Tuesday 20 September 2022 02:05 AM Amy Brown: Public servant sacked over John Barilaro New York job scandal walks ... trends now
The senior NSW bureaucrat who appointed former deputy premier John Barilaro to a plum New York job has walked away with a $400,000 payout after being fired.
Amy Brown appointed Mr Barilaro to the $500,000-a-year trade post, even though there were many other well-credentialed candidates in the running.
Doing so led to her dismissal after NSW's most senior public servant, Michael Coutts-Trotter, suggested she would be sacked for unsatisfactory performance.
Seven months out from the state election, the opposition Labor Party said more heads should roll in the Barilaro job scandal.
Losing a job for unsatisfactory performance would normally lead to a payout of just 12 weeks' salary - $141,700 in Ms Brown's case.
But a spokesman for the Department of Premier and Cabinet, which Mr Couts-Trotter heads, said Ms Brown's payout figure was correct.
Amy Brown (pictured) has walked away with a $400,000 payout after being fired from her senior bureaucrat role
'Ms Brown's employment... was terminated under section 41(1) of the Government Sector Employment Act 2013,' the spokesman told Daily Mail Australia.
'She is entitled to a payment equivalent to 38 weeks' pay.'
The massive payout will help to make up for the loss of Ms Brown's $614,000-a-year position as secretary of the Department of Enterprise, Investment, and Trade.
An independent review into the appointment of Mr Barilaro to the taxpayer-funded US trade job found Ms Brown was indirectly influenced by then-trade minister Stuart Ayres's preference for who should get the role.
Mr Ayres resigned as minister last month after a draft excerpt from the review raised questions about whether he breached the ministerial code of conduct with his involvement in the appointment process.
Premier Dominic Perrottet said the appointment process was 'flawed from the outset' and ordered the independent legal review to establish if Mr Ayres had breached the ministerial code.
The review, carried out by former ICAC inspector Bruce McClintock SC and released last week, found Mr Ayres had not breached the code, but he remains on the backbench.
Ms Brown stood aside from her role as head of Investment NSW in August, saying at the time she wanted to focus on her position as departmental secretary.
NSW bureaucrat Amy Brown said in a social media post that she is 'exploring new opportunities' but neglected to say this was due to her having been fired
Mr Barilaro relinquished the trade job in June, just weeks after his appointment was announced, saying the role was untenable and had become a distraction.
NSW Labor leader Chris Minns said Ms Brown's sacking was 'the
