Berejiklian inquiry day ten as it happened: Tapped phone call reveals Daryl Maguire told former NSW premier about ICAC summons

Good afternoon and thank you for reading our live coverage of day 10 of the ICAC’s public inquiry into former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and former state Liberal MP Daryl Maguire.

The ICAC is examining the circumstances in which the state government granted or promised millions of dollars to two organisations in Mr Maguire’s electorate while he was in a secret relationship with Ms Berejiklian, which started in 2015 when she was NSW treasurer and continued when she became premier in January 2017.

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian outside the ICAC on Friday.Credit: Renee Nowytarger

The corruption watchdog is also considering whether she failed to report suspected corruption involving Mr Maguire, or failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest arising from that relationship.

The inquiry has heard the Berejiklian-Maguire relationship continued even after she asked Mr Maguire to quit politics in July 2018 following his evidence at an earlier corruption inquiry into the former Canterbury Council.

He was not a central focus of that earlier investigation and no corruption finding was made against him, but the ICAC subsequently recommended the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions consider charging him with giving false and misleading evidence at the hearing.

Ms Berejiklian, who denies wrongdoing, started giving evidence today. Here’s what she had to say:

On the potential conflict of interest

• Ms Berejiklian said that if she had her time again she still would not have disclosed her secret relationship with Mr Maguire to her colleagues in government.
• Under the NSW ministerial code of conduct, a minister “must not knowingly conceal a conflict of interest from the Premier”. The code says “a conflict of interest arises in relation to a Minister if there is a conflict between the public duty and the private interest of the Minister, in which the Minister’s private interest could objectively have the potential to influence the performance of their public duty.” The private interest does not need to be financial and can be a personal relationship.
• Ms Berejiklian said she had “never regarded [Mr Maguire] as family in terms of the ministerial code” but he was part of her “love circle”. The pair had discussed marriage and having a child and Mr Maguire had a key to her house, although she changed the locks last year.

• The former premier was shown an April 2018 text message in which she told Mr Maguire: “You are my family.” She told the ICAC she had “very strong feelings for him” but would not have regarded him as a relative, and she was “never assured of a level of commitment” to make the relationship public or introduce him to her family. Asked whether the text message indicated that she regarded Mr Maguire as part of her family at that time, Ms Berejiklian said: “In terms of my feelings, but definitely not in any legal sense”. “We’ll let the lawyers argue about the law,” counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, said.

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and her barrister, Sophie Callan, SC (right) at the ICAC on Friday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

• Ms Berejiklian was asked why she disclosed other potential conflicts of interest, including that two of her cousins worked in the public service, but did not disclose her relationship with Mr Maguire. Ms Berejiklian said that she did not believe there was a kind of “private personal benefit” that she might obtain as a result of decisions involving Mr Maguire. Asked what personal benefit she believed she might get from decisions indirectly involving her cousins, Ms Berejiklian said: “I would have been concerned that that may be treated in a particular way, or it might be assumed that they’re getting favour because they’re related to me.”

On Daryl Maguire’s access to her

• Ms Berejiklian insisted that all MPs had the same level of access to her to make representations about projects to benefit their communities, and she did not treat Mr Maguire any differently.
• In a tapped phone call on May 16, 2018, Mr Maguire complained to her about the lack of funding for hospitals in his electorate. Ms Berejiklian responded that she would “deal with it” and “fix it”. Within hours, she called back and said: “I’ve already got you the Wagga hospital. I just spoke to [then treasurer, and now premier] Dom [Perrottet] ... He just does what I ask him to.” Mr Perrottet is not accused of wrongdoing.
• Ms Berejiklian said in the same call that she had secured $170 million for Mr Maguire for Wagga Wagga Base Hospital “in five minutes” but he would need to speak to Health Minister Brad Hazzard about Tumut Hospital because she wouldn’t fix everything for him.
• Asked why she did not disclose her relationship with Mr Maguire, Ms Berejiklian said: “Building a hospital is not a personal benefit to me. It is a community asset.”

On whether she suspected Maguire of corruption

• The ICAC is also investigating whether Ms Berejiklian failed to report suspected corruption involving Mr Maguire. She was played a tapped phone call in September 2017 in which Mr Maguire told her that he was in debt to the tune of $1.5 million but a Badgerys Creek land deal would result in him being “debt free”. Asked if she suspected him at this time of corruption, she replied: “I did not. He was always talking big and I didn’t pay much attention to that. I never thought he was doing anything untoward.”

