A friend of former School Infrastructure NSW boss Anthony Manning was paid more than $100,000 for two months’ work despite the executive who signed off on hiring him being unsure what he was doing within the agency.
In another ICAC revelation, a current executive within the NSW Education Department has denied being involved in a plot to force out an employee who had made an internal complaint about conflicts of interest within the agency.
Former Schools Infrastructure NSW chief executive officer Anthony Manning is the subject of an ICAC investigation.Credit: Janie Barrett
On Wednesday, the Independent Commission Against Corruption heard evidence about Manning’s friends and associates receiving contracts with the school building agency, sometimes in breach of internal procurement rules, totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Among the lavishly compensated contingent staff was Stuart Suthern-Brunt, a friend of Manning who regularly socialised with the schools boss in activities such as cycling and yoga.
The two had discussed going into private business with one another before Manning joined the agency, and a previous witness told the inquiry she was aware the men had been “friends for a long time” and “knew each other from their time in Europe”.
The inquiry previously heard evidence that Suthern-Brunt was paid $2800 a day, the equivalent of $644,000 a year, and received more than $1.7 million from School Infrastructure in about two-and-a-half years.
Erik Maranik gives evidence at the ICAC.Credit: ICAC
But on Wednesday Erik Maranik, a former senior executive in the agency who signed off on some of Suthern-Brunt’s contracts with the agency, gave evidence to the inquiry that he was not happy with the services provided.
“I formed the opinion that it was not delivering what I would’ve expected it to deliver,” he said.
“My interactions with Mr Suthern-Brunt became difficult, and I was not able to really understand what he was doing.”
Maranik said his recollection was that he raised Suthern-Brunt’s performance with Manning, but that his “impression” of the schools boss’ response was that he should “focus on my own work”.
The inquiry saw two invoices Maranik signed off on from Suthern-Brunt, which totalled more than $100,000 for periods covering November and December 2019.
In another case, Maranik signed off on a contract for Heathwest Advisory, solely owned by Martin Berry, whose buck’s party and wedding Manning had attended, for almost $500,000 a year.
The contract was an extension of a previous engagement which, according to a briefing note shown to the inquiry, had originally been worth $87,100 but had blown out to about half a million dollars for the previous year.
Maranik accepted that because he was also employed as a contingent worker, he was not authorised to approve the contracts. But, he said, he did so because he understood it was what Manning wanted.
He agreed many of the contracts were in breach of department procurement and recruitment rules, but said his focus was “whether the work was required to deliver capital projects”, describing the agency as having a “command and control” culture.
“Mr Manning was the chief executive – he was very directive and very clear in his direction on how to proceed with matters,” he said.
Later on Wednesday, the ICAC heard evidence from Ben Cohen, who was an executive director within the Department of Education and worked under Manning in School Infrastructure.
Cohen was the direct boss of Kathleen Donohoe, who the inquiry has previously heard was moved on after expressing concerns regarding procurement, including around classroom furniture.
“I had asked a lot of questions about why people were in roles when they didn’t come to meetings, or they were doing their PhD while they were working,” she previously told the inquiry.
The ICAC is investigating whether Donohoe may have been the subject of a reprisal sacking. She had lodged a public interest disclosure – the public services’ internal whistleblowing function – before being told she would be made redundant in late 2022.
Cohen was shown evidence of emails in which he, Manning and Wendy O’Brien – the agency’s human resources official who is also under investigation by the anti-corruption watchdog – had discussed a potential “perceived conflict of interest” related to a professional website belonging to Donohoe.
Cohen is not a focus of the watchdog’s investigation.
In a lengthy and sometimes tense examination, Cohen denied concerns about the website had been a pretense to terminate Donohoe, saying he had been worried about her potentially misusing the department’s intellectual property for her private interests.
The ICAC was shown evidence of back and forth emails between the three School Infrastructure officials, including one in July 2022 when Manning stated: “Need to be careful that she doesn’t perceive that were (sic) singling her out, when we aren’t”.
After Donohoe eventually agreed to take the website down, she later had a meeting with Cohen in which he “gave her performance feedback” based on his concern that she was “wasn’t meeting the requirements of the role”.
He told the inquiry his concerns related in part to her “isolationist” management style, and the fact her team was not performing adequately. He also said he did not like her insistence on using yellow furniture in schools because it was “not a good choice for schools”.
“It wears very poorly in terms of colour and discolouration and needs to be repaired and replaced very regularly,” he said. “They’re a maintenance nightmare.”
“And that was a particular problem, was it?” counsel assisting Jamie Darams asked.
“Yes, it was.”
After the meeting, Donohoe was not placed on a performance management plan, but instead Cohen initiated a restructure which eventually led to her position being terminated. Cohen insisted the purpose of the restructure was not to terminate her, although hers was the only job deleted as a result.
“That was not the focus of it,” he said.
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