Former New South Wales deputy premier John Barilaro will be called to appear next month at a parliamentary inquiry investigating his now-abandoned appointment to a lucrative New York trade job.
As pressure mounts on the government and the deputy Liberal party leader, Stuart Ayres, over the appointment, the Labor opposition announced on Thursday that hearings would resume after it secured the release of hundreds of documents related to the appointment.
The deal with the government means the plan to recall parliament from its winter break on Friday will no longer go ahead.
Labor had secured the rare recall with the support of crossbench MPs in a bid to force the government to hand over the documents.
“We make no apologies for holding the government to account [and] keeping the government under extreme pressure here to make sure this has happened,” Labor’s deputy leader in the upper house, John Graham, said.
The bulk of the documents are expected to be released on Monday, with Graham conceding there was “an element of trust” in the government’s promise to release the files publicly.
“Were this deal not to hold, I think the government could expect some very serious consequences on that,” he said.
The removal of the impasse on the key documents means the upper house investigation into the appointment will resume, with Labor’s shadow treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, saying Barilaro would be among the witnesses invited to appear before the committee.
The committee last met on 19 July, but will resume on 3 August when the Investment NSW chief executive, Amy Brown, will be called for a second time to answer what Mookhey called “additional lines of inquiry”.
Other witnesses will include Barilaro’s former chief of staff, Siobhan Hamlin, and the head of the department of regional NSW, Gary Barnes, who wrote the then deputy premier a reference for the New York trade job.
Barilaro will be called on 8 August. The former deputy premier has been calling for the inquiry to have him as a witness after being involved in an altercation with a cameraman outside a restaurant in Manly last weekend.
“Call me to the inquiry because it’s you that’s causing this intrusion and harassment,” he told Sydney radio station 2GB. “Let’s do that before this gets even uglier.”
It comes amid increasing pressure on Barilaro’s replacement as trade minister, Ayres, over what role, if any, he played in the appointment.
The inquiry has requested Ayres appear as a witness, but is yet to hear back. Members of the lower house are able to resist calls to appear at upper house inquiries.
Ayres is expected to face travelling media in Mumbai on Thursday to answer questions for the first time since it was revealed by the Guardian that he signed a briefing note confirming former senior public servant Jenny West was the successful candidate for the New York job.
Last month the Guardian revealed West had been given a verbal offer for the job in August last year, but that offer was later rescinded.
Brown told an upper house inquiry the offer was retracted after a “government decision” to make the role a ministerial appointment instead of a public service appointment.
That decision was later reversed, with the New York position readvertised in December and Barilaro appointed by Brown after the second recruitment round.
Ayres has told parliament there had been “no suitable candidate” found in the first round of recruitment.
That led to accusations from Labor that he may have misled parliament, a charge he has vehemently denied, calling it “false and deliberately deceptive”.
Barilaro has since withdrawn from the position, citing the intense media attention his appointment had garnered, but has said he “always maintained that I followed the process”.
