The corruption watchdog has pointed to the “emotional hold” former NSW Liberal MP Daryl Maguire had over Gladys Berejiklian, as it defended its finding that the former premier was influenced in her decision-making by a desire to maintain her relationship.
Berejiklian has asked the NSW Court of Appeal to overturn the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s findings last year that she engaged in serious corrupt conduct by participating in decisions to award multimillion-dollar grants to two projects in Maguire’s Wagga Wagga electorate without disclosing that the pair were in a relationship.
The corruption watchdog concluded Gladys Berejiklian was influenced in her decision-making by her desire to maintain and advance her relationship with Daryl Maguire.Credit: SMH
The decisions were made between 2016 and 2018 when Berejiklian was treasurer and later premier. The ICAC heard the relationship started in 2015 and Berejiklian did not cut off contact until September 2020.
Berejiklian’s legal team, headed by Bret Walker, SC, has urged the court to quash the ICAC’s findings or declare them a nullity. Walker said on Monday that the ICAC’s finding that the former premier was influenced in her decision-making by a desire to maintain or advance her private relationship with Maguire was not supported by evidence.
But Stephen Free, SC, acting for the ICAC, told the court on Tuesday that the evidence before the commission constituted a “rational basis” for it to infer Berejiklian was influenced by that desire.
Free said the ICAC was alive to Berejiklian’s evidence that she treated Maguire in the same way as any other local MP, but it “simply didn’t accept that that was true as a proposition of fact when it came to how she dealt with the two particular funding decisions”.
He said that this was a “conclusion on the evidence that it was entitled to make”.
“Mr Maguire, on the findings of the commission, was in relation to Ms Berejiklian, clearly not just like any other local member,” Free said.
“He was part of an intimate relationship with her in which, importantly, her vision for her future ... was tied to the maintenance of their relationship.
“As the commission found, it wasn’t just the existence of a relationship per se that needed to be considered, but the particular dynamics of that relationship.”
Free noted evidence considered by the ICAC showing Maguire lobbied Berejiklian about projects and “had an emotional hold on her in the way that the commission identified, in terms of demonstrating his level of insecurity and disquiet [and] his desire to be the boss”.
“That was obviously in a radically different category from any other relationship between members of a government,” Free said.
In a tapped phone call played during the ICAC’s hearings, Berejiklian told Maguire on Valentine’s Day 2018: “Normally you’re the boss, and it’s hard when we have to switch it around.”
“Glad, even when you are the Premier, I am the boss, alright,” Maguire said.
“Yes, I know,” Berejiklian replied.
The former premier told the ICAC during a private hearing that she was trying to “make him feel less insecure” and demonstrate the difference between her public role in which she was “the boss” and their private relationship. Maguire had complained earlier in the call that Berejiklian had “appeared mean” to him in public.
Free said a separate finding by the ICAC that Berejiklian had a conflict of interest between her public duty and her private interest would still hold “even if she were right about saying she wasn’t in fact influenced” and “non-pecuniary interests are capable of giving rise to a conflict”.
In submissions in reply, Walker said that “it doesn’t distort political decision-making to take into account the preferences and desires of those whom you admire, those whom you like, those whose advice you’ve found useful in the past or, if not useful, pleasing”.
“It’s not corruption to be influenced by people whom other observers may wish you were not influenced by. That’s the conduct of human politics by humans,” Walker said.
ICAC findings may only be challenged in court on limited grounds relating to legal error, including that a finding was not supported by evidence.
The court does not review the merits of the original finding, meaning it does not stand in the shoes of the ICAC and make its own finding on the facts.
The two-day hearing concluded on Tuesday. The court will deliver its decision at a later date.