Vikki Campion: ICAC only cares when a lover is lobbying

What did Gladys Berejiklian do? She funded a regional hospital and community facilities. And if that’s corruption then none of us are safe, writes Vikki Campion.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and apparently, so is lobbying and corruption.

ICAC found former premier Gladys Berejiklian corrupt and breaching public trust for funding a $5.5m international-standard shooting club in regional NSW – even though cabinet ministers with her in ERC at the time acknowledged even if they knew about her affair with Daryl Maguire, the project “still would have got approval”.

ICAC took issue with the $5.5m grant for the Australian Clay Target Association becoming a “revenue stream for private organisations”.

Well, if this $5.5m riles them up, ICAC should look at the billions of dollars in grants and subsidies benefiting foreign investors to plough renewables through prime NSW agricultural land. Or help the National Anti-Corruption Commission investigate the $375m going into EV subsidies to buy brand new Teslas where every dollar goes to their foreign-owned manufacturers.

There’s more attachment between lobbying and personal benefit in any of these issues than new public facilities built in a regional electorate.

Gladys Berejiklian with Daryl Maguire while together in parliament.

There’s no divine absorption of ideas. These policies come from people who get paid a substantial amount to lobby for them. Yet they don’t care about the lobbyists lobbying … unless it’s a lover lobbying. If you want to talk about public disclosure of every relationship in parliament, why does it always begin and end with sex?

Why is there never a disclosure for those who carry the influence of friendship, which can span decades longer and more powerfully than any bedroom dalliance? Just how far do you want to draw this bow?

No one ever complains about ministers, such as Anthony Albanese hiring his old friends in his prime ministerial office to collect travel allowance flying around the world with him.

What about people who go from being a staffer to an MP helped by the popularity of their former boss, such as Pat Conroy, who worked in Albanese’s office and was parachuted into a safe seat in Newcastle?

Conroy got more out of Albo than Gladys ever got out of Maguire, which is not to say that Conroy or Albanese are corrupt for doing so; it’s just how humans work. It is the natural course of human nature that if you get along with someone, you try to help them.

In parts, ICAC’s report on Berejikilian is like reading an essay of a teenage idealist who thinks they know what politics should be, quoting “Lord Bingham of Cornhill” and “Lord Wilberforce” on what public duty is as a dissertation of their personal vanity of how clever they are. “It’s fallacious to suggest Ms Berejikilian’s conduct in relation to projects for which Mr Maguire advocated could be compared to other MPs,” they said.

ICAC took issue with the $5.5m grant for the Australian Clay Target Association

If ICAC thinks MPs who are sweet on each other get better deals, they need to spend more time with MPs who hate each other’s guts and are ready to blow the show up.

One of the multiple times Calare MP Andrew Gee was going to resign from the Nationals, the government was forced to find $96m for the Department of Veterans Affairs administration.

That was of no personal benefit to Gee. However, it’s an example of how one regional MP can get a lot of money quickly without sleeping with anyone.

What ICAC really needs is a team of senior retired politicians with unquestioned patriotism to be part of their referral group who know the difference between lobbying and corruption.

Team John Howard and Kim Beazley or John Anderson and Stephen Smith would know what corruption and lobbying are. If lobbying is corruption then ban it or change the model entirely so only genuine residents of an MP’s electorate can lobby them.

If we look at every person in public life the same way as ICAC has looked at Berejiklian and three regional facilities, there are few in local, state or federal government with clean hands. There is also snobbery in ICAC’s perception of funding infrastructure in Wagga Wagga. What a surprise: Some city-based gorms, happy to take the tax and export money regional communities make, believe regional hicks should fly to Sydney if we want sport or art. ICAC turned to the SMH for back-up, quoting an article claiming a “buy-election” because of money going to Wagga Wagga, promised to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music and Tumut Hospital.

No Sydney paper has ever claimed splashing nearly half a billion on the Art Gallery of NSW was “buying” the seat of Sydney – yet apparently $50m for a hospital and $20m for a conservatorium are. A much bigger issue for ICAC is the relationships of bureaucrats, lobbyists and political operatives with foreign governments that want knowledge on how governments’ top echelons work.

Was Gladys talking to Russian and Chinese spies? Had she suddenly accumulated millions that cannot be accounted for? Did she leave politics unbelievably connected to countries hostile to us? Were these relationships developed when she was in power? No. She didn’t. She funded a regional hospital and community facilities. And if that’s corruption then none of us are safe.