MPs running a NSW parliamentary inquiry into trade job appointments hope to hear from Stephen Cartwright, the state’s agent-general to the UK, twice in the coming weeks, Crikey can reveal.
Cartwright has emerged as one of the key figures in the long-running trade job saga that has consumed the NSW government in recent months, but has yet to tell his side of the story. He is scheduled to appear at a hearing tomorrow morning, when he will beam into Parliament from his London office.
The committee also hopes to speak to Cartwright a second time after that. It follows an appearance on Monday by another NSW trade official in London, trade and investment commissioner Paul Webster.
Wednesday’s hearing will be held early in the morning in NSW, which means Cartwright will be speaking late Tuesday night London time.
The inquiry, which has unearthed hundreds of pages of emails and other internal government documents, still has outstanding evidence it wants to publish, some of which is understood to relate to Cartwright’s job application.
A trove of papers that the government has claimed should be privileged is the subject of an independent arbitration, and a report on whether the privilege claim is valid is expected to be tabled next time Parliament sits, on Tuesday, November 8.
If those documents do become public, the committee will ask Cartwright to appear for a second time.
“We hope the arbiter will come back with a report recommending a bunch of privileged documents will be declared non-privileged,” committee chair and Greens MP Cate Faehrmann told Crikey.
“If past assessments are anything to go by, we expect most of what the government has declared privileged will be made public, except of course personal information and details.”
Faehrmann declined to discuss what type of documents were under seal.
Committee members are allowed to view privileged documents, but cannot discuss them publicly or ask witnesses about them in public hearings.
The state’s Public Accountability Committee has relentlessly pursued documents as part of its four-month inquiry into the hiring process that led former deputy premier of NSW John Barilaro to be appointed trade envoy to New York.
The inquiry widened to look into Cartwright’s appointment as the top trade official in the UK.
The opposition has sought to portray the government’s claims of privilege as engaging in secrecy. But Premier Dominic Perrottet has defended his government’s record on transparency, saying it’s produced a record amount of papers for the trade inquiry.
“You have never had a government in the history of this state that has provided more documents,” he told a budget estimates hearing in September.
