Dozens of contractors within the NSW Education Department’s infrastructure arm were paid salaries of more than $500,000 with little oversight, an anti-corruption probe has heard.
The state’s corruption watchdog is holding a public inquiry into the conduct of Anthony Manning, who headed up the department’s school infrastructure unit from 2017 until last year.
NSW Department of Education secretary Murat Dizdar outside the ICAC hearing into school infrastructure on Monday. He is not accused of any wrongdoing.Credit: Dylan Coker
It is hearing allegations the former chief executive of School Infrastructure NSW gave friends high-paying contractor jobs, improperly awarded contracts and misallocated funds.
On Wednesday, the Independent Commission Against Corruption heard evidence from the current and former secretaries of the Education Department, who said Manning could be a “bruising” and “testy” colleague who resisted repeated efforts to cut down on how much the agency was spending.
Current secretary Murat Dizdar told the hearing that while Manning could be a “helpful” and “thoughtful” colleague, he also had a “sharp” and “direct” manner, which left some colleagues “bruised”.
He described a meeting of senior officials in which Manning proposed firing school principals to send a message about school performance, using the phrase “shoot an admiral [to] set the tone”.
The phrase “stunned” the group, Dizdar said, and was followed by a “period of silence”.
He told the hearing that after taking over as education secretary in 2023 he moved to dramatically cut spending on contractors, and discovered 26 people inside School Infrastructure NSW were on salaries of more than $500,000 a year.
He said while he successfully cut down the use of contractors across the Education Department, he was “struggling to achieve what I was after” with Manning, who argued that he had to pay more for staff than could be achieved within the public service.
“I asked him about individuals who were paid more than the secretary role,” he said. The education secretary in NSW earns between $509,251 and $588,250, remuneration records show.
Former Education Department secretary Georgina Harrisson gives evidence.Credit: ICAC
The proportion of permanent to contract staff in the agency had been 51 per cent to 49 per cent when he took over, he said. It has since shifted to 83 per cent and 17 per cent respectively, he said.
School Infrastructure NSW was established in 2017 by the former Coalition government. While it sat within the department, both Dizdar and his predecessor, Georgina Harrisson, told the inquiry it appeared to act with an unusual level of independence.
Manning was given the title of chief executive, and it had its own “advisory council” designed to act similarly to a board, though both the current and former secretary questioned its effectiveness. The inquiry heard that the arrangement appeared to give School Infrastructure an air of separation from the rest of the department.
Both said it was difficult to get information out of the agency, and provided evidence that Manning had repeatedly been asked to be more collegiate with other executives, to no avail.
“I think the sense I had was that Mr Manning felt like School Infrastructure was its own entity, and that therefore his contribution to the executive [team], from his perspective, seemed to be one of commentary on the rest of the organisation rather than his organisation being part of it,” Harrisson said.
She said he had been “assertive” in resisting her own attempts to cut down on contractor spending, justifying the need for high wages by arguing he could not attract appropriate staff on public service wages. She said some of those concerns were justified, but that she was concerned about the number of “corporate” staff hired as contractors.
Dizdar said his impression while he was a deputy secretary was that School Infrastructure operated “parallel” to the rest of the department. He described a series of “unusual” experiences when he was asked to fill in for Manning for three weeks in 2021, including a “reluctance to raise issues” among his staff.
He said he was also surprised when he learnt that Manning had direct sign-off on project spending, ranging from “$100 to millions”.
The inquiry continues.
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clarification
This story was updated to clarify the proportion of permanent to contract staff in the agency.