It was a day of triumph and tragedy when Gabrielle Upton, one-time Wall Street banker, corporate lawyer and university deputy chancellor, was sworn in as NSW Attorney-General.
"I've got to go," the member for Vaucluse told her staff after the ceremony in the ballroom at Government House. "I've got to euthanase our cat at the vet."
Barney, beloved family pet for 15 years, was on the last of his nine lives when he was run over by a car.
An "incontinent cat that's 15 years old that has a broken pelvis and no use of its tail" is not a good rehabilitation prospect, Upton says matter-of-factly.
The 50-year-old is nothing if not a straight talker. The former corporate lawyer prides herself on "evidence-based decision-making".
And, like Premier Mike Baird – also a former banker at Deutsche Bank – she is in a hurry to get things done.
"I'm always about, 'let's do it yesterday but today's OK,' " she says.
Upton is the third Attorney-General in just over four years in NSW and takes over the role from Brad Hazzard.
Hazzard won plaudits from the profession for working with his state counterparts to force the federal government to reverse damaging cuts to Legal Aid.
But Hazzard and Baird also courted controversy last year by introducing tougher bail laws, a move condemned by legal experts as a knee-jerk response to criticisms in the tabloid media.
Asked how she would engender the trust of the profession, Upton says she is here to listen. "You have an open, honest conversation," she says.
Upton says the NSW Bar Association has already raised with her the possibility of reintroducing the title of Queen's Counsel for senior barristers - a controversial issue that divided silks last year.
Upton says she is "happy to consider any idea" but she would "need to understand the rationale for it and how that serves the system of justice well".
As the state's first law officer Upton will find herself regularly in the cross-hairs of shock jocks and other commentators pushing for hardline law-and-order policies and speaks already about the need to be "tough on perpetrators" of crime.
She will work closely with Deputy Premier and Police Minister Troy Grant, a former country police officer who heads the "justice cluster" of ministries.
Baird has also reinstated the corrective services portfolio, which was given to Baulkham Hills MP David Elliott.
Upton grew up in Sydney's eastern suburbs and attended Brigidine College in Randwick, but the MP for the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Vaucluse says she "didn't have a particularly well-to-do background".
"Neither of my parents were university educated, but they sacrificed so that I went to a decent school where I got a good education," Upton says.
As for Barney the ill-fated cat, Upton says her family – investment banker husband Alex Sundich and their children Nicholas, 19, and Georgina, 13 – planned to scatter his ashes in the backyard over the weekend.
"He's been so much a part of the family," she says.
