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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

It started with a job: $500,000 to be a trade envoy in New York.

Now, an entire state government has become embroiled in a scandal over job appointments and how they get made.

As Australia prepares to implement a federal anti-corruption body, in New South Wales -- the state that first put in place an independent anti-corruption commission -- we're learning a lot about why we need more transparency in politics.

Today, Senior Reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton, on the job offer that threatens to engulf the entire New South Wales government.

It’s Tuesday August 16.

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RUBY:

Rick, this story, it’s become about a lot more than just one man. But that is where it begins - with John Barilaro the former New South Wales politician - so let's go straight to him. What’s he saying about the position he’s found himself in?

RICK:

Well, we got a little bit of him last week when he was called to testify in front of a New South Wales parliamentary enquiry.

Archival tape -- Reporter:

“Regret, surprise and despair. John Barilaro wanted to set the record straight over hours of evidence. He said he's not corrupt, it wasn't jobs for the boys and he wished he'd never applied for the New York trade role.”

RICK:

And then he was meant to be back again on Friday but called in sick. But what we do know is from his own mouth, he said he feels like he's the unluckiest man in New South Wales.

Archival tape -- John Barilaro:

“It was fortuitous that I got onto that.”

Archival tape -- Inquirer:

“So you are the luckiest person.”

Archival tape -- John Barilaro:

“Ah mate, if you've lived the hell, if you've lived the hell that I’ve lived that over the last six, seven weeks no I'm the unluckiest.”

RICK:

And he described what was once a sort of dream job for him and the process around it as a shit show.

##Archival tape -- John Barilaro:
“If I knew what I know now. I wish I’d never applied. If I knew what I knew now. I wouldn’t have walked into what was a shit show. And I'm going to use those terms, I'm sorry to say, because the trauma I've gone through the last six, seven weeks has been significant.”

RICK:

But what started as a scandal about Barilaro, the former deputy premier of New South Wales, actually getting this cushy job has now widened out and caused an avalanche of revelations about how appointments have been made in New South Wales full stop. Particularly around these overseas postings which are known as senior trade and investment commissioner roles. And it's opened the door to potential Independent Commission Against Corruption hearings and resignations across both, government and the public service.

RUBY:

Hmm. Okay. So how did John Barilaro end up here at a parliamentary enquiry? Feeling like the unluckiest man in the world, how did it begin? Maybe we should start with the job in New York.

RICK:

So about two months ago, it was announced that Barilaro was actually going to be taking up a posting as essentially a trade envoy in New York on a $500,000 salary package. It's a big number, and that raised a lot of eyebrows. So then it emerged that there had actually been a woman who was supposed to get the job before Barilaro got it. In fact, the New South Wales public service wanted a woman candidate because so many of the Trade Commissioner jobs were held by men.

Archival tape -- ABC News Reporter:

“John Barilaro was named last week as the state's trade commissioner to be based in New York. The Premier says it wasn't a captain's pick and that there were no suitable candidates in an earlier round of recruitment.”

Archival tape -- SKY News Reporter:

“The former deputy premier created the role while he was Trade Minister.”

Archival tape -- 7 News Reporter:

“A key public servant has been forced to admit it was Mr. Barilaro’s office that ordered the plum position be made vacant after someone else was given the job worth half a million dollars a year.”

RICK:

And the question became, how did Barilaro, this late entrant in the process, who was also one of the ministers with portfolio responsibility around this area? How did he, when he left Parliament, get selected ahead of the female candidate and what was going on in the background.

RUBY:

So how did he get the appointment?

RICK:

So in the first round of applications for this job, there is a star candidate. That person's name is Jenny West, and she actually ends up getting the job as the trade commissioner in New York to the point where she's actually offered it verbally by her boss, Amy Brown. Now, at the same time, John Barilaro, who's part of this portfolio, takes a keen interest in the way these appointments are made. And he starts fishing around via his senior policy adviser to get a brief done on how the appointments are made and whether they could be converted to ministerial appointments. That is, a minster could just handpick someone without the need for cabinet approval. And when he decides that he wants to go down that route, he gets his office to prepare a cabinet submission to essentially seek to overturn the way these appointments are made, make them ministerial appointments.

And that has a really crucial impact on Jenny West, who, bear in mind, has been given a salary package for this job but has not yet signed a contract. And what that does is it immediately puts that whole process on ice. Amy Brown tells her that they can't proceed until Cabinet has actually considered this Cabinet submission, which has the effect of meaning she can't sign her contract.

Archival tape -- Jenny West:

“In the space of four weeks, I went from having been appointed to the role of the Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner for the Americas to potentially not having a job.”

RICK:

And of course, when Cabinet finally does consider all of this, they approve it. And then Amy Brown goes back to Jenny West and says, by the way, they approved it, we're killing the job.

