Schools unit contractor was paid $2.4m with no formal job description

A contractor for the NSW government’s school-building unit was paid $2.4 million over six years despite acknowledging there was “ambiguity” over his role in the agency, the anti-corruption watchdog has heard.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating allegations Anthony Manning, the former head of School Infrastructure NSW, gave friends and associates lucrative contractor jobs and misallocated funds.

Over the past five weeks, ICAC has heard evidence of a complex and layered system of highly paid consultants at the school building unit, and that spending on contractors surged to more than $344 million between 2017 and 2024.

Anthony Courtman arrived at the ICAC on Wednesday.Credit: Sam Mooy

On Wednesday, the inquiry heard from Anthony Courtman, who was hired by Manning as a contractor for the government agency in February 2018 as a “strategic adviser”.

Diagrams outlined at the hearing show Courtman was a member of the “Tom, Dick and Harry Breakfast Club”, a social group composed of friends and colleagues of Manning’s, including another contractor, Martin Berry.

While Courtman recalled receiving a standing invitation to attend the monthly breakfast group, he told the inquiry he did not recall attending one of the events.

During his evidence, Courtman said he “wasn’t a breakfast person”, and that he “did not think it was accurate” he was included in the breakfast club diagram.

He said he recalled having dinner once with Manning and their partners, but that it was not repeated. He acknowledged he was friends with one of the breakfast club members, Ioan Morgan, and text messages show he was invited to Berry’s buck’s party.

Courtman told the inquiry he was first engaged by School Infrastructure to run an “asset management review” focusing on public school maintenance and minor works.

Counsel assisting the commission, Dan Fuller, asked Courtman if he recalled being given a formal document describing his role for the review at the government agency. “No, but that is not unusual,” he replied.

He said the asset review work involved risk and data management, capital planning and “various other bits and pieces that I was asked to do” by Manning or other senior executives.

Courtman said he thought his initial rate was “a bit more than” $1700 a day, but that this was revised down to $1450 in 2021 or 2022. “Did you ever go through any kind of performance management process?” Fuller asked. “No, because we were contingent workers,” Courtman replied.

After he completed the asset management review, Courtman said he asked Manning if he could switch to “work in projects” due to some “ambiguity” over his role in the agency.

“Do you say that there was ambiguity over your role during that initial 12-month period or so?” Fuller asked. “Yes,” he replied.

He said the asset management review task was clear and took up about 60 or 70 per cent of his time, and the remainder was “other stuff put on the lap to get things moving”.

The inquiry heard Courtman was paid $2.42 million from February 2018 to July 2024, although he said the figure excluded some of his expenses for travel and accommodation to visit schools from his home in Newcastle.

Courtman said he knew Manning from his time as a management consultant at Turner & Townsend from about 2005, although he said the pair did not have regular contact. He said he could not recall “if I reached out to Anthony or if Anthony reached out to me in terms of whether there was work” at School Infrastructure.

During his time at the school building unit, Courtman was also engaged by Berry’s consultancy company, Heathwest, to set up “governance and functional responsibility support advisory”. He told the hearing he did 60 or 70 hours of work on that project, and invoices show Heathwest invoiced the school building unit $31,350 for that work.

In 2018, Courtman contacted Rohan Brettell at the NSW Education Department and Erin Giuliani, an executive at the building agency, to say he had been approached by Heathwest to support the governance review, and that could create a “potential or actual conflict of interest”.

Adam Smith gives evidence at the ICAC on Wednesday.

In the afternoon, the inquiry heard from Adam Smith, an adviser for consulting firm EIG from 2011 to 2016.

Smith said he was approached by Manning in August 2017 about short-term work for School Infrastructure and that he was brought on as a consultant for seven weeks.

Smith said he met Manning at a cafe near Wynyard to discuss a “commercial role” to assist with “a series of projects related to how we could increase or accelerate the rollout” of public schools.

Smith told the inquiry he was asked to come in to assist the government agency to have the private sector get involved, “potentially in a rollout of new schools”.

Within two weeks of being engaged as a contractor, Smith was appointed to be on a tender panel for “school pilot projects”.

The inquiry heard earlier this month that consulting firms PwC and Paxon were first engaged by SINSW as the successful joint tenderers for a contract as “school pilot projects commercial adviser” in September 2017.

In an email shown on Wednesday, Smith wrote to NSW Treasury saying Manning “would like the ability to hire the subcontractor company [working for the successful big four tenderer] to do work directly” for the school building agency in future.

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