“The role of the Cabinet Standing Committee on Expenditure (Expenditure Review Committee or ERC) is to assist Cabinet and the Treasurer in:
framing the fiscal strategy and the Budget for Cabinet's consideration
driving expenditure controls within agencies and monitoring financial performance
considering proposals with financial implications brought forward by Ministers.
ERC is the only committee of Cabinet that can recommend any new spending or revenue proposals to Cabinet.
All spending, revenue or tax expenditure proposals by Ministers must be considered by ERC prior to final Cabinet approval unless otherwise agreed by the Premier, Deputy Premier and Treasurer…..
The Treasurer is the Chair of the ERC. The Treasurer determines the order of proceedings, and summarises the decisions made for recording by the note takers. The Secretary, Department of Premier and Cabinet, is the Secretary to the Committee. The Department of Premier and Cabinet and Treasury will provide note takers for meetings." [https://arp.nsw.gov.au/c2014-04-cabinet-standing-committee-expenditure-review-procedures-and-operational-rules-2014/] [my yellow highlighting]
From 02 Apr 2015 to 23 Jan 2017 Liberal MP for Willoughby Gladys Berejiklian as NSW Treasurer was chair of the Estimates Review Committee of Cabinet (ERC) and from 23 Jan 2017 to 05 Oct 2021 she was Premier of New South Wales.
Ongoing evidence at Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) 2021 Operation Keppel public hearings to date confirms that the Estimates Review Committee revealed on 4 December 2016 that it had approved $5.5 million expenditure in 2016/2017 to the Office of Sports with funding sourced from the Retart NSW Fund program, Regional Growth – Environment and Tourism Fund.
The Restart NSW Fund - itself financed by way of the sale of government infrastructure or privatisation of its assets - being the responsibility of the NSW Treasurer.
At that point NSW Treasurer Gladys Berejiklian had been chair of the ERC for approximately 20 months and based on previous evidence given by the then Liberal MLA for Wagga Wagga had been in a close personal friendship with him which began sometime between 2013-2015.
However, the bureaucratic path taken in assessment of the Australian Clay Target Association’s expanded proposal for an upgrade in sporting facilities as well as a new club & conference centre appears rather circuitous.
Apparently continuing a level of public service confusion which had marked the progression of this on-off funding request since 2012.
Indeed, by 2 January 2017 the then MLA for Wagga Wagga sent out a media release announcing the gun club funding grant before the bureaucrats had signed off on the still problematic business case.
When by midmorning of 23 January 2017 Ms. Berejiklian swopped horses, becoming NSW Premier on the retirement of Liberal MLA for Manly, Mike Baird, the Liberal Member for Epping Dominic Perrottet became NSW Treasurer and therefore the new chair of the Expenditure Review Committee (ERC).
The ACTA unresolved and unsatisfactory business case was still stumbling along on 2 April 2017 when it appears that no matter how one looked at the cost-benefit analysis of the proposal, any projected economic benefit being returned to that regional city, the Liberal-held electorate or the state as a whole, was likely to be less than the $5.5 million cost of upgrading & expanding that Wagga Wagga gun club.
By that April it had been about 4 years and 4 months since the then Liberal Member for Wagga Wagga had first written to then NSW Premier and Liberal Member for Ku-ring-gai, Barry O’Farrell, raising the subject of funding the gun club upgrade of it sporting facilities.
An ordinary person might be forgiven for thinking that by this time ACTA would have been losing support in Macquarie Street for the Olympic-level gun club and associated facilities it planned for Wagga Wagga.
However, evidence given at Operation Keppel public hearings suggest that staff members of Deputy-Premier and Liberal MLA for Monaro, John Barilario, were letting it be known that he supported the ACTA gun club proposal. Barilaro was also a member of the Executive Review Committee of Cabinet when first Berejiklian and then Perrottet chaired this committee as NSW Treasurer.
Mr. Barilaro’s staff allegedly telling at least one public servant assessing/ progressing the $5.5 million grant proposal that the gun club project was of special interest to Premier Berejiklian.
In June 2017 Regional NSW, Department of Premier and Cabinet appears to have sent the grant proposal to the Department’s Investment Appraisal Unit allegedly following a request by the Premier – there being a belief that the Premier’s Office & the Premier wanted the ACTA business case for a large clubhouse, conference facility and associated infrastructure revisited.
Across three successive NSW Coalition Governments it seem premiers and cabinet ministers have been prepared to spend an inordinate amount of public service time and money on progressing the desires of then Liberal MLA for Wagga Wagga.
