Tough start taught BCA boss Jennifer Westacott life lessons

Her career has its roots in a housing commission flat, and today Jennifer Westacott becomes an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Business Council chief Jennifer Westacott at Sydney’s Martin Place after learning she was to become an Officer in the Order of Australia. Picture: John Feder

Jennifer Westacott’s stellar career in business and public policy has its roots in a small housing commission flat in Springfield, on the NSW central coast.

That’s where the chief executive of the Business Council of Australia grew up, and learned lessons that have underpinned her attitude to life and work.

“My parents didn’t have great education, they didn’t have great careers, but they had jobs and jobs is what gave them dignity,” the 58-year-old says.

FULL COVERAGE: More Honours recipients

Ms Westacott, who today becomes an Officer of the Order of Australia for her service to private and public administration, is currently facing what she describes as “by far” the biggest challenge of her career — championing the business case for the federal government’s company tax cuts as a means to grow the economy, jobs and wages.

It’s a cause that is fuelled as much by her desire to improve the lot of the business community as it is by her personal experience of poverty and disadvantage. “The opportunities that you get early in life, they have all been off the back of a stronger economy and a stronger society,” she says.

Ms Westacott has attracted plenty of criticism over her position on company tax.

She admits, though, that bad behaviour by big business, banks and energy companies has provided opponents of the reform with plenty of ammunition.

But that doesn’t mean all of the business community — and the economy with it — should be fitted with the “ball and chain” of an uncompetitive tax rate by “mischievous” and “unethical” political opponents.

“We are not talking about economic growth for economic growth’s sake,” Ms Westacott says.

“We are doing it so that we can have a decent society and a fairer society.

“We believe that to have these things you first have to have a strong economy.”

Business causes aside, Ms Westacott has also championed causes that have not traditionally been the focus of corporate Australia, leading the heads of Australia’s 100 biggest companies into debates on mental health, unemployment benefits and gay marriage.

The advocacy for same-sex marriage came from an openly gay woman who has been in a committed relationship with Tess Shannon for 33 years.

Ms Westacott has chaired the Mental Health Council of Australia and since last year she has personally funded a literacy centre in inner-city Sydney.

Read, Write, Spell, run by her partner and catering to migrants, asylum seekers and others who have fallen to the margin of society, is “the most fulfilling thing I have done in years,” Ms Westacott says. After finishing university, Ms Westacott joined the NSW public service, rising swiftly to be deputy director-general of the Department of Housing in 1998.

She abruptly crossed the border in 2001, becoming director of Housing Victoria and the Secretary of the Department of Education.

Her public service career ended back in NSW as director-general of the NSW Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Natural Resources until 2005, when she crossed to private sector consulting at professional services firm KPMG. She has been a director of Wesfarmers since 2003.

Ms Westacott describes her Queen’s Birthday award as a “great honour”.

“To have your country recognise you is incredibly humbling.”