“He[Barilaro] asked me to contact[Investment NSW boss] Amy Brown and request a cabinet submission converting the commissioner roles to ministerial appointments,” he said.
When asked if he was given a deadline,Brayford said the time frame requested was “ASAP”.
The former staffer said he had no conversations about the proposal with Barilaro or his chief of staff prior to receiving that text.
He said his interactions with the deputy premier were “pretty infrequent” but the text message request did not surprise him. “Nothing really surprised me with John,” Brayford told the inquiry.
Labor’s Penny Sharpe said it was typical for cabinet minutes to be circulated among ministers for feedback before they were presented at meetings,and asked whether the proposal had been shared with the premier,treasurer or investment minister at the time - which would have included current Premier Dominic Perrottet and Trade Minister Stuart Ayres.
“I recall having a conversation with the deputy premier and he said to me that he would talk to the other ministers,” Brayford said. He said he did not recall Barilaro reporting back to him about the ministers’ feedback.
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Mookhey said Brayford’s testimony had raised “serious questions”. “We need to know:what conversations did John Barilaro have with Dom Perrottet and Stuart Ayres which meant that they could fast track this through cabinet in just 10 days?”
Labor has asked the government to provide further documents – such as Barilaro’s application for the New York role and the panel report that recommended his candidacy – to help the inquiry progress. The documents were due back to the upper house on July 6.
The ongoing sagahas engulfed the government in turmoil as Perrottet embarked on his first trade mission to Asia on Wednesday night.
Speaking in Tokyo on Thursday morning,Perrottet conceded he was disappointed that the mission had been overshadowed bythe ongoing controversy.
He also said he did not work with Barilaro to expedite the submission to cabinet to convert the appointments to ministerial picks.
Treasurer Matt Kean on Thursday said he was confident a separate public service review commissioned by the premier would “get to the bottom of what’s gone on here”.
“I’m not going to play guessing games ... Let’s wait until the independent inquiry comes back with its findings,and then we’ll all know what’s going on,” he said.
“We all want to find out what’s gone on here. But we all want to make sure that we get the right result.”
Thursday’s evidence follows an explosive statement from Barilaro’s former chief of staff Mark Connell,published on Wednesday,thatclaimed Barilaro said in 2019 that a future US trade role would be “the job for when I get the f--- out of this place”.
Barilaro has rejected the claim,calling the former staffer’s allegation “fictitious” and “false”.
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