‘No secrets in there': The photos and the files at centre of ICAC inquiry
A former contractor to the NSW schools building unit has conceded to a corruption watchdog he should have deleted files he downloaded before going on to tender for a lucrative contract with the agency.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating the former chief executive of Schools Infrastructure NSW, Anthony Manning, over allegations that as head of the school-building arm of the Department of Education, he awarded friends lucrative contracts while punishing others who questioned his conduct.
Stuart Suthern-Brunt – Manning's long-time cycling buddy – was recruited in 2019 to School Infrastructure NSW as an executive on $2800 a day, the equivalent of $644,000 a year, but told the inquiry on Tuesday that by the end of 2021 he was ready to leave to take a break and 'do some soul-searching'.
After leaving, Suthern-Brunt joined a consortium called APP, and it won a $39 million contract for a project to implement a rapid-build, pre-fabricated construction method for school infrastructure known as the Pavilion Project.
At the start of the six-week hearing, it was alleged Suthern-Brunt was privy to a range of confidential information about the project, but on Tuesday he said nobody had yet articulated to him exactly what that was.
Just before his contract finished at the end of 2021, he was considering different pathways including the possibility of tendering on the prefabricated schools project. When Manning asked him about joining a steering committee to decide the criteria for that tender for prefabricated modular schools, he declined because he knew it would be a conflict of interest which would prevent him from bidding for the contract.
'I said, I don't want to be part of it because I don't want to miss the opportunity, if there is one in the future,' he told the inquiry.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Jamie Darams, SC, asked him more about the exchange.
'Did [Manning] say, 'Stuart, that's going to be inappropriate with all the information you had [access] to.' He didn't say anything over those lines, did he?' Darams asked.
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