The first thing about the fall of Gladys Berejiklian is that there is no joy in it.
From Labor, no triumphalism.
“Thanks @GladysB for your hard work managing Covid,” tweeted Tanya Plibersek.
“And thank you for your service.”
Berejiklian was “one of the better premiers New South Wales has ever had”, a long-standing Labor operator told the Guardian.
Had an election been held a week ago, she would have romped it in.
Doesn’t matter. She’s gone.
The New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption confirmed on Friday it is investigating whether Berejiklian engaged in improper conduct in grants awarded to the Australian Clay Target Association and the Riverina Conservatorium of Music.
Both are in the electorate of Wagga Wagga, held at the time by Berejiklian’s secret lover, Daryl Maguire.
The Icac investigation will also look at whether her conduct “allowed or encouraged” corrupt conduct by Maguire.
Perhaps the most difficult question for the now-former premier lies in the detail of paragraph 3 of Icac’s statement. It relates to the extraordinary catch-all provisions of Section 11 of the Icac Act.
It requires a minister to report to the commission “any matter that the person suspects on reasonable grounds concerns or may concern corrupt conduct”.
Put simply, failure to report a reasonable suspicion is itself a crime.
Berejiklian was in trouble from the moment secret phone taps emerged last year of her conversations with Maguire, who was struggling with personal debts.
“The good news is William tells me we’ve done our deal so hopefully that’s about half of all that gone now,” the tapes record Maguire as saying.
“That’s good; I don’t need to know about that bit,” said Berejiklian.
“No, you don’t. You do not,” said Maguire.
Berejiklian later called the revelation of the tapes “one of the most difficult days in my life”.
But, she insists, none of it amounts to doing the wrong thing. “I state categorically I have always acted with the highest levels of integrity,” she said in her resignation statement.
Several things follow.
Berejiklian has chosen to go not because of proven wrongdoing but simply because she faces investigation. The presumption of innocence is no shield.
She could have gone to the backbench, as she has required others to do. But left out of cabinet, and with a stand-in premier having many months to relish the exercise of executive power, her chances of returning to the top job were slight. She knew that. Hence her decision to quit politics entirely.
She is the third NSW Liberal premier forced from office by Icac in the past 30 years. But Labor denies that her departure suggests a flaw in the system.
“She was not required to resign; she decided to resign,” says the shadow attorney general Mark Dreyfus. “She could have decided not to do anything and toughed it out. Nothing in the legislation required her resignation.”
Nevertheless, Berejiklian’s fate will harden internal Morrison government hostility towards a proper commonwealth integrity commission.
Seven retired senior judges denounced the government’s draft plans for such a commission as a “sham [that] falls disastrously short”.
Labor says the Scott Morrison model intends to give the government of the day sole power to decide which parliamentarians or their staff would face referral to the commission, leaving it open to becoming a purely political weapon.
“That is an extraordinarily misconceived feature of the Morrison model,” Dreyfus says.
The legislation now sits with the attorney general, Michaelia Cash. Her office did not respond to a request for comment before our deadline. But even before Berejiklian’s demise, it was plain urgency was lacking. As the Australia Institute noted, its funding disappeared in the May budget.
Dreyfus says despite the shockwaves of Berejiklian’s resignation, a Labor government will establish a real anti-corruption watchdog in its first year.
“We remain firmly committed,” he says. Unlike the Morrison government model drafted by Christian Porter, it will come with retroactive powers.
“It will look into the past,” promises Dreyfus.
In the coming weeks, NSW children will be returning to classrooms. Sydney’s airport will start filling up again with domestic and international travellers. Covid case numbers will surely rise. The stresses on the health system will remain acute. Everything will ride on whether vaccination numbers are strong enough to allow the long-planned re-opening of the economy.
“Resigning at this time goes against every instinct in my being and it is something I do not want to do,” says Berejiklian.
Who doubts it?
During the bushfire summer, the non-hose-holding prime minister preferred Hawaii. The NSW minister for emergency services, David Elliott, nicked off to Europe on holiday.
Gladys stayed at her post.
As she has done during her stewardship of the Covid response.
Still, when she appears by videolink before the corruption commission on 18 October, it will be as a private citizen. Her job is gone. All she will be fighting for is her place in history. And her name.
Hugh Riminton is national affairs editor at 10 News First
