An interim report into the appointment of former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro to a posting as a senior commerce commissioner within the US has discovered the method had “all of the hallmarks of a ‘job for the boys’ place”.
Committee chair Cate Faehrmann MP mentioned the report particulars a sample of ministerial interference within the choice course of for the posting and vowed the committee would proceed to analyze the difficulty.
“This interim report particulars an absence of transparency and integrity in the best way through which a public sector recruitment course of was carried out,” she mentioned.
“The inquiry additionally revealed the numerous ‘intersection factors’ between a senior public servant and the then Minister for Commerce Mr Stuart Ayres MP which have been all extremely inappropriate and unacceptable.”
The parliamentary inquiry was launched simply days after Mr Barilaro’s appointment in June 2022 to the newly created posting created important controversy.
The committee held 12 public hearings over an almost six-month interval searching for to analyze the circumstances that led to Mr Barilaro’s appointment to the $487,000-a-year function.
In an interim report handed down on Monday, the committee discovered the then deputy premier’s proposal to transform the function from a public sector appointment to a ministerial appointment was pursued with “pointless haste” and did not disclose that former Funding NSW deputy secretary Jenny West had already been chosen.
Mr Barilaro’s proposal “created a emptiness within the New York place, which Mr Barilaro then utilized for”, the committee discovered.
The report additional discovered that Mr Ayres confirmed “poor judgement” in discussing the place with Mr Barilaro and misled the general public when answering questions throughout hearings.
The interim report features a dissenting assertion from Wes Fang MLC, Scott Farlow MLC and Peter Poulous MLC, the one Coalition members on the committee, that mentioned the findings must be rejected.
“This report is nothing in need of a politically motivated hit job within the lead-up to an election,” they wrote.
“All the things contained inside this report must be seen by means of that lens.”
