Gladys Berejiklian at ICAC: When private becomes public

With more excruciating inquisition ahead, the former premier’s phone intercepts tell a potentially very damaging story.

Gladys Berejiklian arrives for Friday’s ICAC hearing. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw

It was a sad spectacle and understandably stressful for Gladys Berejiklian, the star witness of a public corruption inquiry called to investigate her past conduct as premier of NSW.

On the first of two scheduled days giving evidence on Friday, the discomfort showed on Berejiklian’s face.

She shook her head, pursed her lips, her eyes frequently darting back and forth, as she faced an excruciating inquisition about the nature of her “very close relationship” with the former state Liberal MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire.

“I regarded him as a part of my love circle, of people that I strongly cared for,” Berejiklian told the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption.

She agreed that during her secret relationship with Maguire lasting five or more years, while she was treasurer and later head of government in the nation’s large state, she had loved Maguire, and he had loved her. When presented with a 2017 text message she had sent to Maguire, obtained by ICAC, Berejiklian agreed she had told him: “You are my family.”

During their “intimate” relationship, Berejiklian confirmed she stayed with Maguire from time to time at his home in Wagga Wagga, and he stayed with her in Sydney. She gave him a key to her home and the couple went away together on holidays. They discussed marriage and, according to Maguire’s evidence a day earlier, had talked about having a child.

Yet Berejiklian was insistent she would keep her relationship with the now disgraced Maguire a secret if she had her time again.

She would not feel a need to disclose the relationship to ministerial colleagues and others in government, she said. This was despite a flood of evidence presented during nine days of ICAC proceedings – and put directly to Berejiklian on Friday by counsel assisting, Scott Robertson – that she took a personal interest in her government’s doling out many millions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds to projects of disputed merit in Maguire’s Wagga electorate.

“I didn’t feel it was of sufficient standard or sufficient significance in order to do that,” Berejiklian said, when pressed about why she kept her colleagues in the dark.

“The threshold for me was, did I feel there was a commitment which I would be able to share with my parents or my sisters?”

Disgraced MP Daryl Maguire gives evidence before ICAC on Thursday.

Despite the extended duration of her relationship with Maguire, and how she “derived emotional strength from him” and had hopes of marriage, Berejiklian said the pair did not live together and did not share finances. She did not introduce him formally to her family as her partner. She had doubts about Maguire’s level of commitment. Sometimes Maguire came to Sydney without telling her. According to Berejiklian, Maguire’s access to her was no different to any other MP when it came to lobbying for his pet projects.

And so, Berejiklian claimed, she had no duty to disclose anything. She had acted at all times by putting the interests of the community and the government first. She did not receive any “private personal benefit” from cabinet decisions in which she took part that went Maguire’s way.

Berejiklian confirmed she was aware of the duty imposed on her by the NSW government ministerial code of conduct.

It requires cabinet members to record any possible conflicts of interest, to abstain from discussions about matters where they might have a conflict, and to absent themselves from such matters when they come to cabinet or cabinet committees for a decision. According to the former premier, none of this applied to her.

If Berejiklian’s version of her relationship with Maguire is to be accepted, then it is difficult to comprehend why her sudden resignation was deemed necessary four weeks ago. Indeed, if Berejiklian’s logic were accepted, she should be the premier now, not Dominic Perrottet: nothing extraordinary occurred and ICAC’s inquiry into her conduct would seem mystifying.

Berejiklian resigned on October 1, just an hour after ICAC announced it would hold a public inquiry, Operation Keppel, focused specifically on her. ICAC said it would investigate whether Berejiklian had engaged in conduct that “constituted or involved a breach of trust” where she was in a position of “conflict between her public duties and her private interest”, given her “personal relationship” with Maguire when he was a Liberal MP.

Two key case studies were picked for ICAC’s investigation: a 2016 government grant awarded to the Australian Clay Target Association to build a new headquarters in Wagga, when Berejiklian was treasurer in the Baird government, and the 2018 promise of funding for a new Conservatorium of Music in Wagga Wagga when she was premier.

Broader concerns in ICAC’s investigation of Berejiklian’s conduct relate to a key clause, set out under the ICAC Act, that she had a legal duty to report any matter to the corruption body that she “suspected” might involve corrupt conduct by Maguire, or was liable to “allow or encourage” such conduct by him.

Just as she denied favouring Maguire, or breaching the ministerial code by not disclosing her relationship with him to ministerial colleagues, she insisted on Friday she never suspected her then boyfriend of any corruption justifying an approach to ICAC.

This was the case, she said, during an ICAC-intercepted personal phone call with Maguire in September 2017 when he complained about his personal finances and boasted about his hopes of earning a $1.5m commission from a land deal he’d helped arrange near the proposed second Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek. Berejiklian dismissed Robertson’s suggestion that she might have had suspicions because it was “strange, unusual and unexpected” for a sitting NSW MP to receive such a large commission, and because the land concerned was nowhere near Maguire’s electorate.

After the phone call, one of many intercepted by ICAC and played during proceedings on Friday, Robertson asked Berejiklian why she didn’t have concerns. “I trusted him … I never thought he would do anything untoward,” she said. She did not take the $1.5m land deal seriously because Maguire was “always talking about pie-in-the-sky things”.

