By Lucy Carroll
The former head of the NSW Education Department’s school building unit awarded contracts worth millions of dollars to PwC, granting work to a partner at the consulting firm who had suggested him for the top job and helped review his CV before he applied for the role, an anti-corruption probe has heard.
The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is holding a public inquiry into the conduct of Anthony Manning, who headed up School Infrastructure NSW from 2017 until last year.
ICAC is examining allegations Manning and others within the school building agency subverted recruitment practices, improperly awarded contracts and misallocated funds to favour friends and associates in that time.
Former Investment NSW head Amy Brown at ICAC on Monday.
On Monday, the inquiry heard evidence from former Investment NSW boss Amy Brown, who was a partner at PwC from 2016 to 2018. Brown is not the target of the ICAC investigation.
Brown was later a key figure in the John Barilaro trade job scandal when she was secretary of the Department of Enterprise, Investment and Trade. She was ultimately responsible for appointing former NSW deputy premier Barilaro to a lucrative overseas trade job and in 2022 was sacked following the controversy.
In 2023, a probe found no evidence of corrupt conduct in the public service recruitment of Barilaro.
At the inquiry on Monday, counsel assisting Jamie Darams, SC, outlined Brown’s career in finance law and then at NSW Treasury from 2013 before she was headhunted by PwC in 2016.
The inquiry heard evidence that Manning met Brown while she was at Treasury, and the pair worked on the Northern Beaches Hospital project in 2013. Manning was employed at Health Infrastructure from 2009 to 2017.
She said that after the project finished, they would occasionally catch up for team drinks with others who worked on the hospital rebuild. Brown characterised her relationship with Manning as a “business associate”, and that they would catch up for coffee, but “not frequently”, between 2015 and 2017.
During her time at PwC, Brown said her “practice was in social infrastructure, which included schools. And I was very keen to start doing some official work in that area”. Brown said while at PwC she would prepare “thought leadership papers”, including on open-plan classrooms.
“I believe we wrote a paper on open-plan classrooms or traditional classrooms. Do they ensure better educational outcomes? The jury is still out on that,” Brown said.
The inquiry heard Brown “took a look” at Manning’s CV before he applied for the new role as chief executive of School Infrastructure, and that she acted as a “sounding board” in assisting in Manning prepare for the interview.
Brown said while she met Manning, she denied having any direct influence and said she had “no role in terms of being able to determine the outcomes”.
However, Brown had made a “passing comment” to then-education minister Rob Stokes in early 2017 that if the government set up a special school infrastructure unit, then someone such as Manning “could be good” for that role.
In the opening address last week, the inquiry heard that within a few months of Manning’s appointment as chief executive of School Infrastructure in June 2017, the building unit awarded PwC and another consultancy firm, Paxon Group, contracts which in combination were worth millions of dollars.
“Mr Manning was well acquainted with the relevant partner of PwC and the principal of Paxon at least during Mr Manning’s time at Health Infrastructure. The PwC partner appears to have been the one who put forward Mr Manning’s name as a possible candidate for the role as chief executive of School Infrastructure NSW,” the inquiry heard last week.
Manning had previously worked with chief executive director of Paxon, Michael Palassis, at Health Infrastructure.
“Almost immediately after the contract was awarded to PwC and Paxon, it was converted to a “standing offer arrangement”, and at one stage the PwC partner referred to it as a ‘$20 million project’,” the probe heard.
In PwC documents shown at the inquiry titled “Diary of a Pursuit: School Infrastructure NSW” it states PwC met the minister for education “to discuss our approach to creating value in school infrastructure procurement and suggest propose Anthony Manning as potential CEO for school infrastructure delivery body”.
Those documents also state PwC met with Manning in May 2017 “in preparation for CEO interview,” the inquiry heard.
It was alleged that in March of that year Brown had emailed Manning to say she had met with the NSW Education Department, and stated “they really need you”.
The inquiry heard last week that it expects the evidence will show that the engagement of PwC and Paxon was one of the first examples of a broader pattern of behaviour during Manning’s employment at the building arm of the department.
Darams has previously outlined numerous examples of long-time friends of Manning being employed as contractors in lucrative roles and how the school infrastructure unit’s spending on contingent workers surged to more than $344 million between April 2017 and February 2024.
Last week the inquiry heard that dozens of contractors within the school infrastructure arm were paid salaries of more than $500,000 with little oversight.
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