ICAC Operation Navarra LIVE updates: Inquiry to stretch into next week as sacked Parramatta Council boss Gail Connolly resumes evidence

11.20am

Here’s the latest

By Cindy Yin and Anthony Segaert

As the inquiry heads into a lunch break, here’s what you need to know about what has happened so far today:

• We’ve heard evidence so far that Gail Connolly, the former boss of the City of Parramatta, made staff redundant, characterised these departures as resignations, and “obscured” this fact to councillors in reports and in confidential briefings by directly informing them that no one had been made redundant.
• The commission alleges that, by characterising redundancies as resignations, Connolly was attempting to have an advantage in the restructuring process by “convincing” councillors to accept her plan, and enabling her to rely upon the position as vacant – appearing less costly than it would have appeared if the council had been told that the vacancy was created through a resignation that involved material costs.
• The inquiry heard extensive evidence in the morning about how Connolly sought to have senior staff exit the organisation; she had senior staff enter into deeds of release (agreements to have significant payouts and agreed communications about an exit) and used a “carrot and stick approach” to “lever” their signing of them.
• Connolly agreed with questioning from Counsel Assisting Joanna Davidson SC that she had restructured the council staff without approval from the council. She later presented a restructuring plan to the council that relied on those “resignations”.
• Chief Commissioner John Hatzistergos asked repeatedly why she didn’t just tell the councillors what really happened with the staff. She said that doing so would have breached the deeds she had signed.
• Connolly repeatedly attempted to explain to the commission that councillors could not be trusted to keep confidential matters confidential, and offered to “sit down” with the ICAC to write recommendations from this inquiry about how to improve NSW councils.
• In the morning session, Connolly said she “can’t recall” 29 times and “I don’t recall” seven times.