Again, Berejiklian said, she had no suspicions about Maguire’s conduct when he confirmed to her in a phone conversation in July 2018, also intercepted by ICAC, that he’d been called to give evidence to the corruption body related to his involvement in trying to broker property deals on behalf of a Chinese developer in Sydney’s west. “I trusted him and I believed him when he said he had done nothing wrong,” she replied.

Under pressure from his own party, Maguire resigned as a parliamentary secretary in Berejiklian’s government within days. As the pressure intensified, he quit his seat, forcing a by-election. Berejiklian secretly stuck with Maguire as his girlfriend – until at least September last year – still apparently suspecting nothing untoward.

Maguire faces up to five years in prison if convicted after ICAC found in March this year he gave “false or misleading evidence” to the corruption body by denying he approached former Canterbury councillor Michael Hawatt in 2016 with a view to making money out of the property deal.

To accept Berejiklian’s account over the period of her relationship with Maguire – no breach of trust, no duty to disclose a conflict, no breach of the ministerial code and no grounds for suspecting corrupt conduct by him – is to believe she was at all times naive, perhaps blinded by love.

It is to accept as credible that she “in my own mind”, as she put it, had neatly compartmentalised the private and public sides of her relationship with Maguire, and so it remained no one’s business providing she could, to her own satisfaction, maintain this “black and white” division.

The problem, for Berejiklian, as teased out during ICAC proceedings so far, is her own words, as articulated during many phone calls with Maguire that were intercepted by ICAC and are now public. So too is the evidence of senior members of her own government that they should have known about the Maguire relationship and might have acted differently in the awarding of multimillion-dollar projects in Maguire’s electorate if they had known.

The phone calls between Maguire and Berejiklian aired during ICAC proceedings so far are truly cringeworthy.

The risk for Berejiklian is that her intercepted comments to Maguire could be interpreted by ICAC as contrary to the way she now tries to portray them. She said in evidence that access given to Maguire was the same as any other MP, yet she was recorded telling him first that “we ticked off on your conservatorium the other day, so that’s a done deal”.

When Maguire complained about bureaucracy getting in the way of projects he wanted approved, she told him she could “overrule” it. When Berejiklian confirmed to Maguire that, as premier, she had secured $170m funding for a new hospital extension in May 2018, she said she had personally “just fixed it” with then treasurer Perrottet inserting the money allocation in draft state budget papers. “He just does whatever I ask him to,” she told Maguire. “I’ve already got you the Wagga hospital … I just spoke to Dom (Perrottet), and I said just put the 140 in the budget. And he said no worries, he just does what I ask him to,” she says in a call to Maguire.

When Maguire had problems securing funding for a Wagga Wagga conservatorium of music, allegedly because of obstruction from a particular public servant, Berejiklian told Maguire: “I can’t stand that guy. He’ll be gone soon. After he fixes it, I’m sacking him.”

On Friday, Berejiklian pointed out that the person was still in the public service and so “obviously I didn’t do it”. Assistant Commissioner Ruth McColl reminded her: “That’s what you said.”

After Maguire quit his seat, forcing a by-election, Berejiklian told him: I’ll throw lots of money at Wagga, don’t you worry about that.” When he pressed her for a new stadium, she said: “I’ll do that too.”

former deputy premier John Barilaro. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Adam Yip

Former Berejiklian chief-of-staff Susan Cruickshank. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

In the lead-up to Berejiklian’s ICAC appearance on Friday, former and current NSW government figures expressed their dismay at not knowing about Maguire. Former premier Mike Baird said he was “incredulous” when he learned of the Berejiklian-Maguire relationship just a year ago, saying it “should have been disclosed”. Former deputy premier John Barilaro said Berejiklian “could not have been part of the decision or the debate” about the Wagga Wagga clay target club grant, and the government would have “managed it differently”.

Former sports minister Stuart Ayres said he supported the gun club grant but Berejiklian’s relationship should have been disclosed “so that any actions to avoid or manage conflicts could have been taken”.

Sports bureaucrats Michael Toohey and Paul Doorn said the case for the gun club was economically deficient. They raised concerns at the time, as did former Baird adviser Nigel Blunden. All raised the potential for a conflict or perceived conflict of interest – if they’d known about the Berejiklian-Maguire relationship at the time.

Then there’s Berejiklian’s former chief-of-staff, Sarah Cruickshank. She told ICAC Berejiklian first told her about the Maguire relationship in July 2018, when the then Wagga Wagga MP’s involvement in the Canterbury land deals was first revealed. Cruickshank said she received a “distressed” phone call from Berejiklian, who told her “a couple of times” that the relationship ended before she became premier in January 2017.

“She lied to you?” Commissioner McColl asked.

“There’s not really a different way to characterise it,” Cruickshank said. “The reality is, she told me it was a historic relationship, and then she has subsequently said it’s not, so I can’t do much more with that.” Berejiklian remained in the relationship with Maguire until September last year, keeping all in the dark.

Meanwhile, Robertson wanted to know: Why did Berejiklian believe it was necessary to disclose that two of her cousins were public servants, but it was somehow not necessary to mention Maguire? The cousins, she said, apparently worked for a department where Berejiklian “might make decisions”.

More is to be explored during Berejiklian’s second day in the ICAC witness box on Monday. Her main hope would be to escape a direct finding of corrupt conduct. As for perceptions of a conflict of interest and favourable treatment, the former premier is not helped by her own words. The phone intercepts tell a potentially very damaging story.