Sacked New South Wales minister Eleni Petinos held two meetings with a property developer linked to the former deputy premier John Barilaro weeks prior to the lifting of a stop-work order at a $500m development in Sydney’s west.
New ministerial diaries published on Tuesday show Petinos held two meetings with Coronation Property in June relating to “fair trading building related matters”.
The company, which says it has $1.4bn worth of projects under way and another $5bn in the pipeline, employed Barilaro as its executive director after he left the NSW parliament in December.
On Tuesday Barilaro confirmed to the Guardian that he was at one of the meetings, on 21 June, a week before a stop-work order issued by the former building commissioner David Chandler was lifted.
But Barilaro insisted the meeting was not related to the developer, calling it a “social engagement” to “celebrate” after he was appointed to a lucrative New York trade job and that he had stopped working with Coronation at the time.
“On 21 June 2022 I attended a social engagement with the former minister to celebrate my appointment to the STIC Americas job,” he said.
“I was no longer an employee of Coronation. I did not meet with the minister during my time with Coronation.”
That meeting and another on 2 June, which Barilaro did not attend, took place after a stop-work order was slapped on the developer at a 790-apartment development in Merrylands earlier this year.
The order was lifted shortly after the second meeting.
Petinos was dumped as the state’s small business and fair trading minister last month after being accused of running an unsafe office in media reports. She has repeatedly denied all allegations against her.
After initially defending the minister, Dominic Perrottet changed course and sacked Petinos as a result of what the premier called “further information in relation to separate claims”.
But the timing of the meetings has created new questions for the government amid an ongoing saga over the trade roles and separate questions over the sudden resignation of Chandler last month.
Chandler has said he quit the post because it was “time for a reset”, but media reports have subsequently claimed he raised the stop-work order in his resignation letter.
In a statement Petinos said the “issuing and revocation of stop-work orders is a matter for the Building Commissioner, not the minister”.
“A formal meeting occurred with representatives from Coronation Property Co and MN Builders on 2 June 2022. Mr Barilaro was not in attendance,” Petinos said.
“We met in relation to building regulatory matters and I did not take any action in relation to the matters.”
She said the 21 June meeting was “social in nature” and was only disclosed as part of her ministerial diary “out of an abundance of caution”.
Perrottet on Tuesday said in parliament that he had not seen reports of the meeting, or read Chandler’s resignation letter.
He said he would “get the requisite advice”.
It comes after Barilaro told a parliamentary inquiry examining his now-abandoned US trade role that he had not met with any ministers in relation to Coronation while his application for the job was under consideration.
The 21 June meeting took place the day after his contract for the now-abandoned trade role began. The Labor upper house MP Courtney Houssos said Barilaro would be asked about it when he appears before the upper house inquiry on Friday.
Perrottet conceded earlier on Tuesday that he would have told Barilaro not to apply for the New York job if he knew about the “problematic” hiring process that has thrown his government into turmoil over the past seven weeks.
“Obviously if I had my time again I would have asked him not to [apply],” Perrottet said.
Barilaro told the inquiry on Monday that Perrottet had told him to “go for it” when he raised his plans to apply for the role last year.
