Affair to forget: Gladys Berejiklian’s secret stunned Premier State
The line between privacy and secrecy may be fine, but for almost 20 years in public life Gladys Berejiklian was known to guard the former fiercely.
Her name appears 2373 times. There are 167 references to the “close personal relationship” she kept secret for so long and then tried to downplay, and more than a dozen mentions, in the now widely read report of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, of “hokis”, an Armenian term of endearment that she shared with former NSW Liberal MP Daryl Maguire.
But in a week replete with more excruciating details about the relationship that ended her popular reign as premier of NSW, nothing could top the shock of what had brought Gladys Berejiklian here in the first place.
So many truisms could apply to the saga that on Thursday culminated in ICAC’s serious corrupt conduct findings against Berejiklian and Maguire: that the cover-up is worse than the original sin; that love is blind; that the walls have ears.
But perhaps the most pertinent reminder for the former state Liberal leader, who resigned almost two years ago in the wake of revelations of her secret relationship with the disgraced Maguire, were the words of warning from George Orwell. If you want to keep a secret, he advised in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, you also have to hide it from yourself.
The line between privacy and secrecy may be fine, but for almost 20 years in public life Berejiklian was known to guard the former fiercely. With strong ties to her parents and sisters, she was the indefatigable member for Willoughby who held some of the state’s most important portfolios – transport, treasury and industrial relations – before becoming premier in early 2017.
As 2019’s catastrophic bushfires merged into 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic appeared and progressed, she garnered wide acclaim, and not just in NSW, for her leadership and her omnipresence at televised daily updates. She was hardworking and diligent, and if she had relationships, none made the news.
Dedicated to public service, along the way the former school captain even managed to convert some of her head-girl image into an endearing brand. In a 2020 Twitter challenge of photos of celebrities at 20, Berejiklian was widely heralded as a hands-down winner when she posted an old photo of herself as a 20-something in a Superwoman outfit, looking awkward in red boots and a long blonde wig. (“Embarrassing I know,” she tweeted.)
It was a rare insight into her private world. But the depth of that privacy truly became apparent only later that year.
In October 2020, in ICAC’s witness box, premier Berejiklian revealed that she had been in a secret relationship with Maguire, the long-time member for Wagga Wagga who had resigned from parliament in 2018 over allegations he had used his parliamentary position to secure valuable property deals with developers.
While the revelations from the oh-so private premier stunned many, what followed from her public testimony was often both keenly personal and agonising.
She and Maguire, it emerged, had been together for years, although she had never introduced him to her family. She referred to him as her “numero uno”, and many of their conversations, it turned out, had been recorded.
Maguire, by then, had plenty of detractors, overtly and not; the one-time country salesman had been described by former deputy premier John Barilaro as a “pain in the arse”. But even those who were quietly scornful of him were still shocked that he and the popular Berejiklian had been in a relationship (which, it would later emerge, still had a way to go, ending only in 2021).
Maguire might have been one of their own, but among many senior Liberals the disdain for him appeared to be in equal measure to the acclaim with which they held Berejiklian – and for whom even worse news was to follow. In October 2021, ICAC announced it was expanding a current operation to investigate Berejiklian, and whether, because of her secret relationship with Maguire, she had breached public trust. Within hours, and insisting she had always acted with the utmost integrity, the premier resigned.
Berejiklian was not the first NSW leader to have been brought down by the state’s anti-corruption commission: Barry O’Farrell’s term ended over a pricey bottle of wine that he failed to recall he had been given, and Nick Greiner departed over the appointment of one of his former ministers to a public service job (later overturned by the Court of Appeal).
But Berejiklian became subjected to an entirely different level of scrutiny, thanks to a personal relationship that, for so long, had stayed under the radar. This week’s revelations, detailed in ICAC’s hefty two-volume, 700-page report, included even more insights into the couple’s sometimes daily private messages “replete with terms of endearment, the use of pet names and other indications of mutual affection and love. They include discussions about marriage and the possibility of having a child together. From at least the early part of 2014 onwards, the messages are consistent with physical and emotional intimacy and a romantic relationship having developed between Ms Berejiklian and Mr Maguire.
The messages demonstrate the indices of a continuing deep attachment and love between the two of them up until August 2018.”
The couple, ICAC revealed, as well as discussing marriage and contemplating having a child together, made plans for drinks and holidays and picking up bread, their relationship “of profound importance to both”.
In one of their many documented exchanges, the premier tells Maguire “you are my family”. In another, on Valentine’s Day in 2018, Maguire tells an acquiescent Berejiklian of their relationship: “I am the boss, even when you’re the premier.”
Five months later, and just a day after Berejiklian publicly admonished Maguire over his ICAC evidence about receiving commissions for property developments (“I was shocked by the events [at ICAC] and I spoke to Mr Maguire late that afternoon to express in the strongest possible terms my deep disappointment,” she said in a statement at the time) they were still in close contact. “Hokis,” he advised her in one message, using the Armenian term of affection, “get stuck into me. Kick the shit out of me. Good for party morale.”
While ICAC recommended that the Director of Public Prosecutions be consulted about Maguire’s possible prosecution, it did not suggest the same for Berejiklian.
“Ultimately, the commission is of the view that Ms Berejiklian’s conduct, while it constitutes or involves a substantial breach of the ministerial code, is not so serious as to merit criminal punishment.”
In a wounding week, it was a significant save for the former leader, who now has a new partner, barrister Arthur Moses SC, even as the stench from her former relationship lingers.
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