On proposals in Maguire’s electorate

• Ms Berejiklian was also asked about her support as NSW treasurer in December 2016 for a multimillion-dollar plan for the state government to fund the upgrade of a gun club in Mr Maguire’s electorate, the Australian Clay Target Association. NSW Treasury had indicated that the proposal did not deliver a net benefit to the state. Ms Berejiklian said regional issues were at play because the Coalition had recently lost a seat to the Shooters and Fishers Party.
• In another tapped phone call from 2017, Mr Maguire discusses with Ms Berejiklian a proposal for the state government to give millions of dollars to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in his electorate. Ms Berejiklian said of a NSW bureaucrat in the call: “I can’t stand that guy. His head will be gone soon.” Mr Maguire told her that she should not do so until the bureaucrat fixed the conservatorium proposal. “Tell him to fix it, and then after he fixes it, I’m sacking him,” Ms Berejiklian said. Asked about whether she delayed sacking a person so that they could finish work on Mr Maguire’s proposal, Ms Berejiklian told the ICAC: “That person is still in the public service today.”

On Maguire’s first appearance at the ICAC

• In a tapped phone call in July 2018, Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian that he has been summonsed to give evidence at an earlier corruption inquiry into the former Canterbury Council, Operation Dasha. He said he had been “subpoenaed to go to ICAC, summonsed to ICAC, so that’s exciting”. He told her he had introduced an “idiot” former councillor to a Chinese property development company, Country Garden, but he had “never accepted a dollar; never done a deal”. Ms Berejiklian told him: “Two rules: be honest and listen to your lawyer.”
• As it transpired, phone taps played at the 2018 Operation Dasha inquiry featured Mr Maguire speaking in 2016 to that former councillor about potential commissions they could earn from property deals with Country Garden. He said in the call: “My client is mega big and has got mega money and wants two or three DA approved projects right now. Today.” Ultimately, Mr Maguire did not receive any commission. Ms Berejiklian asked Mr Maguire to quit politics after his evidence in that inquiry, but she remained in a secret relationship with him.
• In the same 2018 phone call with Ms Berejiklian, Mr Maguire likened the ICAC to the “Spanish Inquisition” and suggested “they could be taping your conversation with me right now. You wouldn’t know.” Mr Maguire said in the call that “what they’re doing is marginalising the art of politics”, in an apparent reference to the ICAC and bureaucracy, and “our job is mixing with people”. Now, “you can’t meet with a developer”, he said.
• He told Ms Berejiklian it was “ironic” that he was called to give evidence at the 2018 inquiry because “I spend my life trying to keep people out of trouble”. “I must’ve killed a bloody black cat ... and um, walked under a couple of ladders”.
• Ms Berejiklian raised concerns in the call about why Mr Maguire knew Country Garden, and whether it was even connected to anything in his electorate. She also said that she regarded the same councillor as “dodgy” and she didn’t mix with them. Mr Maguire said he had “never asked anybody for a dollar in my life”. (He subsequently admitted at the ICAC last year that he had sought to monetise his public office for private gain).
• Counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, asked Ms Berejiklian if the phone call gave her pause for thought that Mr Maguire was engaged in “wrongdoing in relation to property deals”, which would have triggered an obligation to report her suspicions to the ICAC. She replied: “I trusted him. He told me he’d done nothing wrong.”

This is Michaela Whitbourn signing off on the blog for today. I will be back before 9am on Monday when Gladys Berejiklian will continue giving evidence at the ICAC.

Counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, says the next topic to which he is taking former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian will be lengthy and he won’t finish before 4pm.

He proposed that the hearing be adjourned until Monday.

Assistant Commissioner Ruth McColl, SC, agreed. Ms Berejiklian will return to the witness box at 9am on Monday.

In the same 2018 call, which was indeed tapped by the ICAC as then NSW Liberal MP Daryl Maguire suggested, Mr Maguire said the corruption watchdog was staffed with “surprise artists”.

“If people had told me the bloke was suss, I wouldn’t have dealt with him,” Mr Maguire told then premier Gladys Berejiklian of a councillor at the former Canterbury Council.

Gladys Berejiklian and Daryl Maguire were in a relationship between 2015 and 2020.Credit: Steven Siewert, James Brickwood

He had just received a summons to give evidence at the ICAC in relation to that council.

These people are surprise artists. You don’t know what they’re gonna come up with next, you’ve got no idea. You know this is all about, you know, setting you up and then stinging you with the tail.” Mr Maguire said.

