Senior education officials raised concerns about a lack of oversight, reprisal sackings and bullying within the department’s school infrastructure unit, the state’s corruption watchdog 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.
Former Schools Infrastructure NSW chief executive officer Anthony Manning is the subject of an ICAC investigation.Credit: Janie Barrett
ICAC is examining allegations Manning and others within the agency subverted recruitment practices, improperly awarded contracts and misallocated funds to favour friends and associates between 2017 and 2024.
The inquiry heard on Tuesday from three witnesses from the NSW Education Department who dealt with Manning in his role as chief executive, and heard evidence that numerous concerns were raised about his agency’s conduct.
Daryl Currie, a director within the department’s internal complaints division, told the inquiry about an employee who was transferred to another unit after blowing the whistle internally over concerns about the agency.
The employee, he said, had raised concerns about the employment of contractors and “relationships between managers and people that they employed” in late 2021. In February 2022, he said, the same employee again contacted the unit fearing they were going to be terminated.
Currie said he raised it with the then-secretary, Georgina Harrisson, to request that the employee be transferred because “whether knowingly or not … there was possible reprisal action”.
Harrisson agreed to the transfer. Asked whether he believed it was a reprisal termination, Currie said he learnt that officials in School Infrastructure NSW had been seeking advice on multiple ways to sack the employee.
“The insistence of people looking to terminate her employment through … two or three different avenues led us to believe that wasn’t just a performance issue or a conduct issue,” he said.
Another witness, Peter Riordan, a former deputy secretary in the department, told the inquiry he raised concerns with the then-education secretary Mark Scott soon after School Infrastructure was set up when it began instituting its own human resources and procurement operations.
“I do recall raising with him my concern there was no clear reporting to the executive,” he said.
“Matters started bubbling up [that there was] no clear visibility of the finances in Schools Infrastructure apart from end-of-year reporting.”
Riordan said he told Scott he believed that “poses a risk to you and the department, and so I left that with him”.
The response, he said, was “leave it with me”, but he did not see any change.
Sasha Holley, a director of governance in the department, told the inquiry that after meeting Manning she told a friend he was “somewhere on the spectrum between a bully and completely corrupt”.
Counsel assisting Jamie Darams asked: “I take it your continued engagement with him just reaffirmed those initial views, is that right?”
“Yes,” she replied.
On Monday, Darams outlined to the a series of examples in which long-time friends of Manning were employed as contractors in lucrative roles within the agency. One, Stuart Suthern-Brunt, was employed in a consultancy role and was paid $2800 a day, or the equivalent of $644,000 a year.
Manning and Suthern-Brunt cycled together frequently, Darams said, and later went to spin classes and yoga together.
After he left the agency, a consortium called APP Group, which included a company associated with Suthern-Brunt, was awarded a multimillion-dollar contract for building prefabricated schools. That contract has since been cancelled.
NSW Department of Education head Murat Dizdar is due to give evidence on Wednesday alongside Harrisson.
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