University of Sydney Vice Chancellor Mark Scott fronts ICAC inquiry into School Infrastructure

Former education secretary and current University of Sydney boss Mark Scott has defended spending millions on contractors to help build schools, testifying before a corruption inquiry into School Infrastructure NSW.

Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Mark Scott AO.

Former education secretary and current University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott has defended spending millions of dollars on contractors to help build schools, amid a corruption inquiry into the man he helped hire to oversee their work.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption’s investigation into former School Infrastructure CEO Anthony Manning has heard that one of the referees on Manning’s job application was not only his previous employer but also one of his cycling buddies.

The referee, Robert Rust, had been the inaugural CEO of Health Infrastructure NSW and would later be appointed chair of the School Infrastructure Advisory Council on a quarter-million-dollar salary.

Mr Scott, who was Secretary of the NSW Department of Education from 2016 to 2021, told the inquiry Mr Rust was a “logical” choice for the chairman role as someone who “appeared to have decades of experience working with and around government … delivering big infrastructure projects in health and, as I recall, in transport”.

Mr Scott said the advisory council was “not a governance board” and was designed to “identify challenges, bottlenecks or impediments” to getting the state’s big build of new schools done.

Sydney University Vice Chancellor Mark Scott. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian.

Counsel assisting the ICAC Jamie Darams SC also raised the matter of Manning’s appointment to the inaugural CEO position, with the inquiry told that it was then-education minister Rob Stokes who had suggested Manning to Mr Scott, who could “not recall” if the minister had mentioned any other names for the candidate shortlist.

Headhunting firm Korn Ferry would later contact Manning’s four referees, which included Mr Rust, former NSW premier Mike Baird, NSW Treasury executive Kim Curtain and former health minister Jillian Skinner.

Excerpt from Korn Ferry's referee review for Anthony Manning, tendered to the ICAC on May 13. Picture: Independent Commission Against Corruption.

“My expectation would have been if there were red flags … or concerns about Mr Manning’s appointment, they would have picked those up and alerted me to it, and at no stage did that happen,” Mr Scott said.

Korn Ferry’s report, tendered to the ICAC, found the referees were “unequivocal in their support for Anthony Manning as a shortlist candidate for the position” but that he had “had a falling out with” then-Health Infrastructure CEO Sam Sangster.

In response to being shown the report, Mr Scott told the inquiry, “no one’s saying ‘don’t appointment, there are some significant red flags’”.

The former secretary was also questioned over the Department’s use of ‘contingent workers’ – contractors and consultants – throughout his and Manning’s terms.

In 2017, the NSW Auditor-General found the contingent labour workforce had already cost the Department nearly $80 million in the year prior to School Infrastructure being established.

“When I arrived … the school assets strategic plan was being considered by government at the time,” Mr Scott told the inquiry.

“There was, I think I can call it, some sticker shock at just how much money was being asked for.”

Education needed the “flexibility” of long-term funding to “execute the value-for-money proposition”, Mr Scott said, similar to the funding arrangements for Health and Transport.

“Still, as the Auditor-General’s report of 2021 or 2022 testified, still the Department had not received the 10-year planning envelope … that would bring greater stability into the operations of School Infrastructure and be a little less budget-to-budget in its approach,” he said.

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