For Stuart Ayres, the release on Monday of a report clearing him of breaching the New South Wales ministerial code of conduct was vindication.
Bruce McClintock SC was unequivocal in finding the former deputy Liberal leader and trade minister had not acted improperly in John Barilaro’s appointment to a lucrative New York trade job.
Ayres, he found, had not “requested a public servant act unlawfully”. He did not act with “dishonesty”, or have “any conflict of interest” in relation to Barilaro.
McClintock also minimised perceptions of a flawed process, deviating from the separate findings of the former public service commissioner Graeme Head. Head had raised concerns about the series of “interactions” Ayres had with the then head of Investment NSW, Amy Brown, which led to McClintock being asked to review the minister’s actions.
But McClintock found any “failure” in Barilaro’s appointment was “one of process not substance”.
Whereas Head, an expert in the public service, believed Ayres’s involvement in the hiring process meant that it was not done “at arm’s length” of the minister, McClintock wrote that it would be “bizarre” if Brown could not “take account of the views of others”. Even if the process was not handled at arm’s length, it wouldn’t amount to any breach of ministerial standards anyway, he said.
The report almost certainly paves the way for Ayres to return to cabinet. Last week the premier, Dominic Perrottet, seemed to foreshadow as much by refusing to rule out such a decision.
But the timing – and substance – of any reshuffle has the potential to cause further headaches for Perrottet, whichever way he moves.
There is no doubt that Ayres wants to be back in the tent sooner rather than later. In his statement after the release of the report, he made an unusual and pointed reference to something he claimed Perrottet had told him during a private chat.
“As the premier described it to me after I was presented with a copy of the report, ‘it is an emphatic exoneration’,” he said.
As the MP for the crucial marginal seat of Penrith, if Ayres decided to retire as an MP rather than languish on the backbench, it would create an unwanted problem for a government which already has a lengthy list of unwanted problems.
But returning him has risks too. It would almost certainly re-energise the pursuit of the government by Labor over the senior trade appointments and leave the premier open to criticism that he had held Ayres to a different standard than another MP recently sacked from cabinet, Eleni Petinos.
There is also the question of the deputy leadership job, something the party room, not Perrottet, decides.
Ayres’ western Sydney credentials were a key reason he was elevated to the job in the first place, and the region will be crucial if the Coalition wants to hold on to government at the election.
Not everyone in the government believes voters in western Sydney really care where the deputy leader of the parliamentary Liberal party lives, but his replacement, Matt Kean – a social progressive – is unpopular with a small but loud segment of the media – no doubt a consideration for some MPs.
