A preferred candidate for a plum UK trade job was “pushed aside” in favour of a late applicant who got the job through an “unofficial process”, a NSW inquiry has heard.
Paul Webster applied for the job as UK agent-general and got close to the finish line with senior bureaucrats pushing for his appointment, but was sidelined at the last minute.
The top position eventually went to Stephen Cartwright, and Webster was instead offered the more junior job of trade and investment commissioner.
Webster appeared at a Monday morning hearing in a long-running NSW inquiry scrutinising the hiring process, beaming into state Parliament from his office in London.
Webster declined to comment on assertions by Labor MP Daniel Mookhey that he had been “pushed aside” by the then deputy premier John Barilaro, who chose to “headhunt” on his own instead.
He also declined to directly comment on Mookhey’s assertion that Cartwright had been chosen by an “unofficial” parallel hiring process, even after Webster had begun salary negotiations and after the NSW treasury secretary had started planning how to announce his appointment.
“It looks to us as though you were the successful candidate in the official process, but you were felled because there was an unofficial process taking place at the same time,” Mookhey told Webster.
“All I know is it was a competitive process,” Webster said.
The inquiry was originally launched to look into the appointment of Barilaro as the state’s trade envoy to the US, but was widened to probe the hiring process for the UK job as well.
Emails tendered to the inquiry and shared with reporters on Monday morning show bureaucrats were in advanced discussions about Webster’s job application.
“We have attached the final shortlist recommendations,” an executive working for an external hiring agency official wrote to Treasury on December 2 2020.
“The key recommendation is that Paul Webster is the strongest candidate.”
Another email sent later the same month shows Treasury secretary Michael Pratt told a colleague to “move ahead with Paul” and set up interviews with the then premier Gladys Berejiklian, as well as with Barilaro and Dominic Perrottet, who was treasurer at the time.
None of those interviews took place, Webster told the hearing.
The email also instructed the official to look into a remuneration package for Webster and to begin making arrangements for Perrottet to announce his possible appointment.
Webster said he was never told why he wasn’t offered the more senior role, and that he also wasn’t told who the successful candidate for that job was before it was announced publicly.
The emails tendered on Monday also showed officials in Perrottet’s office saying in January 2021 the then treasurer had requested to see a shortlist of interviewed candidates as well as their resumes.
The inquiry has previously heard Cartwright asked for a salary of $800,000, and that he eventually managed to secure $600,000 per year including expenses.
In emails previously tendered to Parliament, Cartwright told the recruitment agency head, Marianne Broadbent, that he had been asked by Barilaro to “consider the role in early Feb” of 2021.
Cartwright has yet to give evidence to the inquiry but it’s understood committee members are seeking to arrange to hear from him on Wednesday morning.
That hearing has yet to appear on the committee schedule.
