Gabrielle Upton is the new attorney general for NSW … A well pressed and well ordered product of the Brigidine nuns … Backed by some big guns in the Liberal Party her rise in politics has been swift … Alex Mitchell traces her journey through corporate law, investment banking, New York, and ultimately to the frontbench of the bearpit
THE fish wrappers have given an ecstatic welcome to Gabrielle Cecelia Upton as the first female attorney general for New South Wales.
However, they have overlooked another essential slice of history – she is the first investment banker to hold the first law officer’s portfolio.
Ms Upton, 50, MP for Vaucluse, the nation’s richest piece of electoral real estate, has enjoyed a meteoric rise in Liberal pecking order since her election to the Legislative Assembly in 2011.
Ex-premier Barry O’Farrell tossed her the menial duties of Minister for Sport and Recreation in his first reshuffle in 2013, but when Mike Baird became premier in April 2014 he promptly promoted her to one of the toughest portfolios – Family and Community Services, aka DOCS.
With the return of the NSW Coalition on March 28, Baird selected the ambitious Upton for the attorney general’s job, though she has scarcely practised as a full-time lawyer for 20 years.
Mark Speakman SC, MP for Cronulla, and the sharpest legal mind in parliament, had been groomed for the position, but Baird decided he should be the new environment minister.
That said, most insiders are confident Speakman will have the AG’s job at the time of the next election in 2019.
“Bambi” Baird’s choice of Ms Upton was diabolically clever and shows that he is a more than just a smiling “selfie”. At the same time he chose the first female AG, he made Gladys Berejiklian the state’s first woman treasurer.
The result was effusive newspaper headlines and glowing coverage on radio and television. Labor’s record number of female MPs – now 12 compared to the Liberal Party’s seven – went almost unnoticed.
By making Ms Upton his chief lawmaker, Baird also hopes she will be fireproofed from the ascerbic attacks of shadow attorney general Paul Lynch, MP for Liverpool, a former union lawyer who married into the Jack Ferguson political dynasty.
Upton attended the Brigidine College in Randwick where she was taught by the nuns. As she said in her inaugural speech:
“I was born in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and educated, like my mother and sister before me, by the Brigidine nuns.
Throughout my youth my mother and my Catholic faith instilled in me a belief that is as strong now as was then, that there is no higher calling than serving the community.”
From this inspirational beginning she moved onto the University of New South Wales where she graduated BA LLB, after a heavy involvement in student politics and the Young Liberals.
Freehill, Hollingdale & Page seemed the natural next port of call, followed by DLA Phillips Fox.
She married fellow UNSW student Alex Sundich in 1990 and they moved to New York in 1993 taking an MBA at NYU (on the advice of Liberal patrons of the Nick Greiner era).
She worked as a banker with Deutsche Bank and Toronto Dominion Bank, while Sundich joined Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse First Boston.
Returning to Sydney in 2000, Upton became legal counsel at the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a member of CAMAC, the Howard government’s principal advisory committee on corporations and securities law.
She served as deputy chancellor of UNSW from 2006 to 2009 and on the boards of the Duke of Edinbugh’s Awards (now Sir Phil) and Neuroscience Research Australia.
She also lives and breathes politics and her political ambitions were boundless. In 2010 she was among seven candidates for preselection to replace the hapless Peter Debnam as the member for Vaucluse.
Pre-selectors voted four times before Upton won with 80 votes to defeat Watsons Bay fish ‘n’ chips supremo Peter Doyle’s 70 votes.
Doyle stormed out of the meeting when the result was announced while Woollahra Mayor Andrew Petrie resigned from the party after receiving only one vote (probably his own).
None of the contenders had organised with the same diligence as Upton. She had references from David Gonski AC (Vaucluse’s electoral roll is around 20 percent Jewish, compared to a state average of 0.5 percent), former Leighton boss Wal King, AMP chairman Peter Mason and fund manager Robert Maple-Brown.
She courted Michael Photios, leader of the small “l” Liberals known as “The Group”, as well as the dowagers of Darling Point and the yachties of Point Piper.
In 2001 she had founded the Darling Point Society, a nice little entrée to eastern suburbs influence, promising members she wanted to “preserve the character of our area” (i.e. privilege and wealth).
While her political career has flourished, so has Sundich’s in the CBD. The former accountant was a non-executive director of Eastern Star Gas until its acquisition by Santos Ltd for more than $1.2 billion in 2011. He holds numerous directorships with finance, investment and resource companies, including the job as finance director of listed Australian gas driller Burleson Energy.
He’s also a director of Palladion Partners, a corporate financial service “with expertise in the oil and gas industry”.
If Upton keeps climbing the political ladder at this rate she’ll surely be a contender for a move to Canberra, which is a prospect should Wentworth MP Malcolm Turnbull fail to float to the top of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party.
Upton’s ministerial colleague in the Police and Justice portfolio is deputy premier, National Party leader, and former Gilgandra copper, Troy (Boy) Grant.
He has a magnificent potpourri of responsibilities, including the police, racing, hospitality (gambling and liquor), and arts (the State Library, Art Gallery of NSW, Australian Museum, Powerhouse Museum, Opera House) – now all part of the Department of “Justice”.
For the hell of it, here’s Adam Ant’s version of Goody Two-Shoes …