A former contractor to the NSW schools building unit has conceded to a corruption watchdog he should have deleted files he downloaded before going on to tender for a lucrative contract with the agency.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating the former chief executive of Schools Infrastructure NSW, Anthony Manning, over allegations that as head of the school-building arm of the Department of Education, he awarded friends lucrative contracts while punishing others who questioned his conduct.
Stuart Suthern-Brunt (centre) outside the Independent Commission Against Corruption hearing on Tuesday.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Stuart Suthern-Brunt – Manning’s long-time cycling buddy – was recruited in 2019 to School Infrastructure NSW as an executive on $2800 a day, the equivalent of $644,000 a year, but told the inquiry on Tuesday that by the end of 2021 he was ready to leave to take a break and “do some soul-searching”.
After leaving, Suthern-Brunt joined a consortium called APP, and it won a $39 million contract for a project to implement a rapid-build, pre-fabricated construction method for school infrastructure known as the Pavilion Project.
At the start of the six-week hearing, it was alleged Suthern-Brunt was privy to a range of confidential information about the project, but on Tuesday he said nobody had yet articulated to him exactly what that was.
Just before his contract finished at the end of 2021, he was considering different pathways including the possibility of tendering on the prefabricated schools project. When Manning asked him about joining a steering committee to decide the criteria for that tender for prefabricated modular schools, he declined because he knew it would be a conflict of interest which would prevent him from bidding for the contract.
“I said, I don’t want to be part of it because I don’t want to miss the opportunity, if there is one in the future,” he told the inquiry.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Jamie Darams, SC, asked him more about the exchange.
“Did [Manning] say, ‘Stuart, that’s going to be inappropriate with all the information you had [access] to.’ He didn’t say anything over those lines, did he?” Darams asked.
Manning did not, Suthern-Brunt told the hearing. Suthern-Brunt said he engaged a probity adviser to remove him from the tender steering committee and ensure he did not receive details about it while still at the agency before his contract finished.
Former NSW Schools Infrastructure chief Anthony Manning is the subject of the ICAC’s latest inquiry.Credit: Janie Barrett
Suthern-Brunt was questioned about two main pieces of evidence the commission found on his computer and his phone, the first relating to a report prepared for School Infrastructure about modular construction from June 2020.
The report from Modular Building Systems was downloaded to his computer in December 2021, after leaving School Infrastructure. He was asked if the contents were relevant to the Pavilion Project tender.
He eventually conceded to the commission that they were.
“Do you accept that the information in the document was information you weren’t entitled to use without permission?” Darams asked.
Suthern-Brunt said: “That was information that I should have deleted.”
Darams replied: “Yeah, but what you did do is you didn’t delete it. You actually stored it in a file located on your computer because you identified as that being relevant to the [tender], correct?”
However, Suthern-Brunt went on to say the information in the report about modular building techniques was general in nature and the document was essentially a marketing document and there were “no secrets in there”.
Additionally, Suthern-Brunt also took photos of an online presentation given to School Infrastructure staff, including one of a slide about procurement for the Pavilion Project before his departure from School Infrastructure in December 2021, while working from home.
Asked if he took the photos because he knew that that information might be relevant to the future tender, Suthern-Brunt categorically denied that was the case.
He described the information as “so generic”. “I just don’t think I was planning or scheming to that level. I’m quite sure about that,” he said.
He later told the hearing he did not believe he had ever even accessed or looked at the photograph since taking it.
The department has since terminated the contract with APP Group, including because of inadequate commercial and organisational governance by SINSW, and inadequate evidence of the value that could be achieved by the project.
The hearing continues.
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