And that has the effect of spilling the job and meaning that it is now anyway, it's back up for grabs. And Barilaro, according to his former chief of staff, Mark Connell, was very interested in that particular position. Now, Mark Connell recounted a conversation he claims to have had with his then boss, John Barilaro, in April 2019. Now, bear in mind, Barilaro denies this conversation. He refutes it, are his words. But Connell says that Barilaro allegedly told him after he came back from a ministerial meeting talking about, you know, how they were going to set up these overseas postings again and said, this is it, this is the job for when I get the fuck out of this place, quote unquote.

So now, of course, Jenny West is out of the running. There is a new round of interviews. A new selection process for the same job. So John Barilaro puts his application in through the recruiter NGS Solutions.

He’s offered the job. And of course, he's just waiting, itching, itching for it to get announced, knowing that there'll be some blowback. It gets announced, there's a lot of blowback. And he never got to take up that job.

RUBY:

Right. So instead of going to New York on a half a million dollar salary. John Barilaro has ended up in front of a parliamentary enquiry which is asking all sorts of questions about the details of the appointment.

RICK:

So many questions.

And although the focus so far of the inquiry has been this really messy affair or "shit show", Barilaro’s language, the field of enquiry has actually expanded to include the entire Senior Trade and Investment Commissioner network, especially the agent general position in the United Kingdom, and there's more on that.

So the focus is expanding, the questions are expanding. And this threatens now to expose a lot not just about how the trade rules are appointed, but about what has been put to me as a culture of ministerial intervention.

And in fact, particularly in the kind of triumvirate of three positions in the Government which were held by the then Treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, the then Trade Minister Stuart Ayres, and John Barilaro as the Deputy Premier. So things are starting to get a little bit dicey and a little bit heated.

RUBY:

We’ll be right back.

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RUBY:

So Rick, we've been talking about this inquiry into John Barilaro’s appointment to a job in New York, but as he's been him and others have been giving evidence, the scope of the enquiry has expanded and it sounds like there are all kinds of other issues for the Government as a result of this. So can you tell me more about what we're learning about other appointments that have been made?

RICK:

Yeah. So as this expands and the enquiry lifts the lid on other appointments, we're getting this really concerning portrait and the job as the UK agent general is a really striking example and this has really come out of the testimony of Amy Brown, who in herself is a fascinating character. Now she's the head of investment New South Wales as we’ve established and she's been in the eye of the storm because officially it's her job to hire these positions. She is the employer and so she is in the word of the law. The final sign off on who does and does not get positions. But of course, she does not act alone in any of these things. She seeks a lot of external advice, as you would.

So the candidate for this UK agent general job, there were a few candidates, but there was a late entrant. This one was Stephen Cartwright, the former chief executive of the New South Wales Business Chamber known as Business New South Wales. Now Brown - bearing in mind that Investment New South Wales had only just started as an entity, so she's just come in as CEO - the very first thing she has to deal with is the fact that Treasury had been recruiting for this position and Stephen Cartwright is in the mix and so she was immediately briefed by the recruiting firm that Cartwright was demanding what she said was an eye-watering salary package of about $800,000.

That's $313,000 more than Amy Brown herself makes, which is a technical but really important point, because it would actually be illegal for her to hire anyone with a higher pay band than her own position.

So I guess the really interesting question here is how could Cartwright in his right mind, ask for such a crazy high salary? And the suggestion by some people in the enquiry, and it hasn't fully come out yet, is that perhaps he was told he could ask for it by a mystery person or persons. So these were all issues that Brown had, and she told the inquiry, I do believe that the candidate was using the Deputy Premier and the Treasurer's, bearing in mind that was Dom Perrottet at the time, names a lot.

Archival tape -- Amy Brown:

“I do believe that the candidate was using the Deputy Premier and the Treasurer's name a lot. In terms of, he thought that he had an understanding of what terms he'd be coming in on.”

Archival tape -- The Hon. Daniel Mookhey:

“So that was a view that. Sorry …you're negotiating in April, from as early as April, either to you or to the agency. Did I hear you correct?”

Archival tape -- Amy Brown:

“The recruitment firm, yes.”

Archival tape -- The Hon. Daniel Mookhey:

“The candidate was invoking the names of the Deputy Premier and Treasurer.”

Archival tape -- Amy Brown:

“Yes.”

Archival tape -- The Hon. Daniel Mookhey:

“Okay. Well… okay.”

RICK:

Now when she called then treasurer Dominic Perrottet, his chief of staff, for advice Brown was given the "strong opinion", her words, that the salary Cartwright demanded was justified. Now he is again, I'm quoting her from the enquiry, "he tells me his view that the salary would be worth it, or relayed his view anyway. But he couldn't tell me or direct me what to do with this candidate. And I was very clear on that," she said.

Archival tape -- Amy Brown:

“He tells me his view that the salary would be worth it or relayed his view. But he couldn't tell me or direct me what to do with this candidate. And I was very clear on that.”

