she was told.

On September 6, an advisor in John Barilaro’s office asked Amy Brown “about the mechanisms by which global trade commissioners could be appointed”.

On September 17, during a totes awks walk-n-talk at Balmoral Beach, Amy Brown told Jenny West that her New York job was suddenly on hold. Barilaro was taking a submission to Cabinet to make the half-million-dollar-a-year positions political rather than public sector appointments.

Oh, and also, her current job would no longer be funded.

On September 18, Amy Brown emailed Jenny West, confirming their previous day’s discussion.

Things start to happen quickly.

September 21: Investment NSW’s general counsel begins investigating different ways to employ the commissioners. “Specifically, we have been asked whether there is an option for ministerial appointments”.

September 27. Brown tells West cabinet has “endorsed the request for senior trade commissioner roles to become political appointments”.

October 1. Investment NSW freezes all existing recruitment processes, and Jenny West’s verbal offer is withdrawn. Later the same day, Gladys Berejiklian announces she is stepping down.

October 3. Amy Brown emails Investment NSW’s recruitment agency to inform them the appointments will be made in-house.

October 4. John Barilaro announces his retirement as an MP.

October 11. Jenny West requests a meeting with the state’s senior public servant, Michael Coutts-Trotter, the Department of Premier and Cabinet Secretary.

October 14. Amy Brown tells Jenny West she’s not getting the job. ‘It will be a present for someone’. Brown also adds that Jenny West’s usual job as the deputy secretary of Investment NSW would be made redundant.

Her redundancy is quickly confirmed in a letter from Michael Coutts-Trotter. She never gets that meeting with him.

When you lay it out like that, it doesn’t look good, does it? But I don’t think it’s the stench coming off this that has made it so dangerous for Dominic Perrottet.

NSW has stunk of corruption from the first days of the colony. You get used to it.

I think this story has resonated so powerfully with people all over the country because of the feeling that this could happen to any of us. We can all imagine and have probably experienced getting fucked over by someone who didn’t deserve to wield that power over us.

I think it inspires a feeling of dread that falls particularly hard on professional women, many if not all of whom will have had the experience of being locked out of networks that preference the interests of well-connected men above well-qualified women.

I think if Perrottet wants to escape or even to survive this, he needs to make a grovelling apology to Jenny West and make good her loss of both income and reputation. He then needs to feed those responsible into the shredders.

But of course, the problem is, he sat in the Cabinet, which made this happen.