Anna Caldwell: Why Gladys Berejiklian’s problem is more than just Daryl Maguire

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian put on a brave performance to save face in the wake of the Daryl Maguire ICAC scandal yesterday, but this saga will continue to haunt the Premier, writes Anna Caldwell.

• ‘We’ll see’: First colleague questions Gladys’ future
• Devastated: Premier’s ‘nightmare’ in her own words

Gladys Berejiklian, self proclaimed goody-two-shoes from way back, convinced herself she was keeping her personal and professional lives compartmentalised.

She was lying to herself because it was an impossible task — and that has been exposed for all to see.

We know from phone taps that the Premier privately asked her secret lover if her chief of staff Sarah Cruickshank had called him.

She privately told Daryl Maguire that her office thought a business whose interests he had raised was “in his electorate” — a mistake she told him she didn’t correct.

Gladys Berejiklian during a press conference after giving evidence at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption yesterday. Photo: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

And these are just the phone taps ICAC has played. We know nothing of the thousands of other private conversations and whispers the pair shared.

Berejiklian, asked about these conversations, said she would have said the same to any MP. That’s not true. If it was another MP and her staff had their electorate boundaries wrong, Berejiklian — a stickler for detail — would have been the first to pipe up and correct them.

Her repeated attempts to stop Maguire telling her details of some of his dealings — saying “I don’t need to know about that” also give the dealings a stench.

And most concerning is that her secret relationship — and the lengths to which she may have been willing to go to keep it secret — open the Premier of the state to allegations of blackmail.

Gladys Berejiklian departs after giving evidence at ICAC. Photo: Sam Mooy/Getty Images

But in the face of all this, Berejiklian is staring her detractors down.

She fronted ICAC full of the confidence of a person who had never put a foot wrong.

While MPs were shooting around text messages and having shocked hushed phone calls, Berejiklian‘s demeanour in the dock gave no hint of the fact her life was unravelling in the most humiliating of circumstances.

This, followed by a humanising press conference where she admitted her humiliation and professed to making a mistake in her personal life, may have been the best political performance of her life.

Gladys Berejiklian gives evidence at ICAC. Picture: ICAC via NCA NewsWire

While moderates and conservatives were privately labelling her leadership untenable, by 4.30pm Berejiklian had convinced her number one competitor for the job Dominic Perrottet to stand beside her and publicly back her.

The Premier has a tremendous amount of good will as a result of her extraordinary leadership through the pandemic.

But now, her reputation and her judgment are irreparably bruised.

There is no leadership candidate who last night had the appetite to roll her or the confidence they would have the numbers to succeed.

MPs, like the rest of us, were caught off guard.

But this saga will continue to haunt the Premier.

All eyes will be on Maguire’s evidence this week and the Premier’s humiliation is not close to over.