NAB chairman Ken Henry has been criticised for the way in which he gave evidence at the royal commission. Photo / Supplied
NAB chairman Ken Henry has been criticised for the way in which he gave evidence at the royal commission. Photo / Supplied
Twitter has erupted in a fury over the "arrogant, petulant, disdainful" performance of National Australia Bank chairman Ken Henry at the banking royal commission.
Henry, a multi-millionaire who was once Australia's most powerful and revered public servant, has sparked the outrage by grunting responses, scoffing at questions or refusing to answer, and talking under his breath.
The former Treasury Secretary, who owns large properties outside Canberra, told senior counsel assisting, Rowena Orr, QC, the questions he thought he needed to answer, and those he didn't.
The response on Twitter has been, basically, off with his head.
Posters on Twitter believed his "snide" and "flippant" responses should lead to his stepping down from the NAB board and one called him a "dinosaur".
"Ken Henry! Arrogant Idiot, in his mind ripping customers off appears to be the customer's problem," posted @gretep4.
"Any self respecting shareholder should demand his immediate resignation."
Ken Henry! Arrogant Idiot, in his mind ripping customers off appears to be the customer’s problem. Any self respecting shareholder should demand his immediate resignation.
Ken Henry's Wikipedia page was briefly re-edited to say that he had come across at the Royal Commission as an "arrogant tool and a genuine ballbag".
While other banking and financial institution chiefs have offered the royal commission apologies and conceded mistakes, Henry was less willing.
Take this exchange when Orr grilled Henry about the NAB board's response to the "fees for no service" scandal.
NAB executives reportedly kept quiet for 11 months before informing the regulator ASIC the bank was A$34.6 million ($36.8m) in breach of slugging customers.
Orr: Do you accept that the board should have stepped in earlier?
The wild performance of NAB chair Ken Henry - scoffing at counsel's questions, talking under his breath, grunting responses - could be how he responds to tough discussions, but it has come across as lacking any respect for #BankingRC or the issues it's tackling. Very surprising. pic.twitter.com/NwlAiUqt8r
Orr: Well I'd like you to answer my question. Do you accept that the board should have stepped in earlier?
Henry: I wish we had.
Orr: I'm going to take that as a yes, Dr Henry
Henry: Well you take it as a yes. alright?
Twitter posters also took exception to Henry's honorific of "doctor", @thehonestbank tweeting, "Just because you have a DR in front of your name does not mean you are GOD. "Unfortunately NAB's Ken Henry did not get the memo."
Henry AC, a "doctor" by way of a PhD in economics and a Companion of the Order of Australia for his work as an economist and preserving the habitat of the endangered Hairy-nosed wombat, was at other times plain rude.
When Orr asked a question and Henry dismissed it, saying "we've been through" the issue, Orr replied, "No, I'm sorry I don't think we have."
Henry shot back, "You don't?"
Orr: No.
Henry: (under his breath) No, you wouldn't.
Orr queried Henry about NAB's lack of formal record about breaking the law when it made a formal breach notification for charging at least 12,000 customers A$2m in fees for no service.
Orr: Surely someone within your business at that point was thinking about whether this conduct contravened the law, and, if so, how it contravened the law?
At other times, Henry adopted a lecturing style such as when asked about bank executives huge bonus payouts, he began talking about the state of capitalism.
"The capitalist model is that businesses have no responsibility other than to maximise profits for shareholders," he said.
"A lot of people who have participated in this debate over the past 12 months have said that's all that you should hold boards accountable for, is that they are focused on the maximisation of profits for shareholders."
Rowena Orr repeatedly asked Ken Henry to answer a question about the NAB board's delay in reporting a breach. Photo / Supplied
Asked by Orr whether he'd previously seen a document she had shown him, Henry said he couldn't remember.
"It doesn't matter really, does it?" he said, before looking up at Orr's stony response and adding, "Maybe it does."
Henry, who has worked as a tax consultant for both Liberal and Labor governments is regarded as primarily a darling of the left.
After working for former prime minister Paul Keating to successfully defeat opposition leader John Hewson's Fightback! GST 1993 election campaign, Henry did work for John Howard.
He went on to work for Kevin Rudd, writing the 2010 Henry Tax Review and for then prime minister Julia Gillard as a special adviser.
However even Fairfax press was damning his royal commission performance with the Australia Financial Review describing it as "tone deaf".
"Henry worked to portray himself as a deep thinker … but in doing so he muddied the waters around NAB's attitudes towards key issues of governance and customer care" the AFR wrote.
Appointed in 2011 to the NAB as executive director and then in 2015 as chairman, Henry has also been a director of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
In 2016, Henry stated a belief that the gulf between the hefty pay packets of chief executives and the little average workers were paid could not be wider.
He said he would work on aligning pay towards customer outcomes.
However, last year on the same day the NAB reported a A$6.64 billion profit, it announced it cut up to 4000 bank jobs.
And despite Henry's aim to reduce executives obscenely large salaries, NAB chief executive Andrew Thorburn may achieve a record earn of A$10.76m this year if he achieves performance targets.
As chairman, Henry, who comes from a humble background, having grown up in Taree as the son of a timber cutter, himself earns a mere A$790,000 from the NAB.
He also gets paid as a director of Reconciliation Australia, ASX, as executive chair of Institute of Public Policy at the Australian National University and Chair of the Advisory Council of the SMART Infrastructure Facility at Wollongong University.
Henry says his rural origins have made him a passionate conservation campaigner, with he and wife Naomi on the council of the animal protection institute, Voiceless.
"There are few pursuits more noble in life than giving voice to those who would otherwise suffer in silence," Henry says on his Voiceless profile.
But he is talking about his beloved Hairy-nosed wombat, not banking customers.