Archival tape -- The Hon. Daniel Mookhey:

“Okay. So it was more advice or opinion for you to consider.”

Archival tape -- Amy Brown:

“Strong opinions.”

Archival tape -- The Hon. Daniel Mookhey:

“Strong opinion? Or was it given emphatically.”

Archival tape -- Amy Brown:

“Relatively.“

Archival tape -- The Hon. Daniel Mookhey:

“Okay.”

RUBY:

Right, ok. And so Rick, when it comes to accountability, where is it that responsibility is falling? Because someone like Amy Brown, she's a public servant. And it sounds like she's caught in the middle of some competing interests here.

RICK:

Yes. I mean, public servants, as we all know, are meant to be fiercely apolitical. And Amy Brown is in a very interesting position because she's very senior and she's making a lot of decisions. But she's also caught between a rock and a hard place. And it's actually come out in some of the evidence where, you know, when she had to can that entire first round of interviews and Jenny West was dumped as the candidate, Amy Brown had to email the recruiter and say, essentially, can you please ring every candidate and say, 'this process is over'? I'll deal with Jenny myself. And then she says, "You'll appreciate that most of this is outside of our control".

And so she's constantly dealing with what is the letter of the law. And to give her her due credit. She knows the details. But I think she struggles a little bit with the pressure that was coming from outside. So, what we know already from this process, which is not finished and I suspect has only just begun to ask some really spicy questions, is that Stuart Ayres, who took over the other ministerial portfolios when John Barilaro retired from Parliament and was the then Trade Minister. He has been essentially forced to resign in relation to this hiring process, in particular with his conversations he had with Amy Brown about John Barilaro’s appointment.

Archival tape -- Dominic Perrottet:

“Late last night Minister Stuart Ayres informed me that he would resign from his ministerial positions and as deputy leader of the New South Wales Parliamentary Liberal Party. The draft review that I have seen raises questions. It raises questions in respect to the ministerial code of conduct.”

RICK:

He, of course, denies any wrongdoing, but the reason he resigned was because there was a draft report from the Graham Head (former public service commissioner) review about this process that suspected he may have breached the ministerial guidelines. The other interesting thing, and this has been put to me by a few people, of course, no one really knows what's going on in the dark dungeons of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. But it sounds like they have already taken an interest in these revelations. Certainly I know that people have already been to the ICAC to make some voluntary declarations. So, you know, one source with knowledge of all of this told me that they expect a rush of people making voluntary declarations to the ICAC essentially to "cover their arses", which was their quote.

So there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes at the moment. And of course we've got another hearing of this Accountability Committee enquiry on Thursday. And I guess we'll just wait to see if we get to hear from John Barilaro again.

RUBY:

So, Rick, by the sounds of it, this is not the end of this story. And it seems like the further that it goes, the more people get drawn into it. And I wonder ultimately whether you think this is something that might actually affect the stability of the New South Wales Government because we've started to talk about the ICAC and hearings there spelt the end of the last Premier's political career. So is this likely to be something that will continue on and begin to have impacts for the current Premier, for Dominic Perrottet?

RICK:

I would certainly argue that they already have. I mean, if you think about it from the politicians perspective, the ICAC is the bogeyman of New South Wales politics. And yet for whatever reason, a lot of MPs don't seem to change some of their behaviour, even where there are perceptions involved, where they might want to tread a little more carefully. It doesn't seem to alter too much about how things are done in practice.

And of course, you remember obviously Gladys Berejiklian was taken down. I say taken down. It was her own actions. The ICAC investigated these things and also, you know, Barry O'Farrell famously lost his job because he forgot about a bottle of Grange. Arthur Sinodinos was caught up in the same inquiry for the ICAC. Neither had wrong findings of wrongdoing made against them. But both of those men are in fact referees for John Barilaro in this job.

And so I suspect we have just started to see the beginning of the way this kind of where puts together, in fact one of the people very familiar with this whole process who I was talking to you last week said to me, it's a lot like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and that you've got a lot of characters all crossing over into different projects and all popping up kind of again and again and again. So it's going to be very interesting to see where this lands. And I think a lot of people are paying attention.

RUBY:

Well, we'll speak to you again about it I'm sure, Rick.

RICK:

I hope so.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

It was revealed former Prime Minister Scott Morrison was sworn into several ministries during the COVID pandemic, in secret.

Reports in the news limited press claim Morrison was sworn in to act in the Health and Finance ministries as well as the Resources ministry.

Governor-General David Hurley released a statement on Monday confirming he swore Morrison into several ministries, but said it wasn’t his role to make the swearing-in public.

And

A man who allegedly fired a gun inside Canberra airport on Sunday has faced court.

The 63-year-old was charged with three offences, including firing and possessing a revolver and intentionally discharging the gun causing another person to fear for their safety.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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