The schools boss, the 120 messages and a multimillion-dollar contract
The inquiry was shown text messages from June 2017 in which Palassis wished Manning luck for his School Infrastructure job interview, and congratulated him when he got the role. 'Just had a call from Minister [Brad] Hazzard congratulating me on my new role,' Manning wrote. Palassis responded: 'Game. Set. Match. Well done buddy.'
The pair met for drinks in September and messages shown reveal the pair were critical of Amy Brown, then a partner at the consultancy firm PwC.
The inquiry has heard Brown had been in contact with Manning leading up to his interview, and had mentioned him as a potential candidate for the job to then-education minister Rob Stokes.
Counsel assisting Jamie Darams SC asked Manning if the text messages showed there was a 'personality issue' between Palassis and Brown. Manning said he could not recall the issues and could not remember 'doing anything about it'.
'Is the reason you didn't do anything about it because you saw the whole tender process as a means to get Mr Palassis and his company engaged with School Infrastructure?' asked Darams, who at one point compared it to a Trojan horse. Manning replied: 'I don't remember anything of the sort.'
Loading
Under questioning, Manning conceded he should have declared his relationship with Palassis.
'Given this additional correspondence, you certainly should have been making it clear to people who were tasked with assessing whether contracts should go to Mr Palassis' company that you had a relationship with him,' Darams said. 'And as a matter of probity, transparency, all of that should have been declared, do you accept that?'
Manning replied: 'Yeah, I do.'
Later in the day, Manning was asked about another contract – for 'strategic communications' services – that was awarded to consulting firm Kathy Jones and Associates. That firm was paid about $9 million over six years, the inquiry has heard.
The inquiry has previously heard Manning described Jones as his 'communications fairy godmother', a comment Manning said on Monday he may have made 'once or twice'.
He told the inquiry that he should have declared his relationship with Jones.
'There were relationship issues I was having with the minister's office [in 2023], and I was using Kathy as a sounding board.' He told the inquiry Jones had helped him with personal issues in 2016, and that year she suggested the pair meet while they were both in London and they had Christmas lunch at Ormeggio in The Spit.
On Monday morning, Manning was asked about another contract awarded to a long-time friend, Martin Berry, and his consultancy Heathwest Advisory.
Darams took Manning through a briefing document to contract Berry for $596,250 to 'lead the property and accommodations teams' at the building unit in 2019.
The inquiry has previously heard Heathwest did not submit a proposal or go through a competitive tender for the contract, and no conflict of interest was declared over the pair's relationship.
Manning told the inquiry Berry began work on a $600,000 contract at the agency without 'any documentation', saying that he 'relied on his team' to check if procurement rules were followed.
Berry has previously told the inquiry he was brought in to the public school building unit on a rate of $2650 a day to work on property transactions for schools earmarked for Chatswood, Westmead and Wentworth Point.
Loading
Berry began work on the contract about six weeks before it was approved, the ICAC heard. Darams questioned Manning on what he did to check procurement rules were being followed when engaging Heathwest. 'I would have relied on my team, and Mr [Erik] Maranik is part of my team, to go through that process,' Manning replied.
Manning said he could not recall 'any documentation' that proper procurement processes were followed. He told the inquiry he 'had a conversation' to bring in Berry, and 'then he started'.
'We hadn't formalised it before he started,' Manning said. He told the inquiry the NSW Education Department did not have the skills to manage the property transactions for the planned schools, and Berry was brought in to identify 'logjams'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
West Australian
15 hours ago
- West Australian
Rodney McWeay: Father held children in ‘house of horrors' convicted of child abuse, murder
WARNING: DISTURBING DETAILS A Georgia man has been found guilty of starving his four-year-old daughter to death in what prosecutors described as a 'house of horrors'. Rodney McWeay, 32, was convicted on June 19 of murdering his daughter, Treasure McWeay, just days before Christmas in 2023 in a case of sickening child abuse and neglect. A jury found him guilty of 14 felony charges, including malice murder, felony murder, child cruelty, false imprisonment, kidnapping, and contributing to the dependency of a minor. The case revealed a grim timeline of abuse. McWeay's three children had previously been removed from his custody in June 2023 due to unsafe living conditions, including mould and unsanitary environments, Fox 5 Atlanta reported. Prosecutors said he later abducted the children from their mother and confined them in his apartment in Atlanta, described in court as a 'house of horrors.' Investigators testified that the children were kept locked in separate rooms with no food or water. Surveillance cameras monitored their movements, and they were not allowed to leave their rooms, even to use the bathroom, per CBS affiliate WRDW . Neighbours had raised concerns. Quasheea Cokley, who lived nearby, reported hearing frequent screams and crying from the apartment and contacted Georgia's Division of Family & Children Services. Despite multiple attempts, state and law enforcement agencies were unable to make contact before Treasure's death. Police discovered the young girl unresponsive in McWeay's apartment in the days leading up to Christmas. She and her two brothers were transported to the hospital, where Treasure was later pronounced dead. A medical examiner determined she died of cardiac arrest caused by prolonged malnutrition. At just 24 pounds, her weight was well below the healthy range for a child her age. During the trial, McWeay's defence acknowledged he had made 'some wrong decisions' regarding the children's mother but claimed he never intended harm. McWeay had previously rejected a plea deal of 75 years. He now faces the possibility of multiple life sentences when sentenced in the next 30 days. Young people seeking support can phone beyondblue on 1300 22 4636 or go to
Perth Now
15 hours ago
- Perth Now
Four-year-old dies of starvation in ‘house of horrors'