Ms Berejiklian suggested in the call that the ICAC would be asking why Mr Maguire was involved in matters relating to the inner west in Sydney, far away from his Wagga Wagga electorate.

Counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, asked Ms Berejiklian if it never “piqued” her interest that Mr Maguire had an interest in other matters outside his electorate, including a potential Badgerys Creek land deal.

She replied that she trusted Mr Maguire and “didn’t think to bother” to ask further questions.

Phone taps subsequently played at the ICAC’s Operation Dasha inquiry in 2018, related to the former Canterbury Council, featured Mr Maguire speaking about potential commissions that he could earn from deals with Chinese property development company Country Garden. Ultimately, he did not receive any money.

The ICAC did not make corruption findings in relation to Mr Maguire in Operation Dasha. However, it did recommend in its final report this year that the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions consider prosecuting him for the offence of giving false and misleading evidence at the hearing on July 13, 2018.

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian agrees at the ICAC that the then NSW Liberal MP, Daryl Maguire, told her in a tapped 2018 phone call about his relationships with property developers.

Counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, asked Ms Berejiklian if that gave her pause for thought that he was engaged in “wrongdoing in relation to property deals”.

“I trusted him. He told me he’d done nothing wrong,” Ms Berejiklian said.

Daryl Maguire and Gladys Berejiklian.Credit: Brook Mitchell/Getty

She said developers were known to members of Parliament and others.

Mr Maguire said in the call that “what they’re doing is marginalising, you know, the art of politics”, in an apparent reference to the ICAC and bureaucracy, and “our job is mixing with people and meeting with people”. Now, “you can’t meet with a developer, you can’t dine with someone”, he said.

“The bureaucrats are taking over ... The old 1800, 1900s, um, art of politics is gone.”

Ms Berejiklian replied: “Don’t get involved in anything you don’t need to, that’s the bottom line.”

Mr Maguire said: “I’m a helpful kind of person.”

Ms Berejiklian warned that “people will use you”.

“They might,” Mr Maguire replied. “Constituents use you every day. You bare your arse to the world every day. We’ve become prostitutes.

“We have become f--king harlots and prostitutes through no fault of our own because of these, you know, rules of transparency, of you know arm’s length of not talking to this person or that person, or bloody ICAC or everything else.”

Mr Maguire warned again that the ICAC could be tapping his phone, including his conversations with Ms Berejiklian.

“Is that going to be a problem?” she replied.

“Why, what have you done?” Mr Maguire said.

“Nothing, I don’t even know these people.”

Ms Berejiklian raised concerns in the call about why Mr Maguire knew Chinese property development company Country Garden, and whether it was even connected to anything in his electorate. She also said that she regarded a named councillor as “dodgy” and she didn’t mix with them.

Mr Maguire said he had “never asked anybody for a dollar in my life”.

He has admitted at the ICAC that he sought to monetise his office in State Parliament for private gain.

In the same July 2018 phone call, the then NSW Liberal MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire, told then premier Gladys Berejiklian that he was unaware of any “shenanigans” at the former Canterbury Council and it had “nothing to do with me”.

As noted in previous posts, Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian he had introduced an “idiot” former councillor to a Chinese property development company, Country Garden, and he had now been summonsed to appear at an ICAC inquiry.

Daryl Maguire arriving at the ICAC last year.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Phone taps subsequently played at the 2018 Operation Dasha inquiry, which pre-dated this investigation, featured Mr Maguire speaking about potential commissions that he could earn from property deals with Country Garden. Ultimately, he did not receive any money.

Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian the ICAC inquiry was bad luck and he “must have killed a few black cats and walked under a few ladders”.

“Honest to goodness, what more can you throw at a bloke,” Mr Maguire said.

Ms Berejiklian said at one stage: “What a nightmare, my goodness ... The good news is Wednesday is State of Origin.”

The ICAC did not make corruption findings in relation to Mr Maguire in Operation Dasha. However, it did recommend in its final report this year that the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions consider prosecuting him with the offence of giving false and misleading evidence at the hearing on July 13, 2018.

The then NSW Liberal MP Daryl Maguire said in the same phone call in July 2018 with then premier Gladys Berejiklian that the ICAC was akin to the “Spanish Inquisition” and they could be tapping their phones at that very minute.

He was correct.

“They could be taping your conversation with me right now. You wouldn’t know,” he said.

You “can’t even have a conversation now, they’re taping it”, Mr Maguire said of the ICAC.

He said it was “ironic” because he spent his life trying to keep people out of trouble.

