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It didn’t take much political savvy to anticipate that the appointment of John Barilaro to a plum trading post in New York, a post Barilaro helped create when he was Secretary of Commerce, would set off a firestorm the moment it was announced. go public in mid-June.
“We were all scratching our heads to be honest,” a senior minister said this week, after Trade and Investment Minister Stuart Ayres fell on his sword. “It was such an obvious own goal. As soon as the senior ministers saw it [the Barilaro appointment] we were furious.”
The mystery is this: why wasn’t the political risk obvious to the prime minister from the start? Why wasn’t it obvious to his chief of staff, Bran Black? Or, for that matter, to Deputy Prime Minister Paul Toole, who like Perrottet, knew about it by the end of April at the latest?
Experts question why Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet did not save the government before Barilaro’s own goal. Credit: SMH
Why wasn’t it obvious to Ayres, who had known since December of Barilaro’s interest in the role and sent him a link to the press notice announcing the job?
Even the senior civil servant who made the final decision – with much input, it now appears, from Ayres – confessed to a NSW upper house inquiry this week that he had harbored some “nervousness” about appoint Barilaro to the half million dollar position. , which came with a significant living allowance and fast-paced new offices in the Big Apple.
Amy Brown, head of the department for enterprise, investment and trade, told the upper house committee: “I was nervous about it … because he [Barilaro] had some history with the NSW government which [could] make it difficult for him to assume the role without media and public controversy”.
She was nervous enough to take soundings from Perrottet’s head of department, Michael Coutts-Trotter, who – she claimed – raised no red flags after she asked him to check with the Prime Minister on April 12.
(Coutts-Trotter has declined to comment. He says Brown’s evidence will be “addressed” in the yet-to-be-published review of Barilaro’s appointment commissioned by Perrottet from former public service commissioner Graeme Head).
But Brown’s observation that Barilaro had “history” is pertinent.
As a senior MP recalled to the Herald this week, the story included Barilaro getting into heated text exchanges with ministerial colleagues. It included almost blowing up the coalition government in late 2020 when, as deputy prime minister, he threatened to take the Nationals to the cross-bench in a dispute with Gladys Berejiklian over koala habitat.
The department’s secretary, Amy Brown, said she was nervous about appointing John Barilaro to the trade role given his history with the government. Credit: Kate Geraghty
It included one time Barilaro publicly said then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was resigning, and labeled then-federal Nationals leader Michael McCormack a failed leader. Liberal colleagues saw him as an unpredictable firecracker.
Most recently, Barilaro’s objection to media intrusion saw him involved in a brawl with a camera crew outside a Manly hotel in late July.
“It goes to temperament,” says a former colleague, wondering if the volatile former deputy prime minister could ever have been a wise choice for what was a quasi-diplomatic role.
In fairness to Barilaro, he was unanimously endorsed by a civil service selection panel. But in explosive evidence at the upper house inquiry on Friday, independent panel member Kathrina Lo, the public service commissioner, said she would never have endorsed the selection board’s proceedings “had I known [then] what I know now”. This included knowledge disclosed from the scope of “ministerial input” to the appointment process.
“If I had known on June 15, what I know now, I would not have endorsed the report,” Ms Lo told the inquiry on Friday. Credit: Kate Geraghty
Ayres’ resignation on Tuesday afternoon – offered despite insisting he had done nothing wrong – ends a disastrous two months for Perrottet.
The Ayres/Barilaro saga has overshadowed a carefully crafted budget that was intended to put the nearly 12-year-old coalition government on a war footing for state elections in seven months.
It threatens Ayres’ hold on the highly marginal seat of Penrith and blows a hole in his bid to woo voters in the city’s west who are still reeling from the harshest pandemic lockdowns they endured.
It comes long after Perrottet’s sacking this week of Fair Trading Minister Eleni Petinos over alleged bullying, and coincides with the impending suspension from state parliament of another former minister John Sidoti, who ICAC found on last month that he had acted corruptly.
The Barilaro controversy dogged Perrottet for the duration of his recent trade mission to Asia, which included a defiant Ayres joining him for the Indian leg of the trip.
