Train wreck Berejiklian evidence is damning

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian arrives at the ICAC hearing in Sydney on Monday. Picture: Gaye Gerard

When Gladys Berejiklian resigned as premier of NSW, she insisted she had “always acted with the highest level of integrity” and would ultimately be vindicated. Well, after 11 days of hearings at the Independent Commission Against Corruption, her credibility has been shredded.

In the witness box for two days, Berejiklian has been unrepentant and unbowed. She conceded nothing. Even when presented with phone taps, text messages, documents and testimony that demonstrate multiple probity failures as her public ­duties collided with her personal life, she would not have done anything different in hindsight.

There have been brusque ­exchanges with commissioner Ruth McColl and counsel assisting Scott Robertson, as Bere­jiklian ducked and weaved questions, preferring to make short speeches, and her responses defied rational judgment.

It has been an utterly bewildering and completely delusional performance.

ICAC has made no findings and Berejiklian insists she has done nothing wrong. But even former premier Mike Baird said Berejiklian should “certainly” have disclosed her five-year secret relationship with former MP Daryl Maguire, which took place when she was premier and treasurer, and continued even after he had resigned from parliament in disgrace.

John Barilaro, her deputy premier, said Berejiklian would not have been involved in deliberations on grants to Maguire’s electorate if he had known about their relationship. Minister Stuart Ayres said it would have been “prudent” for Berejiklian to divulge it. Her former chief of staff, Sarah Cruickshank, said Berejiklian lied to her about Maguire.

Senior public servants said they would have handled grants differently if they had known about Berejiklian and Maguire.

Berejiklian has been alone in her defence. Not one witness has said the conduct of her public duties in how she handled her personal relationship with Maguire was entirely above reproach. This is not ICAC, her political opponents or the media saying this, but her former colleagues. It is a damning judgment on her character and behaviour.

The Ministerial Code of Conduct – a regulation that sits under the ICAC Act – is the first, and most obvious, area where Berejiklian has transgressed which warranted her resignation more than a year ago when the relationship with Maguire was revealed. Maguire told ICAC that he was in love with Berejiklian, and she was in love with him. He stayed at her house and had his own key. She stayed at his house. They talked about getting married one day and having a child. He said the relationship with the treasurer and premier took place from 2015 to 2020.

Berejiklian described Maguire as part of her “love circle” and texted him to say “you are part of my family”. Last year, she told radio shock jocks and newspaper gossip columnists that she was in love with him and they planned to marry. This was designed to win public pity for having been “unlucky in love” with a “bad boyfriend” defence. This relationship was required to be disclosed under the ministerial code because it was quite obviously an “intimate personal relationship” and therefore his “pecuniary and other interests” were relevant in the discharge of her public duties. But Berejiklian claims it was not of sufficient status to disclose. This is an absurd explanation.

The second area not in dispute is that Berejiklian should have disclosed her relationship with Maguire to her cabinet colleagues. Such disclosures were a standing item at cabinet and expenditure review committee meetings. This was relevant when considering grants to the Australian Clay Target Association and the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in Maguire’s electorate of Wagga Wagga.

There is nothing wrong with MPs lobbying ministers for grants for their electorates. This is as old as politics. But the issue is whether Maguire had special access and preferential treatment. It is impossible to believe that other MPs spoke to Berejiklian in the way Maguire did, or so regularly, or that she in turn was so willing to help other MPs ­secure funding, as revealed by the phone taps.

When Maguire sought hospital funding for his electorate, a 2018 phone tap recorded Berejiklian saying she would “fix it” and boasted that then treasurer Dominic Perrottet “just does what I ask him to”. When discussing other projects, Berejiklian said: “I’ll throw money at Wagga, lots of it, don’t you worry about that.” When Maguire said there was bureaucratic resistance to a project, she replied: “I can overrule them.” Berejiklian also said she would sack a public servant after Maguire complained about them, saying: “His head will be gone.”

The third area under scrutiny is the duty to report actual or suspected corrupt conduct under section 11 of the ICAC Act. Berejiklian was advised by her department that staff were making reports to ICAC about concerns they had regarding Maguire’s behaviour. But this did not prompt any critical reflection by Berejiklian, who was in a relationship with Maguire at the time. This is truly astonishing.

During a tapped phone call in 2017, Maguire told Berejiklian that he would earn a $1.5m commission in relation to a Badgerys Creek land deal which would result in him being “debt free”. He was a member of parliament at the time. Inexplicably, this also raised no alarm bells. “I never thought he was doing anything untoward,” Berejiklian said.

However, in a 2018 phone recording, Maguire told Berejiklian he had been summonsed to give evidence at an earlier corruption inquiry. “Is that going to be a problem?” she asked. When they discussed the people Maguire had associated with who were caught up in the investigation, Berejiklian said: “I think they’re dodgy.” Acknowledging ICAC could be recording their conversation, he advised her to “get a private phone” and use an encrypted messaging app.

But, again, there were apparently no suspicions of corruption. Yet, after Maguire had given evidence to that inquiry, Berejiklian insisted he resign from parliament. “Why didn’t you draw the dots?” counsel assisting Robertson asked on Monday. Berejiklian’s only defence, if not lying, is being extremely naive. Either way, her conduct is not defensible.

When Berejiklian resigned, she claimed to have upheld the “highest of standards” in public life. The ICAC hearings have been a train wreck for Berejiklian. Her credibility, integrity and ethics have been permanently damaged. It casts a shadow over the Perrottet government. And the fantasy of a career in federal politics, or any future position of high public trust for her, will ­remain just that.