During the tapped phone call in July 2018, the then NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian told Liberal MP Daryl Maguire at one stage, “I don’t want to know about that stuff”.

Mr Maguire had just told Ms Berejiklian that he believed he was being summonsed to give evidence at the ICAC to help prove a former councillor was “was to benefit from the skulduggery he was getting up to” with the former Canterbury Council.

Ms Berejiklian told the ICAC that Mr Maguire told her in the call that “he’d done nothing wrong” and “I trusted him and I believed him when he said he hadn’t done anything wrong”.

Daryl Maguire arriving at the ICAC in October last year.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Asked if she suspected him at this time of being involved in corrupt conduct, Ms Berejiklian said: “No I did not, and if I had, I would have reported it.”

Mr Maguire said during the call that he introduced an “idiot” former councillor to a Chinese property development company, Country Garden.

Ms Berejiklian asked Mr Maguire: “Why did you feel you needed to do that for Country Garden?”

Mr Maguire said he was motivated by friendship.

Ms Berejiklian told the ICAC that she assumed Mr Maguire was a witness assisting the ICAC’s investigation and not a person of interest in the inquiry into the former Canterbury Council.

The ICAC heard earlier today that Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian in a phone call in September 2017 that he could make $1.5 million from a prospective land deal around Badgerys Creek.

Counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, asked Ms Berejiklian she considered during the later phone call in 2018 that Mr Maguire wasn’t being truthful when he said he hadn’t asked Country Garden for a dollar, because he was contemplating receiving a separate payment related to a property deal in 2017.

She said it did not appear those matters were related and Mr Maguire had assured he had done nothing wrong.

Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian in the call that he was “calm as a cucumber”.

“Do I sleep? Yes, I do ... I have nothing to fear; I’ve done nothing wrong.”

In a tapped phone call in July 2018, the then NSW Liberal MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire, tells then premier Gladys Berejiklian that he has been summonsed to give evidence at an earlier corruption inquiry.

The inquiry, Operation Dasha, examined dealings at the former Canterbury Council.

Daryl Maguire and Gladys Berejiklian.Credit: SMH

Mr Maguire said he had been “subpoenaed to go to ICAC, so that’s exciting”.

He said he introduced an “idiot” former councillor to a Chinese property development company, Country Garden.

Ms Berejiklian asked if there was anything to worry about. Mr Maguire said no, and he had “never accepted a dollar; never done a deal”.

Ms Berejiklian said: “Two rules: be honest and listen to your lawyer.”

The phone taps played at the 2018 Operation Dasha inquiry featured Mr Maguire speaking to a former councillor about potential commissions that he could earn from property deals with Country Garden.

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian is asked whether one reason she was interested in funding projects in the Wagga Wagga electorate was because it might smooth the path for then NSW Liberal MP Daryl Maguire to retire at the 2019 state election.

“Absolutely not the case. I reject it outright, and I consider it offensive,” Ms Berejiklian said.

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian arriving at the ICAC on Friday.Credit: Renee Nowytarger

She added she was “really offended” and “every decision I make is in the public interest”.

ICAC Assistant Commissioner Ruth McColl, SC, said Ms Berejiklian had said that a few times, and she should “answer the questions”.

Ultimately, Ms Berejiklian asked Mr Maguire to quit politics in July 2018 after he gave evidence at an earlier corruption inquiry.

The ICAC plays another tapped phone call between former NSW Liberal MP Daryl Maguire and then premier Gladys Berejiklian in May 2018.

Mr Maguire said he was concentrating on “my money projects” in his electorate and Ms Berejiklian said: “Good, ’cause it helps me too. The more you do that the more easily we’ll win the seat.”

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian outside the ICAC on Friday.Credit: Renee Nowytarger

She told him that “we ticked off your conservatorium the other day, so that’s a done deal now”.

This was a reference for $10 million in funding for the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in Wagga Wagga to move from Charles Sturt University to a new government-owned site in his electorate.

Mr Maguire said that was only the first stage of the project, in a reference to a proposal for the conservatorium to be given another $20 million for a recital hall.

“Oh my God. Heaven help us, seriously,” Ms Berejiklian replied.

Ms Berejiklian is asked at the ICAC whether it was usual to tell an MP whether cabinet’s expenditure review committee had approved projects in their electorate.

Counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, asked if Mr Maguire got an “advanced run or direct run” in being advised of government decisions.

“No more or less than anybody else,” Ms Berejiklian said.