Gladys Berejiklian’s Valentine’s Day phone call with then-lover Daryl Maguire exposes depressing truth

It was Valentine’s Day when Gladys Berejiklian was urged by her secret lover to declare he was the “boss”. The tapped phone call exposes a “depressing” truth.

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Remember when Gladys Berejiklian revealed she dressed up as a female superhero for her 21st?

I wonder what that young woman would think of the phone conversation she would have several decades later with Daryl Maguire?

“I am the boss, even when you’re the Premier,’’ he told her.

And no, this was not some sort of spicy sex chat as some suggested online. It’s just garden-variety bully stuff, from a balding, middle aged man.

The real mystery is why she put up with it.

Embarrassing I know, but this is from my 21st (nearly 20). #MeAt20pic.twitter.com/sxMj290kBd

— Gladys Berejiklian (@GladysB) April 18, 2020

BEREJIKLIAN: Because you know what I tell you, because normally you’re the boss and it’s hard when we have to switch it around. That’s the truth.

MAGUIRE: Yeh but I am the boss, even when you’re the Premier.

BEREJIKLIAN: I know. So therefore it’s hard when I had to switch it around.

MAGUIRE: Glad even when you are the Premier I am the boss alright.

BEREJIKLIAN: Yes I know.

MAGUIRE: You are at my table eating my food that’s fine right you’ve just got to calm down you just came over like, oh Jesus, why are you sitting there no f*** off but.

BEREJIKLIAN: I’m sorry I apologise.

Yikes.

It was depressing, distressing and said something truly sad about what the hell Gladys Berejiklian thought she was worth.

Gladys Berejiklian with disgraced MP Daryl Maguire.

As one of my friends texted to say, “I feel so sad for Gladys reading those transcripts. Not in the absolving corruption way, in a ‘I am sad she put up with that total moron way.’”

Personally, I’ve never been swayed by the bad boyfriend defence. The ICAC has raised serious claims about Ms Berejiklian’s conduct.

She can’t brush them away by blaming dodgy Daryl. She’s the Premier, not a teenager in a Judy Blume novel.

But the phone taps also tell us something else too.

In one call previously played at the hearing, Mr Maguire boasts that people are “s**t scared” of him.

Which seems frankly unlikely, given he seems to be a man with hardly any power at all, beyond his secret relationship with the former NSW Premier.

“They’ve invited all these people to shake hands and suck d***s,” he said.

“The problem is, They’re all that f***ing s**t scared of me now and they’re, and they’re – they don’t know what I’ll do. So whether I’ll just go feral or, or whatever.

“F*** them. They can get f***ed.

“If they wanna solve a problem, they want to resolve an issue, then they better get off their fat a**es and make something happen,’’ he told her.

Gladys Berejiklian being grilled by ICAC in 2021. Picture: ICAC

Ms Berejiklian has since moved on with high-powered barrister Arthur Moses. Picture: Adam Yip

Given that Mr Maguire may know a thing or two about getting off his own fat a**se, one supposes he may have some expertise in the area.

But it was the grotesque way he spoke to Ms Berejiklian that left many women profoundly sad.

In one phone tap, Ms Berejiklian responds by quietly saying, “Can you please not get yourself worked up again because all you do is shout at me sometimes.”

Veteran journalist Tracy Grimshaw, a former host of A Current Affair, put it best when she reflected on some of the conversations a few years ago

“He treats her with disdain,” Ms Grimshaw said. “Domineering, self-obsessed, bordering on abusive at times. Valid investigation but excruciating.”

The ICAC report states that during a private examination that Ms Berejiklian was asked whether the “I am the boss” exchange was “a fair understanding of their relationship at that point in time.

“Look, as you can appreciate, when you’re the Premier of the state, it’s very difficult in private relationships to make people feel that – he wanted, he, he wanted to feel equal in the relationship because of my position … To make him feel less insecure in a private capacity I’m talking now, not in a public capacity,’’ she said.

In other words, a grown man was so threatened by her job she had to act subservient to cheer him up.