The NSW public service commissioner has said she wouldn’t have signed off on John Barilaro’s appointment as New York trade envoy if she knew in June what she knows now.
Katherine Lo, the state’s public service watchdog, was on the recruitment panel for the job but revealed at a parliamentary hearing on Friday she was kept in the dark about ex-trade minister Stuart Ayres’ involvement behind the scenes.
She said she’s concerned she was used as “cover” for the controversial recruitment process and said she “deeply regretted” not asking for a draft of the recruitment panel report, which was later changed to be more favourable to Mr Barilaro.
“I have recently become aware … of various matters relating to this recruitment process (including) the degree of ministerial involvement, including input into short-listing and provision of an informal reference,” Ms Lo told the committee.
“I was not aware that informal references were sought for any candidate, nor was I aware that the minister met with (short-listed candidate) Kimberley Cole.
“I’ve also recently become aware that the treatment of the third-ranked candidate in the report did not accord with what I believed would occur. Had I known on 15 June, what I know now, I would not have endorsed the report.”
Ms Lo also said another fellow independent panel member, former federal Liberal minister Warwick Smith, had told her the same thing.
“Warwick Smith would like me to put on the record that had he known then, what he knows now, he also would not have endorsed the report,” she said.
Ms Lo also said she wasn’t aware that Mr Barilaro had already been offered the job and signed a contract by the time she was asked to sign off on a recruitment panel report.
“I wasn’t aware that an offer had been made when I received this and I wasn’t aware that Mr Barilaro (had signed a) contract,” Ms Lo said.
“I wasn’t aware of any of those conversations between the department and Mr Barilaro. Having said that, an independent panel member would not be involved in … contracts and things.”
Earlier on Friday, the committee heard Mr Barilaro was told he would be hired for the plum New York trade job before Ms Lo and the other panel members had signed off on the position.
Investment NSW managing director Kylie Bell said she texted Mr Barilaro on May 23 to set up a phone call the following day.
She was asked if no one else had signed off on the selection panel report by that time and responded that was “correct”.
Ms Bell also revealed that in 2019, Mr Barilaro, who was then trade minister, Dominic Perrottet, who was treasurer, and Stuart Ayres, who was investment minister, had made a cabinet submission seeking to establish the state’s trade office in New York.
She also denied “colluding” with Mr Ayres, who resigned as minister this week over his alleged role in the scandal, at a meeting held just days before the second round of recruitment began in December last year.
“I don’t recall the meeting as being particularly … there was no colluding,” she said.
“It wasn’t a meeting that I remember as being instrumental in this process.”
Mr Barilaro gave up the role as senior trade and investment commissioner to the Americas in June after his appointment caused outrage among former colleagues and opponents.
The lucrative job was originally promised to a public servant, but the offer was revoked in the months before Mr Barilaro quit politics and applied for the role.
Mr Barilaro’s former chief of staff, who testified earlier in the day, revealed she pleaded with him not to quit politics on the day that ex-premier Gladys Berejiklian resigned.
The morning’s questioning largely focused on Mr Barilaro’s plans to quit politics and his interest in changing the appointment process for the New York role.
Ex-chief of staff Siobhan Hamblin said she and Mr Barilaro had talked often about his plans to quit.
But on the day Ms Berejiklian resigned, October 1 last year, Ms Hamblin said she urged her boss to stay in parliament for the sake of the state’s stability.
“Following the events of the resignation of the premier, my advice to Mr Barilaro on that day was that any plans that you may have to leave politics should be shelved for the sake of stable government and for the people of NSW,” Ms Hamblin said.
“My point was that the state was in the grips of a lockdown, people were still locked at home, there was going to be a level of disruption to the normal order of governing and business.”
But Mr Barilaro announced just days later he would leave politics.
Labor MP Daniel Mookhey led the opposition’s questioning and appeared to suggest Mr Barilaro had planned to quit in order to take up the New York role and that his final cabinet submission, which would have turned the appointment into one controlled by ministers, was aimed at paving the way for him to get the job.
The inquiry was told Mr Barilaro managed to get an urgent item onto the cabinet’s agenda on September 27 to make the trade roles ministerial appointments.
It was the same day Mr Barilaro and Ms Berejiklian presented the state’s “road map” out of coronavirus lockdown.
“I’m just going to put this to you: Was the actual reason why the deputy premier, in the middle of Covid, was urgently seeking a cabinet decision to turn these into ministerial appointments because he was intending to resign?” Mr Mookhey asked.
“That’s a question for Mr Barilaro,” Ms Hamblin responded.
Earlier, Ms Hamblin said in her opening statement she never perceived that Mr Barilaro showed any interest in the job other than in his capacity as minister.
“Mr Barilaro never raised with me any personal interest in these roles,” she said.
“Any request from Mr Barilaro for information or instructions, I understood to be in the sole capacity as minister responsible for trade.”
Ms Hamblin’s testimony comes as the chair of the committee suggested outgoing trade minister Stuart Ayres appeared to have chosen to do the bare minimum to advertise the US job.
An email tendered to the inquiry shows staff at Investment NSW deferred the decision on how to advertise the role to Mr Ayres.
The email indicates the post was advertised in the Australian Financial Review for one week, starting December 17.
“We have not advertised with any other publications yet, print or online, so will await your confirmation whether the minister wants to do this in January,” a bureaucrat wrote.
Another email showed that Mr Ayres had previously considered advertising the role in The Australian and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers; however, he appeared to have changed his mind.
The chair of the inquiry looking into the hiring of Mr Barilaro said the email raised questions of whether the government was truly looking far and wide for the best candidate for the role.
“You would think if the government really wanted to find the best and the brightest in this second recruitment round they would have tried a little harder to get the job ad out there. You’d almost think they wanted to get as few applications as possible,” Greens MP Cate Faehrmann told NCA NewsWire ahead of Friday’s hearing.
“Whether you’re hiring for a barista or a trade and investment commissioner, everyone knows it’s pointless advertising jobs over the Christmas and new year period.
“Besides, at that time of year, anybody who would apply for a $500,000-a-year trade role in New York is probably off skiing with their family in Aspen.
“The obvious question that arises from this is did Stuart Ayres direct his department to advertise in a way that would not attract the least number of quality applicants?”
Mr Ayres quit as trade minister this week after information came to light he had not been at an “arm’s length” from the hiring process as he had claimed.
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