By Lucy Carroll
A human resources adviser for School Infrastructure NSW has admitted to the anti-corruption watchdog that she sent departmental documents to Anthony Manning, the former boss of the building unit, after he was dismissed from the top job.
The state’s corruption watchdog is holding a public inquiry into the conduct of Manning, who headed up the state government’s school infrastructure unit from 2017 until last year.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry, now in its seventh week, is also investigating claims Manning and the building unit’s former HR adviser, Wendy O’Brien, engaged in reprisal action against certain staff following complaints about the agency.
Wendy O’Brien appears as a witness at the ICAC on Friday.Credit: ICAC
On Friday, the inquiry heard for the first time from O’Brien, who met Manning when the pair worked at Health Infrastructure and was recruited to the school building unit in 2019 to create “a database” and oversee the agency’s contingent workers.
During her evidence, O’Brien denied deleting numerous text messages that she sent from her work phone to School Infrastructure officials about employees during her time at the agency. The ICAC recovered the texts from O’Brien’s phone after she was sacked from the agency in March 2024.
O’Brien was extensively involved in the hiring and firing of employees at the agency, including employees who were replaced by contingent workers, the ICAC has heard. The inquiry heard O’Brien was initially paid $800 a day, however that later increased to $1300 and then $1425 a day.
Former School Infrastructure chief executive Anthony Manning arrives at the ICAC on Friday.Credit: Sam Mooy
Text messages show Manning wrote to O’Brien after he left the agency in February last year, and he asked her to “keep in touch” and the pair met for lunch soon after he was dismissed.
Counsel assisting, Jamie Darams, SC, questioned O’Brien on whether she sent departmental documents to Manning after he left in February last year “in preparation” for his compulsory examination at the ICAC.
Commissioner Paul Lakatos, SC, asked: “You saw no problem in supplying departmental information to a person who wasn’t then in the department, is that position?” O’Brien replied: “That’s correct.”
“He asked for it, and there was nothing confidential in there. It was just documents that were in there that he couldn’t access, so I just passed them on to him,” O’Brien said.
During an afternoon of tense questioning, O’Brien was taken to emails about a complaint made by Justin Barrett, a contingent worker for the school building unit who made a complaint about conduct of School Infrastructure staff.
The inquiry has previously heard Barrett raised a complaint about bullying, harassment and other misconduct by management.
In an email from September 2022, an executive director at the department, David Tonge, emailed O’Brien to notify her of the complaint by Barrett, which emails indicate was also copied to then-department secretary Georgina Harrisson.
“I don’t propose to do anything about his email which I consider ridiculous,” wrote Tonge. In her response, O’Brien said: “What a ridiculous diatribe. I agree with a short note to Georgina and copy in Anthony in case she raises it with him; just say he is a contingent worker, and we ceased his contract for reasons obvious in the email.”
The inquiry heard Barrett’s wife, Bernadette Barrett, was the director of a creative agency named Kazbar Creative, which had performed extensive graphic design work for the NSW Education Department.
Text messages from O’Brien to Manning show she asked procurement director Paul Hannan to “flag” Kazbar’s future tenders “so we know to not engage them”, in other words, to be blacklisted, the inquiry has heard.
The inquiry was also shown an email between O’Brien and Hannan in 2021 that referred to a “realignment” two years earlier. “The 2019 realignment afforded me to delete roles and as such, the people we didn’t want,” she wrote.
The inquiry was also shown numerous recovered text messages about a former director at School Infrastructure, Kathleen Donohoe, who the ICAC alleges was ostensibly made redundant after making a public interest disclosure about conflicts of interest and various other matters. Manning and O’Brien were involved in this termination, the inquiry has heard.
Earlier in the day, the inquiry heard from Manning, who appeared for his seventh day of evidence.
Manning was asked about former NSW Education Department finance manager Greg Brown, who last month gave evidence that he raised concerns about unsustainable budgets amid an “explosion” of contractors within the building unit soon after it was established.
However, Manning said he could not recall Brown raising repeated concerns that School Infrastructure was exceeding its available budget for labour costs. Latakos asked: “Do you reject what [Brown] said, or you don’t know?”
“I can’t reject what he said,” said Manning, but said he could “not recall” him raising issues.
Manning said he was involved in conversations around the restructure that led to Brown being made redundant in late 2019, but denied the restructure was to move him on from his role.
The inquiry was shown an email exchange that showed O’Brien asked for Manning to sign off on a “higher salary” for Carol Thompson, a “manager of finance transactions” who was hired in April 2020.
Manning said he “couldn’t place the logic” behind Thompson’s hiring.
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