Banking royal commission: arrogance to contrition as Ken Henry falls

Just a decade ago, he had scaled the peaks of the nation’s public life. But moments of folly have cost Ken Henry a lifetime’s reputation.

NAB Chairman Ken Henry last night. Picture: Britta Campion

Moments of folly in a witness box have cost Ken Henry a lifetime’s reputation.

Just a decade ago, he had scaled the highest peaks in the nation’s public life. He was the Treasury secretary who piloted Australia through the global financial crisis without a downturn; the man who put ­together an ambitious, two-year review of the entire tax system, even if not much of it was ever implemented.

He even liked wombats.

NAB in turmoil as Thorburn, Henry exit

His public service career was the perfect foundation for a transition into the corporate world that led to him becoming chairman of one of the nation’s biggest banks.

All that is gone now, after royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne went out of his way to criticise the bad attitudes of Henry, his chief executive, Andrew Thorburn, and their bank, NAB, towards him, the commission, customers and the community.

The attack was at least in part prompted by Henry’s inability to accept criticism during a dis­astrous stint in the witness stand in September, in which he came across as being arrogant.

“I can’t tell you how many times I have relived that appearance,” he told ABC’s 7.30 last night.

Looking crestfallen, Henry presented a far different public image, demonstrating humility and offering several apologies.

“I did not perform well,’’ he said of his appearance at the royal commission. “I really should have performed quite differently. I should have been much more open.”

While Henry and Thorburn initially dug in the day after Hayne’s report, the outgoing chairman said last night that he and the CEO had had “further time for reflecting”.

While Henry was in Sydney, Thorburn was holed up in his Melbourne home.

Henry’s now infamous performance in the witness box was an excruciating experience, both for those watching the performance in the public gallery and for counsel assisting the commission, Rowena Orr.

Her seven-word question asking Henry to explain what was behind the “purpose” he and Thorburn had cooked up “to back the bold who move Australia forward”, provoked a 665-word answer. Her efforts to get a straight answer about whether the board should have stepped in to fix up one of its messes drew little more than petulance. “I’ve answered the question the way I choose to answer the question,” Henry replied.

While most commission observers immediately knew it was a mistake to sneer at Orr, whose dogged persistence made her a folk hero, Henry last night revealed he was initially surprised and “quite upset” to read criticism of his star turn in the papers.

Not that the Henry on display during the commission was completely gone last night. While clearly too disappointed to deliver flashes of ­arrogance, there were glimpses of it when he described one of Leigh Sales’s questions as being “about something else”.

For now, Henry says the bank has “an absolute mountain to climb” to meet its customers’ expectations. If he’s to return to the top level of public life, so does he.