A long-time friend and colleague of former School Infrastructure NSW boss Anthony Manning received millions of dollars in contracts which either “pushed the boundaries” of, or breached, government procurement rules, the state’s anti-corruption watchdog has heard.
In one case, Martin Berry, whom the Independent Commission Against Corruption has previously heard had known Manning as a friend and colleague since 2006, appeared to have begun work on a contract worth almost $600,000 about a month before it was approved “outside normal procurement thresholds”.
Martin Berry gives evidence to ICAC on Friday.Credit: ICAC
“Cart before the horse stuff,” is how Paul Hannan, a senior Department of Education official who appeared before the commission on Friday, described it. “Rare, super rare stuff,” he said during the second day of his extensive and often tense questioning by counsel assisting Jamie Darams.
In total, ICAC has heard that between 2018 and 2022 Berry and his advisory firm, Heathwest, were engaged nine times by School Infrastructure and paid more than $3 million.
The two men met in 2006 when Berry gave Manning a job in the Sydney office of consulting firm Turner & Townsend. They socialised together, and Manning organised Berry’s buck’s party and attended his wedding.
They were both members of the “Tom, Dick and Harry Breakfast Club” along with various other consultants who were also contracted to do work for the school building agency.
Berry appeared in the witness stand for the first time on Friday afternoon, and Darams took him through a long history of text messages with Manning dating back to 2015 and early 2016.
They boasted about cricket – both men are English, and took pleasure in their Ashes victory at Trent Bridge that year – arranged to catch up for beers on Sydney’s northern beaches, and discussed work.
On the latter point, Darams showed Berry a series of texts between late 2015 and February 2016, which seemed to show Manning attempting to find work for his friend, who was unemployed at the time.
Berry at times attempted to play down their relationship, saying his memory was that, on average, they would see each other once every six months, though he conceded it was more frequent in that period because he did not have a job.
While he admitted they were “friends”, at one point he said the two men “kept our relationship at a professional level”.
Asked by Darams what he meant by that, he said: “We recognised there would be occasions we might be in roles that we’d need to be seen to be maintaining a professional relationship.”
However, when Darams took him to a series of texts which appeared to show Manning attempting to introduce him to people for work opportunities during that period, Berry denied that was the reason for their contact.
“He would’ve known I was not working, but the purpose of engaging him was not …” Berry said.
“As a mate he’s identifying an opportunity for a mate who’s out of work?” Darams responded.
“Well he’d obviously heard someone was looking for something and thought …”
“Thought of his mate,” Darams said.
The text revealed Manning was responsible for introducing Berry to Sam Sangster, the former chief executive of Health Infrastructure, where Manning worked at the time. Berry was subsequently employed on a contract doing “complex and significant” work on Royal North Shore Hospital.
“Anthony how did you go with Sam? Cheers,” Berry wrote to Manning after the meeting in February 2016.
“All good – start Monday,” Manning replied.
The relationship between the two men is of key interest to ICAC in its probe into whether Manning gave friends and associates high-paying contractor jobs, improperly awarded contracts and misallocated funds while head of School Infrastructure NSW between 2017 and 2024.
The ICAC has previously heard that in early October 2017, about six weeks after Manning started as the head of the new School Infrastructure agency, the two men had met to discuss engaging Heathwest. Berry then sent Manning a proposed scope of works, which the schools’ boss passed on to staff without telling them where it came from.
An eventual request for quotations sent to the market by the agency “was in many aspects a ‘cut and paste’” of what Berry had sent to him, Darams has said.
Berry’s company was eventually contracted for work worth about $87,000 not including GST. That contract ended up costing about $500,000, before it was extended for another 12 months for another $500,000.
Earlier on Friday, Darams continued his lengthy examination of Hannan, who still works in the Department of Education as its chief procurement officer and previously acted as Manning’s underling in the agency.
Hannan was involved in signing off on many of the contracts to Berry’s firm. He told ICAC that the extension was “worthy of questioning”, but couldn’t recall whether he did question it.
On Friday, the ICAC was shown another briefing document approved by Manning to contract Berry for $596,250 between July 2019 and June 2020. The contract was a direct engagement, meaning it was not put out for an open tender, and the briefing noted it was “outside normal procurement”. It was still approved. The document was dated September 16, 2019, but ICAC was shown evidence which suggested Berry had already begun working on it in August.
It was, as Hannan said, “cart before the horse stuff”.
“Obviously, it’s been done after the fact. It’s not something we do very much these days because obviously, it’s not the right way to do things,” Hannan said.
“Was it the right way to do things then?” Darams asked.
“No, it wasn’t,” Hannan said.
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