The CEO of Investment NSW will face a public hearing on Wednesday on the recruitment process for former Deputy Prime Minister John Barilaro’s new job in the United States.
Key points:
- Investment NSW CEO Amy Brown will face a two-hour hearing next week
- Ms Brown said in an email that the New York job would be an “internal matter”
- Dominic Perrottet has promised a public review of the appointment
Sir. Barilaro was last week named the state’s top trade commissioner for America, based in New York, with a salary package of $ 500,000.
An earlier recruitment round identified two highly regarded candidates, and in August last year, internal emails, obtained through Parliament, showed that Investment NSW was almost ready to publicly announce the successful person.
It is understood that this was a senior bureaucrat in Investment NSW, Jenny West.
On August 23, Kylie Bell, CEO of Trade at Investment NSW, asked a colleague “can we also get started this week with the media release shells for NY, Mumbai and Singapore”.
“I think we’re close to being able to publish NY, and the others will probably be ready to leave sometime in September. Then we’re all done.”
Emails in early September stated that a contract for the US role was being drafted.
But three weeks later, the agency’s attorney general Chris Carr examined other recruitment methods and sent an email “we have been asked if there is a possibility of appointments to the minister”.
As ABC reported on Thursday, Investment NSW CEO Amy Brown then wrote to the external recruiter on October 3rd.
“I appreciate that you will keep this confidential, but we have now received confirmed instructions to begin legislative preparation to transform the Global Senior Trade & Investment Commissioners into statutory officials (ie, ministerial appointments),” she said. .
“This means that the recruitment process for the STIC posts in Singapore, India / Middle East and China must be suspended and all candidates informed that we will not proceed with the process.
“We will handle the STIC New York position as an internal matter.”
Barilaro announced his resignation from politics the next day.
A parliamentary inquiry will examine the recruitment and recruitment process.
It will hold a two-hour public hearing on Wednesday, with only one witness, Mrs Brown.
NSW opposition leader Chris Minns gave a full explanation of how Mr Barilaro, who actually announced the creation of the commissioner roles when he was trade minister, ended up with the job.
“I think this has gone from farce to farce, the original explanations given to the public in the first few days have proven to be wrong … or wildly out of the mark,” he said.
“We need to understand exactly how Mr Barilaro was appointed to this post.
“This was not the NSW Government’s gift, it’s taxpayer funds going to Mr Barilaro to take a stand in New York City.”
ABC asked detailed questions to Investment NSW about who made the request that the roles be transferred to ministerial appointments and why.
In a statement, a spokesman said they could not comment due to another review conducted by the Ministry of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet has repeatedly defended the appointment of Mr. Barilaro to the role and said it was a public service appointment that did not require input or approval from any ministers.
But on Thursday, he announced that his department would make a review, which he would publish.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/W6UWGQV6N5PMBJPEKWWW6KPY6I.jpg)
