Stuart Ayres suggested John Barilaro ‘could be quite good’ in New York role, NSW inquiry told

Newly resigned deputy Liberal party leader Stuart Ayres had told the head of his department he believed John Barilaro “could be quite good” in a senior New York trade role on the day after applications for the job closed, an inquiry has heard.

After the New South Wales premier, Dominic Perrottet, revealed Wednesday that Ayres would stand aside from cabinet and as deputy Liberal party leader while he is investigated for a possible breach of the ministerial code of conduct over the role, Investment NSW chief executive, Amy Brown, told a parliamentary inquiry he had praised Barilaro prior to his appointment.

Ayres denies any wrongdoing but said he was standing aside while the investigation was conducted.

Brown told the inquiry she had “multiple” conversations with Ayres about Barilaro’s application for the job, including at a meeting in January in which the minister gave a positive appraisal of his suitability for the job.

“I gave him a heads up that Mr Barilaro had indeed applied and he said, ‘Given he has been the trade minister I would suspect he would have relevant experience to represent the NSW government’,” Brown told the inquiry.

She said Ayres told her he believed Barilaro “could be quite good” for the job.

“The sentiment of it was John Barilaro would have some attributes, positive attributes, that are relevant to the role,” he said.

Brown also revealed during the hearing that when Ayres took over as trade minister after Barilaro’s resignation in October, he told her that he did not want to hire Jenny West, the woman who was first offered the position last year.

“I said, ‘Need I ask about Ms West?’” she told the inquiry. She said he replied: “No, I don’t think that’ll work, will it.”

Ayres has insisted he did not play a decision-making role in the recruitment of Barilaro to the New York position and says the decision was Brown’s alone, despite a series of revelations showing the minister had asked Brown to add a name – which was not Barilaro’s – to the shortlist for the role.

After weeks of denials from the government, Perrottet intervened on Wednesday after a draft excerpt from a separate review had raised questions about whether Ayres might have breached the ministerial code of conduct because of his involvement in the process.

On Wednesday Brown told the inquiry she did not believe that Ayres had been at “arms-length” from the hiring process.

“In my view he was not at arms length from the process,” she said. “There were multiple intersection points throughout.”

During the hearing Brown was forthright about her “nervousness” at the potential for Barilaro to be appointed.

She said the public service had been put into a “strange area” because of a decision to make the roles ministerial appointments.

The inquiry has previously heard that decision was taken to cabinet by Barilaro and approved on 27 September, just a few weeks after West had been verbally offered the role. Brown told the inquiry she had been given the sense ministers “weren’t impressed” that a “bureaucrat” had been chosen for the role.

“The deputy premier’s office did indicate there was a general sense that people were not impressed with the first candidate I’d selected,” Brown said. “It was disheartening.”

After Barilaro resigned in October, Ayres took over as trade minister.

Ayres and Brown have said the decision to make the senior trade commissioner roles ministerial appointments was subsequently overturned.

But on Wednesday Brown said she never received any “formal” notice that had occurred.

It created what she called a “grey area”, where the public service technically had the responsibility to fill the role but Brown had the sense that could be overturned in the future.

“It’s difficult to articulate but that creates an uncertainty,” she said.

“You don’t want to make a decision then [see it] reversed in five minutes … it also confused my organisation.”

Brown agreed that “grey area” put her in a “difficult position”, and conceded Ayres’s positive appraisal of Barilaro carried “some weight” in her decision-making.

Asked whether it was a “factor” in including Barilaro on the shortlist for the role, Brown replied: “Yes. It was the view of minister Ayres that he would be a strong candidate, but [Barilaro] was the trade minister [so I] agreed with the proposition that he was a strong candidate.”

She had earlier told the inquiry that she felt the recruitment for the trade role “was ultimately mine to make”.

On Monday it was revealed an initial selection panel report from an external recruitment agency for the second recruitment round listed Barilaro as the second-ranked candidate, but Brown intervened to have the report changed.

During her evidence she said she did that because she believed the report was “just inaccurate”.

“As we left the [interview] room we actually said the words ‘They’re neck and neck, we can’t quite decide who would be more suited, let’s do some informal checking and come back’,” Brown said.

Part of that checking included setting up a meeting with Ayres and the highest-ranked candidate, award-winning businesswoman Kimberly Cole.

On Monday Ayres insisted he had not expressed a view about Cole following that meeting.

During her evidence Brown said the meeting had been “disappointing” and she had decided that Cole was not the best candidate. But she also suggested Ayres had offered his opinion too, one of many “intersections” she said had occurred during the hiring process.

“The discussion we … had was around Ms Cole … not really having the confidence of the minister in the meeting,” she said.

Barilaro walked away from the role less than two weeks after his appointment was announced in June, saying it had become untenable and a “distraction” due to media attention. He has said that he “always maintained that I followed the process”.