What, if anything, did Gladys Berejiklian do wrong that led to her appearing before New South Wales’ anti-corruption watchdog and the broadcasting of taped phone conversations with her secret boyfriend?
The former premier appeared in the witness box of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) on Friday to answer a series of questions that will determine her legacy – and her future.
The nature of her undisclosed relationship with the now-disgraced former MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire, is central to Icac’s expanded Operation Keppel investigation.
The lack of disclosure is relevant to whether Berejiklian breached her duty under the ministerial code of conduct to declare a relationship that could give rise to a conflict. This is not a criminal matter but a breach could lead to a finding of corrupt conduct by Icac.
Far more serious is the question of whether the premier’s relationship led to favourable treatment in her official functions – including in relation to grants for Maguire’s electorate. If proved, this could amount to misconduct in public office and that’s a criminal offence. So too is failing to report any suspected corrupt conduct by Maguire.
Last week, witness after witness, including the former premier Mike Baird, told Icac that if they had known about the relationship, they would have handled grants to Wagga differently. Several suggested a possible conflict of interest and the need for more safeguards in the system as a result.
On Friday, Berejiklian strongly disagreed.
From the outset, Berejiklian employed a tactic most of us are familiar with when she was premier: lengthy answers delivered with machine-gun rapidity and a combativeness that says: “Don’t dare quibble with me, I know my stuff.”
It has served her well at the dispatch box and as salesman-in-chief of her government.
But it wasn’t long before the former premier was reprimanded by the Icac commissioner, Ruth McColl, not to give speeches and answer the questions.
And as the day wore on, the public was introduced to another Gladys Berejiklian: a Gladys who threatened to sack bureaucrats she didn’t like, who boasted she could tell her colleagues what to do and they’d do it, and who justified a $5.5m grant to her boyfriend’s electorate against the advice of Treasury as a legitimate response to political pressures such as the disastrous Orange byelection.
Berejiklian is a very private person. The very thing that made her popular with the public – her devotion to her job, her workaholism, her upbringing as a high-achieving child of migrants – perhaps left her without the life experiences to deal with the likes of Daryl Maguire.
Maguire has been revealed as a man whose self-importance often borders on delusional. In phone intercepts now being played at Icac, the former premier barely gets a word in as he talks about his schemes to make money, his small victories over perceived enemies and his battles with bureaucrats to get funding for projects in the electorate.
His conversations, captured in Icac telephone intercepts, are peppered with expletives and his stories revolve around his importance to the future of Wagga.
Berejiklian often defers in the face of his bombast. From the witness box she acknowledged the relationship was unequal: though she felt deeply about him, she was uncertain it was reciprocated.
In conversations in 2018 about $170m funding for the Wagga hospital that had apparently been left out of the 2019 budget, Berejiklian told an irate Maguire she would “fix it”. “I will tell Dom to put it in; he does what I say,” she said, referring to the then-treasurer Dominic Perrottet.
“You just shout at me, hokiss,” she added, mournfully, using an Armenian term of endearment, meaning “beloved”.
By keeping the relationship secret, Berejiklian was unable to seek counsel from staff, family members or colleagues.
She has defended not disclosing her relationship with Maguire to cabinet colleagues on the grounds it was “not of sufficient status”.
Berejiklian has insisted the relationship did not give Maguire preferential access to lobby her for funding for pet projects. Because they had no financial entanglements, she did not think there was any personal benefit to her. She says there had not been any benefit to him because any funding was for projects that benefited the community.
To test these claims, counsel assisting Icac, Scott Robertson SC, resorted on Friday to playing excruciatingly personal telephone exchanges between Maguire and Berejiklian.
Maguire had a key to her house and stayed there when he visited Sydney (although not always), and she stayed with him in Wagga. She once texted “you are my family” and they called each other “hokiss”.
Maguire agreed on Thursday that they had discussed marriage and having a child together and that they had been “in love”. Berejiklian said she “had aspirations” but was not sure they would be realised.
Berejiklian agreed she had made other disclosures to cabinet regarding two cousins who worked in the public service and someone nominated for a government board because she had met them at functions.
She repeatedly made the distinction between decisions that delivered a personal benefit – which in her view required disclosure of a potential conflict – versus decisions that benefited a community, like a grant. But a grant can benefit both a community and the politician who secures it for their electorate.
Robertson on Friday focused on Berejiklian’s actions in delivering two grants to Wagga: a $5.5m grant to the Australian Clay Target Association and $30m to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music.
The Acta grant was initially opposed by her department at the time, Treasury, because it did not deliver a financial benefit to the state overall and had an inadequate business case. But it was quickly put on to the agenda of the expenditure review committee, which Berejiklian chaired.
“I honestly can’t remember,” Berejiklian said when asked if she had approved the project’s inclusion on the agenda.
She suggested that the 2016 Orange byelection, which saw the Coalition lose the seat to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party in a disastrous 20-point slide, had possibly caused them to approve it because of “a desire for electoral popularity” in the regions. Berejiklian has previously suggested pork-barrelling was something “every government” did.
The $30m for the Riverina Conservatorium of Music was approved in two tranches of $10m and $20m.
Berejiklian was played a phone intercept in which Maguire urged her to support it and criticised the handling of the grant by a government official whose name was suppressed.
“I can’t stand that guy,” Berejiklian told Maguire, “his head will be gone soon.” But Maguire wanted the conservatorium processed first. “After he fixes it, I will sack him,” the then-premier replied.
Berejiklian said on Friday the bureaucrat still worked for the public service and she had not carried through her threat. She denied she had done any favours for Maguire or provided him with additional access to lobby “vociferously”.
Asked whether her personal relationship drove her actions, Berejiklian replied: “ I am quite offended by the question, if I may say so.” She insisted she always acted in the public interest.
There is also the question of whether Berejiklian breached her duty as the highest public official in the state to disclose a suspicion of corrupt conduct to Icac.
Berejiklian was played tapes of Maguire telling her in September 2017 he stood to make $1.5m out of land deals, including at the site of the new western Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek.
As Robertson put to her, the value of land around the airport was integrally tied to zonings and the placement of roads, something that was in the control of the state government.
“Didn’t it strike you as strange a backbencher could make an income of $1.5m outside his role in parliament?” the barrister asked.
She replied: “I don’t think I even listened properly. I certainly didn’t believe him. I didn’t think he would do anything untoward. He was someone I trusted.”
During the afternoon, Robertson played a long telephone intercept detailing the moment Maguire told Berejiklian he had been subpoenaed by Icac to appear as a witness in Operation Dasha, a separate inquiry into the Canterbury council and allegations of kickbacks for rezonings. That probe brought Maguire to the attention of Icac in the first place.
In the audio, an increasingly alarmed Berejiklian is heard trying to untangle just what Maguire is being asked about by Icac. Again she said it did not give her reason to suspect Maguire of corrupt conduct and he had assured her he had done nothing wrong. But she describes other people involved in the deal as “dodgy” and warns Maguire to listen to his lawyers’ advice.
Icac will make a finding on whether Berejiklian breached any laws, including its own act. But in the world of public opinion, Berejiklian’s credibility is severely damaged.
The relationship with Maguire mattered to her and most people will judge that that meant she had to surrender some privacy – if only to her colleagues. As premier, she arguably had a higher duty to disclose than most.
