Deputy NSW Liberal party leader Stuart Ayres asked Investment NSW chief executive Amy Brown to add a name to the shortlist of candidates for a lucrative New York trade commissioner job that ultimately went to John Barilaro.
Emails obtained through a parliamentary order on Thursday show that in February this year Brown, the public servant ultimately responsible for appointing Barilaro, met with Ayres to discuss candidates for the job.
On 8 February Brown wrote to another senior public servant in Investment NSW, Kylie Bell, to advise that she had “run through” the list of candidates with Ayres.
“Min Ayres and I have run through the ‘long’ shortlist and our recommended ‘short’ shortlist for NYC,” she wrote.
“He’d like to add [REDACTED] to the short shortlist please.”
The explosive email calls into question comments made by Ayres during his first press conference in almost a month on Thursday. Speaking in Mumbai alongside the premier, Dominic Perrottet, where the two are on a trade mission, Ayres again denied playing any role in the recruitment process.
“I have not under any circumstances influenced the decisions of Amy Brown [CEO of Investment NSW] in who she is selecting as senior executives of the public service,” Ayres reportedly said.
The minister has previously insisted the appointment was done by the public service, at arm’s-length from the government.
Another document obtained by the Guardian suggests Ayres met with Barilaro before he was announced as the candidate for the job, and “supported” his appointment.
A briefing prepared for Brown by the department in June states that Barilaro had “met with the Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Investment, Stuart Ayres MP, who has supported his appointment”.
Ayres has come under increasing pressure over his role in the saga since the Guardian revealed he signed a briefing noting that former senior public servant Jenny West was the “successful” candidate in a first round of recruitment in the role.
Brown later told an upper house inquiry the offer was retracted after a “government decision” to make the role a ministerial appointment instead of a public service appointment.
That decision was later reversed, with the New York position readvertised in December and Barilaro appointed by Brown after the second recruitment round.
After the Guardian first revealed that West had been offered the job, Ayres told parliament there had been “no suitable candidate” found in the first round of recruitment.
That’s led to accusations from Labor that he may have misled parliament, which he denied again on Thursday, telling the travelling media: “I want to be very, very clear about this. The information that I provided the parliament is absolutely consistent with the information that has been provided by the CEO of Investment NSW”.
At a press conference in June, Ayres confirmed Barilaro had told him he intended to apply by text message sometime in December. He said he told Barilaro that “these processes will be done at arm’s length of government … and he was free to apply for a job like any other private citizen”.
He also confirmed he had given Brown a “heads up” that Barilaro might apply for the position.
However he insisted he had not encouraged or discouraged Barilaro from applying.
“Absolutely not,” he said at the time. “I merely provided him information that the role would be advertised publicly and he would have the opportunity to enter that recruitment process like any other person,” he said.
The Guardian has contacted Ayres’ office for comment.
Barilaro has since withdrawn from the position, citing the intense media attention his appointment had garnered, but has said he “always maintained that I followed the process”.