Written by Nicole Lawder, Former ACT MLA for the Liberals and Deputy Opposition Leader.
This ACT Labor government has, from the outside at least, been quite a tightly run ship, despite Opposition calls for greater accountability from Ministers — including over a couple of costly debacles from Chris Steel’s directorates. That ended on Thursday when Yvette Berry, ACT Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister, resigned from Cabinet, a few hours after the ACT Integrity Commission released its long-awaited report called “Operation Kingfisher”, into the Campbell Primary School modernisation project. Chief Minister Andrew Barr accepted her resignation and apologised to Canberrans for the conduct the Commission found, while saying he considered it the behaviour of specific individuals rather than a systemic problem.
The Commission’s report itself found that three responsible officials undermined procurement processes and cheated construction firm Manteena to the advantage of the CFMEU and Lendlease “at a substantial cost to the territory.” That’s right: it is us, the Canberra ratepayers, who footed the bill to award the contract to the more expensive contractor. The two individuals found to have engaged in serious corrupt conduct were Berry’s then chief of staff, Josh Ceramidas, and the then Education Directorate director-general, Katy Haire, who were found to have “dishonestly provide[d] a back door” to prioritise the CFMEU’s interests, despite evaluations repeatedly rating Manteena as the better and cheaper option. Ceramidas’s underlying motive, per the Commission, was that (to paraphrase) his loyalty to the union outweighed his ethical obligations to his boss, Yvette Berry. There’s a whiff of biting the hand that feeds you there.
ACT Ministers are bound by a Ministerial Code of Conduct. This is really the crux of why her resignation came even though the report cleared her personally. The Ministerial Code of Conduct clearly states that ministers are accountable for the decisions and actions of their staff, and are responsible for ensuring their staff comply with the Ministerial Staff Code of Conduct.
So the Code effectively created a doctrine of ministerial vicarious accountability: it doesn’t matter that Berry wasn’t personally found corrupt — the Code holds her responsible for ensuring her staff and the officials in her directorate acted with integrity, and a serious corrupt-conduct finding against her top staffer is treated as a failure of that duty regardless of her personal knowledge.
Is Berry “responsible” for Ceramidas and Haire’s actions? Under the Code, yes — in the sense of political/constitutional responsibility, not legal culpability. The Commission’s findings of actual corrupt conduct sit with Ceramidas and Haire individually; there’s no finding that Berry directed or knew about their conduct. But the Ministerial Code of Conduct imposes a broader standard: ministers answer to the Assembly and the public for what happens in their office and portfolio, even absent personal wrongdoing. This is similar to how a company director can be accountable for failures of oversight without having committed the underlying misconduct themselves.
Opposition Leader Mark Parton referenced a precedent, when in 2015 Joy Burch’s chief of staff resigned after allegations that she had briefed then-CFMEU ACT boss Dean Hall about a meeting between Burch – then Police Minister – and then-Chief Police Officer Rudi Lammers. In other words, the allegation was that a minister’s most senior staffer had improperly fed information about a confidential meeting with the top police officer to a powerful union official. At the time, Andrew Barr said Burch had resigned in accordance with her responsibility under the Ministerial Code of Conduct. Barr’s framing at the time — that ministers are accountable for their own behaviour and for the decisions and actions of their staff — is exactly the line Parton quoted back at Barr on Thursday, arguing the same standard should now cost Berry her position. The parallel is telling: senior ministerial staffer, undisclosed CFMEU contact, minister personally cleared of wrongdoing, but resignation triggered anyway under the Code’s staff-accountability clause. Barr could hardly argue that this time was different.
This report made no adverse findings against Berry personally. Her resignation was about accountability for her office and staff, not a personal corrupt-conduct finding. In her own words, she said she took full responsibility for the finding made against her staff, but wanted to leave cabinet with her integrity and moral compass intact, adding she didn’t want “a parliamentary public circus” to follow the report, and didn’t want to give the Opposition or Greens “that satisfaction.” That’s pretty much what happened with the Burch precedent; originally Burch only resigned the Police portfolio but sustained pressure from the Opposition led to a fuller resignation from other portfolios.
By the time Berry quit, cross-bench and Opposition pressure had become intense — the ACT Greens, the Liberal Opposition, and independents Fiona Carrick and Thomas Emerson had all called on her to go, and Parton said if she didn’t resign, he would call on Barr to dismiss her.
None of this happened overnight: the Campbell Primary School saga has been playing out for years. In case you are unaware of the background, in 2019–2020 the ACT government ran a procurement process for the Campbell Primary School modernisation/expansion, choosing between short-listed tenderers Manteena and Lendlease. Two separate tender evaluation teams rated Manteena as having a superior design and cheaper bid, yet the contract went to Lendlease.
The alleged reason was that the CFMEU disliked Manteena over its compliance with the Secure Local Jobs Code (a policy requiring construction firms to meet workplace/industrial-relations standards to be eligible for ACT government work) — with the union alleged to have told officials Manteena should not get the contract.
A public servant (given the pseudonym “John Green” under a Commission suppression order) alleged he was told by Berry’s office, via Ceramidas, that “Manteena shouldn’t get it, they don’t do the right things by their workers,” attributing the line to a CFMEU official.
The matter went through two internal audits before the ACT Integrity Commission opened a full investigation, which included public hearings starting mid-2023 examining whether union or political interference shaped the Education Directorate’s decision-making. Berry herself gave evidence, telling the Commission she was aware by late 2019 that the CFMEU disliked Manteena but couldn’t recall how she knew.
Katy Haire had earlier taken the Integrity Commission to court over its investigation of her conduct, although she discontinued that case in 2024 – dropped, not won. Interestingly, the ACT government paid Haire’s legal costs for a lawsuit whose stated aim was to shut down the corruption probe into her own conduct, which the Liberals highlighted as taxpayers funding an attempt to derail the investigation.
The Chief Minister says “further action” is still to come, not least of which is the political jockeying for position for the portfolios previously held by Berry, and the position of Deputy Chief Minister. Stay tuned, this is likely to be fascinating.
