The Sauce: Daryl Maguire wrote personal notes to Premier Gladys Berejiklian on grant applications
Grant applications submitted by now-disgraced Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire included personal notes to his lover Premier Gladys Berejiklian, The Sauce can reveal.
NSW
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Disgraced Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire added personal notes to his grant applications to his lover Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Details of seven grant applications were made public last week following a call for papers by the state Opposition, with the documents revealing two included a handwritten note.
In a January 31, 2017, letter to the Premier requesting $1500 for a computer for the Adelong Alive Museum, Mr Maguire suggested the grant could be made on the way to a Snowy Mountains bushwalk.
“Cheque could be presented on way to Tumba Trek!”, he scribbled.
Ms Berejiklian provided the “one-off” grant on March 22 the same year.
In another grant application to the Premier in May 2018 for funds for the Country Hope Trust in Wagga Wagga, Maguire again signed off with a little note, writing: “One of my longtime projects!”
The Trust was offered a “one-off” $10,000 grant to upgrade its Family Support Centre.
Other successful grant requests included $4619.19 for “urgent infrastructural repairs” for Adelong Golf Club, $10,400 to allow the Wagga Wagga branch of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia to build an enclosed area for the purposes of cleaning and reloading firearms safely, and $5000 funding assistance for seven shade modules for Lockhart Bowling Club.
Maguire also requested “any assistance” for the volunteers restoring the Ladysmith Tourist Railway to compensate for the theft of $5133.33 worth of railway sleepers. It was the Premier who replied, declaring she had approved a one-off grant of the same amount.
The grants totalled more than $40,000 in value.
Labor MP John Graham, who lodged the request for the documents detailing the Premier’s grants, said it defied belief no conflict of interest was declared.
“The documents detail letter by letter the requests from Daryl and the grants from Gladys,” he said.
“It is just unbelievable that no conflict of interest was declared.”
A spokeswoman for Ms Berejiklian said these grants accounted for “0.94 per cent” of the Premier’s discretionary fund and she was “pleased” the organisations that received her 378 grants in the 2016-17 and 2018-19 financial years “have been able to make good use
of the funds”.
RIP JOHN THORPE
Pubs and politics were the topic of discussion when mourners turned up to say their farewells to former Australian Hotels Association president John Thorpe AM.
Thorpe, who owned the Harbord Beach Hotel until offloading it recently, died on December 3 after a long illness.
Described as a “true Aussie character” who “liked a beer and a punt”, Thorpe was both friend and foe of the state government over the years.
Among those who paid their respects at his funeral were former prime minister Tony Abbott, Police Minister David Elliott, Corrections Minister Anthony Roberts and Health Minister Brad Hazzard.
Elliott, who was for many years AHA deputy chief executive officer, read the eulogy.
“Thorpie and I always joked that I would be able to use his eulogy to square up on a few people, but what we didn’t prepare for was the fact I’d be the Police Minister when I gave it, so this tribute had to be severely edited on the grounds that I didn’t want to incriminate myself,” Elliott said.
SENSIBLE CENTRE
What looks like a harmless Facebook group for Coalition staffers has triggered paranoia among some sections of government.
Called the “NSW Coalition Staffers Network”, the page was set up several years ago, but has only recently begun recruiting members, according to a Macquarie Street source.
Staffers who have joined include Peter Shmigel, who was chief-of-staff to Barry O’Farrell when he was in Opposition, and Sal Jeloscek, the wife of Lee Jeloscek, who is the head of media at Transurban.
Why the paranoia?
According to our operative, the page was set up by a member of the Centre Right faction, former political staffer Nick Tyrrell.
With both the Left and Right factions historically suspicious of the Centre Right, the recruitment drive has members of both in a sweat.
As our source explained: “Should there be a reshuffle or change of leader or something,
the Centre Right now have this resource.”
G ot some Sauce? Contact linda.silmalis@news.com.au
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