Vikki Campion: ‘An affair is not a reason for Gladys to lose her job’
Their controversial affair cost Barnaby Joyce his marriage and Vikki Campion was publicly condemned so she says she understands, more than anyone, what Gladys Berejiklian is going through.
Opinion
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In the social conscience age, is a relationship only a relationship if it’s declared on Facebook?
Because if that’s the case for both the Premier and myself, “it’s complicated”.
At what point is a personal relationship a partnership? I did not share any bills with the man I was in love with at the time, under Centrelink rules, he was not my “partner”, but in parliament in 2018, I was crucified by the highest office in the land as his “partner”.
But as someone who obtained a top-secret security clearance, I know you have to declare the kind of relationship the Premier had with the man who calls her “Glad” — because I did.
I drove to the security office, nervously sweating into a conservative blue suit, chain-smoking in pearls, to be grilled in a Negative Vetting Two interview, known to take up to seven hours.
Obtaining the NV2 allows you access to classified resources up to and including Top Secret. It is essential to obtain an NV2 to work in high levels of the public service, and can take up to two years to be issued.
What’s pressed upon you is not to lie to investigators.
It’s not about what you are guilty of, it’s whether you are ashamed of it and can be bribed or blackmailed, with offenders using your shame against you and putting the government at risk.
Before this interview, I had spent weeks piecing together a shorthand of my life — addresses of every home I had ever lived in, my entire employment history back to the deli in Far North Queensland, former bosses, former partners, former housemates, where I had gone overseas, who with, and who I had seen there.
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Every financial asset I held, shares, property, money received or spent, credit card debt, loans, mortgages — it all had to be declared and explained.
Did I, as a 16-year-old, share a bong? Had I ever slept with another woman? What do I fantasise about? It’s uncomfortable and invasive, but you do it because you have to.
I pass the police history check easily, but there was one element I was worried about and I wonder how Premier Gladys Berejiklian would have handled the same question.
“Do you have a partner?”
When I was asked the question there was a glass of water and a bowl of Mentos in front of me in an otherwise bare room. My hands were shaking under the table.
After 15 years of working overtime, Christmas and Sundays, this is how it all blows up.
I explained I had a close personal relationship with a government MP. The investigator is not surprised because he already knows this.
He has already spoken to those who would condemn me for it. He has interviewed my dearest friends and my worst enemies. He asks if I am in a relationship with anybody else, knowing I’m not.
Here’s why — the same excruciating checks are applied to your partner as well. For federal parliamentarians, it’s a more covert assessment. But the mission is the same.
An affair is not a reason for Gladys to lose her job. Politicians are not pastors and the history of politics shows they may take lovers like anyone else might, and it overwhelmingly has no detrimental bearing on the work they do in office.
Eisenhower, Kennedy, Holt, Hawke, Chifley — the list is longer with many who have never been outed.
More than most, I understand the implications of loving someone you shouldn’t and the humiliation of having every liaison debated in public.
As she said in her press conference, she passes security clearances no one else has to, so she would have had to tell investigators about her 5½-year “close personal relationship” with disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire, and revealed anything that she knew — if anything — about his business dealings. So, what did she tell them?
The issue now is there is no shortage of right-wing MPs that the Premier’s factional allies iced out when they were merely mentioned in ICAC.
The consequences of an ICAC investigation are most aptly demonstrated by the case of NSW’s respected former police minister Michael Gallacher, who was isolated as soon as his name came up in ICAC.
Even though he was cleared of misbehaviour, his redemption never received the same headlines as those generated in his fall.
There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy, what’s your business and ours — but it’s complicated.
* Vikki Campion is the partner of National MP Barnaby Joyce