High Steaks: Jenny Aitchison has revealed many secrets over the years – and now this
NSW Regional Transport and Roads Minister Jenny Aitchison has not been shy about revealing secrets about herself, proving her portfolio is the least interesting thing about the Maitland MP.
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Work boots and jeans might be the outfit of the regions but, for Jenny Aitchison, the commonplace country uniform is the “magic suit” that helps her overcome a crippling phobia of dogs.
She has been terrified ever since she was rounded on by two dogs while going door-to-door selling raffle tickets for a school fundraiser.
A severe dog phobia would be bad enough for anyone to endure.
For Aitchison, who has spent countless hours door knocking her Maitland constituents, it was also “humiliating”.
“It used to be quite humiliating because, you know, you’re a woman, you’re from the Labor Party, which is not traditionally seen as a party of the bush, and you’re turning up on their doorstep, and you have to say: ‘Can you make sure there’s no dogs here’?” she said.
That’s where the magic suit comes in: A sartorial barrier of psychological protection from dogs when on the road.
“If I’m wearing short work boots and jeans, it’s okay. That’s like steel or concrete for me,” she said.
Aitchison has represented Maitland in parliament for a decade. She is now one of the Minns government’s most visibly “regional” ministers, with responsibility for Regional Transport and Roads.
But Aitchison’s portfolio is the least interesting thing about the Maitland MP.
For one, her family Christmases can be more awkward than most:
Aitchison’s daughter sometimes jokes about that time her mum told the world that she wished she had an abortion.
It was just after 10pm in 2019, in the middle of an emotionally-charged debate about abortion reform, when Aitchison took to the parliamentary dispatch box to say she would have wanted the choice to terminate her pregnancies if she had known she had the “cancer gene” BRCA2, which could be passed on to her two kids.
She told parliament of the pain she felt at carrying a potentially deadly genetic condition which may have been passed on.
“I love my daughter and my son so much,” she said.
“But if I knew when I was pregnant that there was a chance that I would be putting them through the past 10 years of my life, I would have had an abortion straightaway – because I love them and I know the pain that I have dealt with.”
More than five years later, Aitchison’s daughter still brings it up.
“This is one that comes up at family lunches quite often,” Aitchison said.
“What 22-year-old doesn’t take the chance to give mum a go?
“One of the things with my family is we’ve always been really open about everything, so they knew where I was coming from.”
It’s not just her family with which she is very open; our steak lunch at CBD’s Chophouse traverses everything from cancer to relationship troubles and sexual assault.
Aitchison grew up in Canberra, before moving to Walcha in the Northern Tablelands.
She has always been close to politics – her parents were both public servants, and you are never far away from politicians in the Canberra bubble – and a union leader in the 1990s.
But Aitchison, unlike some of her Labor comrades, also spent two decades running a small business.
Before parliament, she ran a couch tour business, a job that took her to amazing places around the world.
It is a job that came with amazing experiences, but also life-changing trauma: Aitchison was sexually assaulted on a houseboat in Zambia.
She went public with her story when she was Labor’s spokeswoman for the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault.
She was in two minds about sharing her story, because no-one except her husband and a family friend knew.
It was a way for her to better engage with survivors she spoke with as part of her job, she said.
“I just felt it was gonna be difficult, and it was difficult, but the worst thing was talking to survivors and knowing what they had felt, but not wanting to take away their story with my story,” she said.
A cancer survivor, she had a double mastectomy and reconstruction in 2018.
That came almost a decade after Aitchison had both of her ovaries removed in a bid to avoid a cancer diagnosis.
It was also around that time, 15 years ago, that Aitchison went through a crisis at home.
“I was going through a hard time with the husband, and we separated,” she says.
“I found out I had the breast cancer gene, and I’d had a hysterectomy, so I was in full surgical menopause, (with a) multimillion-dollar business, two young kids.”
Ultimately, Aitchison patched things up with her husband after some “serious time out”.
“I realised that he really, really loved me in a way that I just couldn’t see at that time,” she said.
“My husband and I are lucky that we didn’t burn down the house.”
It is a good life lesson, she thinks, and one she has applied to politics, which is a long game.
“You have to look after relationships,” she said.
Aitchison was once on the opposite side of Premier Chris Minns in a bruising ALP leadership contest, as one of the original supporters of former leader Jodi McKay.
Now she is a Minns convert.
“I was not a supporter in the early days, but I love him as a boss and as a leader,” she said.
“He gives you feedback (and) he gives you the freedom to pursue your agenda.”
Emotional questions out of the way, we finish our rib-eye and scotch fillet with reflections on Aitchison’s day job.
Among her portfolio achievements, Aitchison is most proud of her work in a $390m fund giving councils cash to upgrade dodgy roads after five years of natural disasters.
“We’ve got money out to councils really quickly,” she said. “That’s been a really big thing … speeding up that disaster relief, so that councils actually get their roads fixed.”
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