Senior bureaucrat sat in on friend’s public service interview, supplied reference

A senior NT public servant has got on the wrong side of ICAC due to a conflict of interest. Read what he did.

Male member of human resource team whispering to his colleague during a job interview in the office. The view is through glass.

The Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro is seeking advice from the Chief Executive of Chief Minister and Cabinet on actions being taken to ensure public sector leaders uphold proper conflict management and recruitment practices.

It follows a damning finding by the Northern Territory ICAC that a public officer engaged in improper conduct in relation to the recruitment of a friend early last year, without proper management around conflict of interest issues.

The Chief Minister said the ICAC has found a senior executive public officer engaged in improper conduct related to mismanaging a conflict of interest.

“This is disappointing and falls well short of the expectations the community places on the public service, especially leaders within the public service.” she said.

Declining to identify the public official, delegate of the NT ICAC Patricia Kelly SC said in a statement titled ‘Operation Apollo – Improper conduct in recruitment’, that the public officer engaged in “unsatisfactory conduct, relating to the mismanagement of a conflict of interest”.

“I found that the conduct involved negligence and incompetence. The conduct did result in a substantial detriment to the public interest and was also an inappropriate use of public resources in the recruitment process,” the report said.

The statement said that in early 2024, the unnamed senior executive was a panel member for the recruitment to a senior position within their department. It said the public officer was a long time friend of the candidate “and there was sufficient evidence given during the compulsory examinations from which I formed the view there was a close and current relationship between the public officer and the candidate”.

The recruitment process involved improper conduct. Picture: iStock

The public officer provided their previous job application to the candidate before that candidate applied for the position, a privilege not afforded other candidates.

The public officer “verbally” declared a friendship with the applicant to other panel members without providing specifics around the extent of the “relationship”.

In addition the public officer acted as a referee for the candidate in the recruitment process in the process failing “to manage the conflict of interest and ought to have recused himself from the recruitment process”,.

“Whilst it may not be improper per se, to act as a referee as well as a panel member, nevertheless doing so has the potential to cause conflicts of interest and can lead to perceptions of bias in the recruitment process,” Ms Kelly said.

“That is so when a panel member provides a positive reference for one candidate and not others. I make this public statement as I believe there are a number of lessons to be learnt from this investigation, in particular the need to proactively manage a conflict of interest and have in place rigorous guidelines for such management that is specific to recruitment panels.

“If a reasonable and fair-minded observer might perceive that a public officer’s personal interests could be favoured by exercising their duties and responsibilities, then a conflict of interest exists,” Ms Kelly said.

“Perception is an important consideration when identifying conflicts of interest and the reasonable person test should always be considered when seeking to identify the existence of conflicts of interest.”

Ms Kelly SC then said because of “statutory constraints in the publication of evidence obtained under compulsion” she did not identify the individual involved.

It is the second time in two weeks the ICAC has made findings around senior NT public servants engaging in inappropriate conduct without identifying them.

On February 18 it found an executive public servant on more than $200,000 salary engaged in corrupt conduct by chucking sickies to holiday interstate at casinos, play golf or fishing over three years between January 2018 and May 2021.