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Westpac sinks to Carolyn McCann

For McCann to now be 2IC of Australia’s sixth largest company is beyond ludicrous.

Joe Aston |
Westpac sinks to Carolyn McCann
Carolyn McCann, now acting 2IC at Westpac, at a parliamentary hearing in Canberra on 29 August 2024. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

I'm sure you're all excited for the election to be over and for Australia to continue its terminal decline under the leadership of someone deeply unqualified to meet the moment. We don't know who that person is just yet, but we can already be confident of their determination to underwhelm us. 

I vented my frustration with the dire standards of this campaign in my monthly column for the Australian Financial Review, published this morning:

We are being led by numpties
A gobsmacking lack of intellectual heft in politics has us on a desperately unsustainable path, yet nobody is proposing to do anything meaningful about it.
Australian Financial ReviewJoe Aston

In welcome relief, Rampart's resident foodie Alex Carlton has twice darkened the doors of Chris Lucas' new Melbourne compound, Maison Bâtard, and we published her review yesterday. I've been twice myself since it opened in November and on its rooftop terrace, was teleported to the fabled atrium of Paris' Hotel Costes. Last time I was at Costes, funnily enough, I ran into Lucas.

Clucky for Maison Bâtard | Rampart
Chris Lucas has ushered in the Paris end of Bourke Street.
RampartAlexandra Carlton

Also this week, Westpac appointed corporate services boss Carolyn McCann acting chief executive of its largest and most important division, the consumer bank. Roxy Jacenko must have been unavailable. 

McCann joined Westpac 12 years ago as its head of PR and picked up responsibility for customer service along the way. One presumes she's more capable at customer service than public relations, which wouldn't be saying much.

Actually, McCann was caught up in a customer service and PR fiasco last month when an over-zealous agent in Westpac's call centre froze a customer's money after asking him a series of incredibly intrusive and presumptuous questions. The customer recorded the call and Sydney radio host Ben Fordham played it on his show. McCann then left a voicemail for the staff member saying "I couldn't be prouder of you and… I thought you handled the call brilliantly" (which he really didn't), but McCann inadvertently left that message on the customer's phone. Fordham played that on the radio too! Fordham beeped out McCann's name because "I don't want to cause her undue embarrassment". I suffer no such aversion, and Rampart is delighted to bring you the world exclusive that it was her!