John Barilaro has insisted to the NSW parliamentary inquiry into his appointment to a New York trade post that he was unaware his former deputy secretary Jenny West had been successful in applying for the job he was later handed — despite signing a brief endorsing her as successful.
Barilaro says he pressed ahead with his plan to change the process for appointing trade commissioners to political appointments, unaware that West — of whom Barilaro said he was a “big fan” — had been chosen by a recruitment panel and been offered the job by secretary Amy Brown. However, his signature appears on a brief endorsing her selection as the successful candidate. Barilaro says it was his electronic signature on the document and his staff had used it, and that he is unable to recall when he instructed his staff to add his signature to the brief.
The former deputy premier also said that there was no agenda about changing the status of the trade commission appointments except to attract better candidates for the roles, and he attached no urgency to the development of a cabinet submission despite asking for it to be done “ASAP”. “Everything is ASAP,” he said. Barilaro told the inquiry he had been intending to leave politics from June 2021 onwards, having never properly recovered from a breakdown in 2020.
Barilaro’s interest in a lucrative posting to New York was well known within the Perrottet government even before Barilaro left Parliament, he revealed, with Barilaro informing both NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet and Treasurer Matt Kean of his interest in the role, as well as former minister Stuart Ayres, prior to resigning from Parliament in December. No one at any stage expressed concern about the political ramifications of his successful application for the job.
Barilaro says he should have used his own political nous to realise he should not have applied for the job, and that he now regretted ever doing so given it had turned into a “shitshow” and he had been through “hell” in recent weeks.
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