Former NSW deputy premier John Barilaro was ranked second on a list of candidates following interviews for a lucrative New York-based trade job, but still got the position after the chief executive of Investment NSW, Amy Brown, asked for the results to be changed.
New documents released on Monday show that a selection panel report dated 25 March listed Barilaro in second place out of the candidates interviewed for the position.
On an updated selection panel report dated 15 June – just days before the job was announced – Barilaro had been pushed into first place. He had signed his contract a week earlier on 8 June.
In the first selection report, Barilaro was rated as “exceeds” requirements for two categories and “meets” requirements for the second two. Another candidate, the businesswoman Kimberley Cole, was marked as “exceeds” requirements in all four categories and the panel recommended that candidatefor the job.
The document said that Barilaro “did have some of the relevant capabilities and experience for the role” but “he had not worked internationally in a role aligned to the experience expected for high level” commissioner candidates.
“His lack of business development networks would mean that he would have a considerable learning curve in the role,” the report said.
The second version of the report, dated 15 June, was altered to say that Barilaro “exceeds” requirements in each of the four categories and selected him as the preferred candidate for the position.
The edited version said that while Barilaro “would have a learning curve on doing business in the US, he had a strong track record of building teams as well as operating in a dynamic environment and had deep understanding of the NSW Trade and Investment environment”.
The comments about Barilaro were changed to include a comment that the Australian ambassador to the US, Arthur Sinodinos, who is a former federal Coalition senator, had provided a reference and “concluded that John had the right motivation, capabilities and experience for the role”.
Asked on Monday why Barilaro had gone from being ranked second to first, the trade minister, Stuart Ayres, said it had been Brown’s decision because she “did not believe” the initial report from the global recruiting firm conducting the search was accurate.
“I understand that she emailed almost instantaneously to inform [the recruitment company] she did not believe that was an accurate representation and asked for that to be adjusted,” Ayres said.
“That’s a decision for her; she made that call.”
This week a parliamentary inquiry into the posting will resume, with Brown to appear for a second time on Wednesday.
The opposition Treasury spokesperson, Daniel Mookhey, said the inquiry would attempt to uncover how much pressure the public service, including Brown, was under in relation to the appointment of Barilaro.
“It’s unheard of that you would change a selection panel report,” he said.
“Every piece of evidence we’ve gotten so far shows that [Ayres] was exerting heavy levels of influence on the public service to dictate the process, dictate the timing and ultimately dictate the candidate. What we want to understand is how was the public service coping with that pressure.”
Ayres has come under increasing pressure over his role in the recruitment of Barilaro to the lucrative New York trade commissioner job.
On Monday he revealed he had sent Barilaro a copy of the job advertisement for the New York role when it was published in the Australian Financial Review in December.
Despite Ayres’ insistence that the decision to appoint Barilaro was done at arm’s length from ministers, the Guardian has revealed Ayres asked Brown to add a name to the shortlist of candidates during a meeting in February.
The minister continued to deny that he influenced the process, insisting on Monday that he had not “directed” Brown to add the name and saying he had only had “discussion and engagement” with her.
“Throughout the course of this exercise and standard activities that happen in the interactions between, particularly, secretaries or heads of agencies and ministers, we’re always going to get discussion and engagement,” he said.
“The key point here is there’s been no direction by me to Amy Brown about who should be employed.
“It was merely a discussion … the decision on who goes on to that shortlist is not for me.”
Some senior ministers are privately saying Ayres should stand aside until two separate inquiries into the post are complete, but the minister insisted he would not.
“I’ve not done anything wrong, there is no need for me to stand aside,” he said, adding that the premier, Dominic Perrottet, had not asked him to quit as the party’s deputy leader.
At a press conference on Monday Perrottet said he had not asked for the minister to step aside and that he was awaiting an independent report from former public service commissioner Graeme Head, expected to be delivered this week.
He conceded that MPs had raised concerns about the impact of the saga on the government.
“I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of discussions in relation to my engagement my colleagues, but let’s be fair, I mean, this is a difficult situation for the government,” he said.
“Mr Head has access to … all the documents he needs and access to any person he needs to speak to and if the time it’s taken for that review to take place has been longer then would be politically palatable, that’s OK, because the more comprehensive the review is, the more comprehensive my response can be.”
In a lengthy statement released on Facebook on Sunday night, Ayres said the appointment had followed an “independent, transparent and meritorious selection process”.
Ayres said the first round of recruitment had not found a suitable candidate, despite the Guardian previously revealing Ayres signed a brief stating former senior public servant Jenny West had been selected as the “successful candidate” for the post last August.
“Not liking Mr Barilaro or his style of politics is not a suitable reason to reject his application, let alone not select him for the role,” Ayres wrote in the post.
Ayres has previously said that “politicians have not played any role in the selection and recruitment process” of the New York trade role, and that any attempt on his part to direct the public service over hiring would have amounted to “undue influence”.
Barilaro withdrew from the position, citing the amount of media attention his appointment had garnered.
However, he has said he “always maintained that I followed the process”.
Both Brown and Barilaro declined to respond to the new documents on Monday other than to confirm their appearances at the inquiry over the next week.
The revelations came less than 24 hours after Perrottet, sacked his small businesses and fair trading minister, Eleni Petinos, after allegations of bullying were made against her in the media last week.