WARNING: DISTURBING DETAILS A Georgia man has been found guilty of starving his four-year-old daughter to death in what prosecutors described as a 'house of horrors'. Rodney McWeay, 32, was convicted on June 19 of murdering his daughter, Treasure McWeay, just days before Christmas in 2023 in a case of sickening child abuse and neglect. A jury found him guilty of 14 felony charges, including malice murder, felony murder, child cruelty, false imprisonment, kidnapping, and contributing to the dependency of a minor. The case revealed a grim timeline of abuse. McWeay's three children had previously been removed from his custody in June 2023 due to unsafe living conditions, including mould and unsanitary environments, Fox 5 Atlanta reported. Prosecutors said he later abducted the children from their mother and confined them in his apartment in Atlanta, described in court as a 'house of horrors.' Investigators testified that the children were kept locked in separate rooms with no food or water. Surveillance cameras monitored their movements, and they were not allowed to leave their rooms, even to use the bathroom, per CBS affiliate WRDW. Neighbours had raised concerns. Quasheea Cokley, who lived nearby, reported hearing frequent screams and crying from the apartment and contacted Georgia's Division of Family & Children Services. Despite multiple attempts, state and law enforcement agencies were unable to make contact before Treasure's death. Police discovered the young girl unresponsive in McWeay's apartment in the days leading up to Christmas. She and her two brothers were transported to the hospital, where Treasure was later pronounced dead. A medical examiner determined she died of cardiac arrest caused by prolonged malnutrition. At just 24 pounds, her weight was well below the healthy range for a child her age. During the trial, McWeay's defence acknowledged he had made 'some wrong decisions' regarding the children's mother but claimed he never intended harm. McWeay had previously rejected a plea deal of 75 years. He now faces the possibility of multiple life sentences when sentenced in the next 30 days. Young people seeking support can phone beyondblue on 1300 22 4636 or go to
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Schools boss signed off on $67,000 ‘fungus bench' that was flagged as biosecurity hazard
Manning conceded that 'it would have been better' if other bidders had been aware Jones had written the brief when competing for the tender, but disagreed her company should have been excluded from the tender. 'At that point in time I didn't see an issue with it, no, I didn't see an issue with it. If I did it again I would do it differently, yes,' he said. Jones' involvement pre-dated just the writing of the scope of services. The ICAC heard on Tuesday that she had a contract with the agency extended three times in six months leading up to the tender, and had another of her employees, Amreetha Kariyawasam, embedded with School Infrastructure on a three-month contract worth $108,000 plus GST. On March 27, 2018, Jones complained directly to Manning that other School Infrastructure staff were 'keeping Amreetha out' of developing a new strategy because 'they say she has a conflict of interest which I don't agree with'. That email came at the end of a longer trail discussing the release of the new 'engagement' strategy for the agency which pre-dated the tender. It was not clear how Jones was included because she was not a party to the original emails. However, on Wednesday it became clear that Manning had blind copied her into correspondence in which he had instructed another executive to delay progress on the strategy until he returned from an overseas trip. Manning could not say why he blind copied her, saying it 'could have been an accident' or 'could have been deliberate'. The commission then saw an email Manning sent to a human resources employee about two staff members. It was sent on the same day as Jones' complaint. Manning wrote in the email that 'continued poor behaviour by a couple of the team may need to be dealt with by asking them to leave the organisation'. But Manning said there had been problems with the two employees. One of them had 'lied' about a separate issue, he said, and had caused 'continual issues' such as running 'tick-a-box' community engagement which caused 'downstream issues' for the agency. 'When they [held information booths] in shopping centre [they would] find spaces right at the back so it was less prominent, that was the feedback I was getting from the team,' he said. Manning has previously told the inquiry he only began to consider Jones a friend in 2023, after she helped him with problems he was having with the new Labor government. He also invited her to his 50th birthday in 2021. He denied a suggestion from counsel assisting Jamie Darams SC that he had been 'favourable' to Jones. 'I don't think so, no,' he said. 'I don't know whether I had a view or not at the time.' Later, the ICAC heard Manning organised a contract for Elena Bondareva, a US-based consultant he had worked with in the past but hadn't seen for 'a number of years', as a sustainability adviser. Bondareva was hired as a direct appointment via another 'reverse brief', which she wrote. The initial appointment was for a daily fee of $2250. The brief, signed in 2020, noted an 'approximate upper limit' of $90,000 for two months. But the contract was repeatedly extended, and she was paid $676,730 over four years. Bondareva was working on 'engineered living materials', Manning told the ICAC, including algae and fungus to create materials including pavers, bricks and outdoor furniture. The agency conducted an expression of interest tender for 'engineered living materials', which Manning said 'got a lot of traction' but struggled because of the difficulty in procuring fungus-based materials in Australia. Manning said the idea was to procure 'very normal' fungus-based items including bricks, 'rather than trying to do something too clever', but there were 'biosecurity risks' because of the need to import the materials. Loading In 2023, after plans for a 'grafted' tree canopy fell over because School Infrastructure could not find an engineer to declare it was safe, the agency bought a bench made from mycelium. The commissioner of the inquiry, Paul Lakatos SC, labelled it a 'fungus bench'. The inquiry saw various briefs which showed the cost of the bench between $67,000 and $79,000, but the bench was stopped at customs after it was flagged as a 'biosecurity hazard' by Border Force. 'Unfortunately, it is not good news in relation to the delivery of the mycelium bench,' an employee wrote to Manning in July 2023.
