Deputy NSW Liberal party leader, Stuart Ayres, asked Investment NSW chief executive, Amy Brown, to add a name to the shortlist of candidates for a lucrative New York trade commissioner job that ultimately went to John Barilaro.
Emails obtained through a parliamentary order on Thursday reveal that in February this year, Brown, the public servant ultimately responsible for appointing Barilaro, met with Ayres to discuss candidates for the job.
The documents were made public after claims made by Ayres in Mumbai on Thursday that he had no influence on the recruitment process, and suggest he was directly involved in shortlisting candidates for the job.
On 8 February, Brown wrote to another senior public servant in Investment NSW, Kylie Bell, to advise that she had “run through” the list of candidates with Ayres.
“Min Ayres and I have run through the ‘long’ shortlist and our recommended ‘short’ shortlist for NYC,” she wrote.
“He’d like to add [REDACTED] to the short shortlist please.”
In a statement released on Thursday afternoon, Investment NSW said the candidate mentioned in the email “was not John Barilaro”, but refused to provide further comment. Brown has been called to appear before the upper house inquiry probing the job for a second time next month.
However the email calls into question Ayres’ insistence that the appointments were made by the public service at arm’s length from the government.
Ayres, speaking on Thursday alongside the premier, Dominic Perrottet, in Mumbai, where the two are on a trade mission, again denied playing any decision-making role in the recruitment process.
“I have not under any circumstances influenced the decisions of Amy Brown [CEO of Investment NSW] in who she is selecting as senior executives of the public service,” Ayres reportedly said.
Ayres also told reporters that he had not met with Barilaro when he was identified as the preferred candidate, saying there was “not reason for me to engage with John Barilaro” about the job because he had “a clear and intimate understanding” of the state’s trade priorities.
Another document appeared to contradict that statement. A briefing prepared for Brown by the department in June states that Barilaro had “met with the Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Investment, Stuart Ayres MP, who has supported his appointment”.
However in a statement issued on Thursday afternoon, Investment NSW said that was a “clerical error”.
“Investment NSW can confirm that an internal CEO briefing cover note contained a clerical error, incorrectly stating that the Minister for Enterprise, Investment and Trade had met with Mr Barilaro as part of the [New York trade commissioner] recruitment process,” the statement said.
Ayres also told reporters: “We’ve met with the preferred candidates when the CEO of Investment NSW recognised that they will prefer candidates and wanted to proceed to contracting.”
Other documents produced under the parliamentary order also suggested Ayres had met with Barilaro.
In a series of talking points produced for Ayres by his department, under the heading “if asked was the minister involved [in the New York appointment]”, the suggested response states: “I was advised of these appointments and have met with both the successful STIC Americas and China candidates.”
The documents prompted Labor to accuse Ayres of having “misled the public”.
Labor’s shadow treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, said the email from Brown showed Ayres was “nominating candidates” for the job.
“Stuart Ayres hasn’t been arm’s-length from this process, he’s had his fingers all over this process,” Mookhey said.
“We need to know why Stuart Ayres felt like he had the power and authority to be telling Amy Brown who she should be interviewing for the America’s position.”
Ayres has come under increasing pressure over his role in the saga since the Guardian revealed he signed a briefing noting that former senior public servant Jenny West was the “successful” candidate in a first round of recruitment in the role.
Brown later told an upper house inquiry the offer was retracted after a “government decision” to make the role a ministerial appointment instead of a public service appointment.
That decision was later reversed, with the New York position readvertised in December and Barilaro appointed by Brown after the second recruitment round.
After the Guardian first revealed that West had been offered the job, Ayres told parliament there had been “no suitable candidate” found in the first round of recruitment.
That has led to accusations from Labor that he may have misled parliament, which he denied again on Thursday, telling the travelling media: “I want to be very, very clear about this. The information that I provided the parliament is absolutely consistent with the information that has been provided by the CEO of Investment NSW.”
At a press conference in June, Ayres confirmed Barilaro had told him he intended to apply by text message sometime in December. He said he told Barilaro that “these processes will be done at arm’s length of government … and he was free to apply for a job like any other private citizen”.
He also confirmed he had given Brown a “heads up” that Barilaro might apply for the position.
However, he insisted he had not encouraged or discouraged Barilaro from applying.
“Absolutely not,” he said at the time. “I merely provided him information that the role would be advertised publicly and he would have the opportunity to enter that recruitment process like any other person,” he said.
The Guardian has contacted Ayres’ office for comment.
Barilaro has since withdrawn from the position, citing the intense media attention his appointment had garnered, but has said he “always maintained that I followed the process”.