And it has ignited a divisive row for the deputy Liberal leadership vacated by Ayers, inflaming factional tensions that have only simmered since Berejiklian’s shock exit less than a year ago.
Little love is lost between the two front-runners, moderate leader and treasurer Matt Kean, and the head of the centre-right faction, Transport Minister David Elliott.
Transport Minister David Elliott has thrown his hat into the ring for the Liberal deputy leadership. Credit: Nick Moir
Just a few weeks ago, Elliott was publicly accusing Kean of “treason” for secretly asking a reporter to lobby Scott Morrison during the federal election campaign over the Katherine Deves affair. This week, Elliott continued a thinly veiled attack on Kean on 2GB radio over delayed compensation for taxi plate holders.
Perrottet’s problems also extend to parliament, which meets next week.
There are just six weeks of session left before NSW goes to the polls in March, and the Coalition’s grip on government is increasingly precarious due to its minority status. It currently has 45 seats, two short of the majority. The situation is made worse as Kiama MP Gareth Ward remains suspended from parliament as he faces a charge of sexual assault and Sidoti’s imminent eviction.
That means two more votes from the former Liberals, which the government could have relied on to pass the legislation, are gone. Lake Macquarie MP Greg Piper, one of the independents the government relies on for its confidence and supply, acknowledges the Coalition is on a downward spiral.
However, the long-serving MP, who often forms a voting bloc with fellow independents Alex Greenwich and Joe McGirr, is reluctant to cause Perrottet any more trouble. “There is no practical benefit, no utility in bringing down the government at this stage. Our role is to make sure that the government continues to function properly,” Piper says.
For Ayres, the way the week has unfolded must have been personally devastating. Brash and energetic, Ayers held a series of ministerial positions – including business, tourism, sport and western Sydney as well as trade and investment – which placed him at the center of a network of powerful business and sporting interests in Sydney .
A bittersweet moment for Stuart Ayres. Shortly after inaugurating the new Allianz stadium he had so vociferously supported, he had to resign from the ministry. Credit: SMH
He and his partner, former foreign minister Senator Marise Payne, were among the city’s power couples, often seen at sporting matches, well-known in racing circles and both prominent figures in the faction moderate of the liberal party.
On Tuesday morning, Ayers stood on the freshly laid turf at the rebuilt Allianz Stadium, a project of his for years, and relished its completion.
But that fleeting moment of triumph would be overshadowed within hours by an outburst from ARLC president Peter V’landys, furious that suburban stadiums were no longer receiving promised state government funding. (Ayers’ home stadium Penrith retains the promised $300 million).
By late Tuesday, Ayers was calling for the termination of the ministry, after Perrottet called him and handed him a draft of the chief’s report that pointed to a possible breach of the ministerial code of conduct on Barilaro’s appointment.
Ayers resigned in a defiant statement denying any such wrongdoing and maintaining that he had always acted with “the highest levels of integrity” as a minister.
The turmoil surrounding the government has created a feverish internal atmosphere, with gossip, rumors and conspiracy theories spreading through the liberal ranks. A senior source postulated on Thursday that a challenge to Perrottet was imminent. Most senior ministers consider this far-fetched, but their confidence in Perrottet’s judgment has been severely shaken.
Senior Liberals fear the prime minister has no politically astute minds in his office to help guide him. Black, his right-hand man, is a former NSW Liberal HQ lawyer who is seen as a “lovely guy”, according to ministers, but lacking in political savvy.
The turmoil surrounding the government has created a feverish internal atmosphere.
“His office will let him down,” according to a senior minister. He is also facing the loss of some wise heads at the election, with his friend Infrastructure Minister Rob Stokes and Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello heavily tipped to withdraw from the politics in the elections.
The long process that the Prime Minister established to manage the Barilaro controversy is seen by senior colleagues as an example of the shortcomings in his political management.
Ayers had initially told parliament that Barilaro’s appointment was, under current rules, entirely a matter of public service and had been carried out “at arm’s length” from the government. Perrottet echoed this view and indeed initially predicted that Barilaro would do a “brilliant job”.
But once the Upper House investigation began…