Is the Barilaro affair heading for ICAC? Facts first. This is the basic timeline.
August 2021: Investment NSW CEO Amy Brown verbally offers the New York trade role to Jenny West. A written briefing seeking Barilaro’s endorsement of the appointment is signed by him.
August: Barilaro calls Brown to recommend his then media adviser, Jennifer Lugsdin, for a job at Investment NSW (which she gets). Lugsdin is Barilaro’s girlfriend, although he has said she was yet to achieve that status when he called Brown.
September: Investment NSW is instructed to consider “alternative” recruitment processes, i.e. ministerial appointment, after inquiries from Barilaro’s office asking for the process to be changed. Barilaro lodges a cabinet submission to this effect and cabinet agrees. Brown gives West a “heads up” that things might change, and is directed to cease the recruitment process.
October: Brown withdraws the offer to West. Barilaro resigns as deputy premier. Brown informs the recruitment agency that the process will be a ministerial appointment. However, this doesn’t happen; instead Brown launches a second round of recruitment with fresh candidates. Trade Minister Stuart Ayres tells the Investment NSW chief of staff he wants the NY post “left vacant”.
December: the NY job is readvertised. Lugsdin, by now working at Investment NSW, is given advance warning a week ahead. Ayres forwards the ad to Barilaro, and pushes hard for him in phone calls to Brown.
January 2022: according to Barilaro, he tells Premier Dominic Perrottet that he’s applying for the role and Perrottet says: “Go for it.” He also allegedly tells Treasurer Matt Kean.
April: Brown decides Barilaro is the best candidate. She maintains this was her decision, not directed by any minister.
June: Barilaro’s appointment is announced. After two weeks, he withdraws. Ayres tells Parliament that, at the end of the first round in 2021, “there was no suitable candidate identified”. However, he had signed a briefing in August 2021 confirming West as the “successful candidate”.
July: Barilaro’s former chief of staff, Mark Connell, gives evidence to the parliamentary inquiry that Barilaro told him in 2019 he wanted the NY trade post “for when I get the fuck out of this place”. Barilaro denies saying this.
August: Ayres resigns after an internal review identifies a possible breach of the ministerial code of conduct. Perrottet admits: “The process was not at arm’s length. The issues in the review go directly to the engagement of Mr Ayres with a department secretary in respect of the recruitment process.”
ICAC’s remit is to investigate allegations of “corrupt conduct” in NSW. That includes, relevantly:
- Conduct that could adversely affect the honest or impartial exercise of official functions by a public official
- The dishonest or partial exercise of a public official’s functions
- Breaches of public trust
- Misuse of information or material that a public official has acquired in the course of their functions, whether for their own benefit or someone else’s
- Official misconduct.
The conduct also has to be capable of being a criminal or disciplinary offence or, in a minister’s case, a breach of the NSW ministerial code of conduct. The code is in the ICAC Regulation. It requires ministers to act honestly and in the public interest, not improperly for their or another’s private benefit.
There is, on the evidence unearthed so far, a solid enough basis for alleging that this is what happened: Barilaro created the trade roles; Investment NSW went about the recruitment process diligently, found a good candidate, got that approved and offered her the job; Barilaro, by now looking to leave politics, was not keen on that idea and starts agitating for the process to be ditched and replaced by a direct ministerial appointment; West was dumped to deal with the inconvenience of the role having already been filled; for some reason, Brown goes back to square one; Barilaro applies, backed by the minister, Ayres, who champions his case aggressively; lo and behold, Barilaro gets the job.
That has a strong whiff about it, of ministers of the Crown doing each other’s bidding rather than that of the public (not to mention poor Jenny West, who not only lost the posting but also her job), and interfering directly in the responsibilities of the public servants who were charged with the task of filling the $500,000 a year plus expenses role.
Bearing in mind, too, that Barilaro was objectively a shithouse candidate.
So, yeah, I think there’s plenty of reason for this to go to ICAC. It needs to, because the stench is overpowering everything.
By the way, this is how these guys behave in a jurisdiction which has a corruption watchdog with teeth sharp enough to trigger the fall of three premiers and put numerous ministers in prison. We can’t even imagine what their federal counterparts might have been up to.
Is it time to wrap this sordid mess up and send it to ICAC? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
