He reportedly described him as someone who "wrote a few useless compilations of Imperial Speaker’s decisions for the sake of notoriety" and the South Australian parliament as having "the same importance as a parish council, no more than the Board of Works".

[4] Jenkins' primary task as acting clerk was to organise the arrangements for the official opening of parliament by Prince George, Duke of Cornwall and York, which took place on 9 May 1901 at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne.

His role in organising the proceedings gave him a public profile, with Melbourne's Punch magazine describing him as "probably the happiest, proudest, most important and most worried individual throughout the length and breadth of Australia".

[1] He was caricatured alongside the Duke of Cornwall and Prime Minister Edmund Barton in The Bulletin,[5] and appears in the foreground of Tom Roberts' oil painting The Big Picture depicting the opening.

[9] Jenkins resigned his role as acting clerk on 6 July 1901 to return to the Victorian parliament, and was succeeded by the Senate clerk-assistant Charles Cashel Gavan Duffy.

[1] According to an anecdote recounted by federal MP James Hume Cook, Jenkins once interrupted Barton during an early sitting of the House to inform him he had taken delivery of "the finest trout he ever saw in his life".

[1] His subordinate Edward Theodor Hubert kept a detailed diary in which he accused Jenkins of procrastination, incompetence, and misusing parliamentary staff for his personal ends.

[13] After his retirement in 1910, Jenkins moved to Ceylon to live with his daughter on a tea plantation near Hatton, hoping the climate would aid his recovery from bronchitis.