Gladys Berejiklian brought down by her questionable choice in lovers

From the moment she revealed to ICAC Daryl Maguire was her secret lover, Gladys Berejiklian was a dead politician walking.

Gladys Berejiklian with Daryl Maguire in 2015. Picture: The Daily Advertiser/ACM

From the moment she stepped into the ICAC witness box on that jaw-dropping morning last October to reveal Daryl Maguire was her secret lover, Gladys Berejiklian was a dead politician walking.

Her answers to the corruption watchdog would set in motion an investigation that would take her from witness to person of interest to ex-premier in less than a year.

The premier knew she was in trouble but she was confident she could deal with whatever counsel assisting Scott Robertson dealt up. She knew some of what was coming: she had already given evidence to a private session of the inquiry two months before.

This time there were cameras. Her five-year relationship with Maguire was about to become public.

Under the watchful eye of her barrister, Arthur Moses SC, she told the inquiry she had decided to keep the relationship a secret ­because she was a “very private person”.

The relationship with the former Wagga Wagga MP had ended two months earlier, she said.

While her relationship was “close” and “personal”, it did not meet the threshold of an “intimate relationship”, Berejiklian said. ­“Irrespective of how I felt, we led completely separate lives.”

But this was the Independent Commission Against Corruption, a corruption-buster notorious for never asking a question it didn’t already have a tape for. And these tapes – phone intercepts – were excruciating.

Not just for the endearments – Maguire called her “Hawkiss”, an Armenian term for “my beloved”; Berejiklian called him “my ­Numero Uno”.

Not just for Maguire’s seemingly urgent need to itemise the money he would make from every business deal. But for what she told her lover, repeatedly, she didn’t need to know.

“I don’t need to know which little friend you are talking about,” Berejiklian told Maguire, ­moments after he told her to ­expect a meeting request from a property developer.

Berejiklian at ICAC last October.

In another bugged conversation, Maguire told her that the $330m sale of the development site near Badgerys Creek airport was close to being completed, and that he stood to make a $690,000 fee on the sale of the property, owned by the Waterhouse family.

“I don’t need to know about that bit”, Berejiklian told him.

The premier’s explanation for cutting off conversations with ­Maguire was that she felt uninterested by the financial ­specifics of his business arrangements. She was “bored and busy and wanted to move on” with the conversation.

The relationship between the premier and Maguire began in 2015 according to her; at least a year earlier according to him.

In a series of text messages sent in 2014, while Berejiklian was transport minister, she congratulated Maguire over the successful sale of a motel for $5.8m.

“Congrats!!!Great news!!Woo hoo,” Berejiklian replied, asking what his commission was.

In October 2017, she visited Maguire’s then safe Liberal electorate to announce a $200,000 funding increase to prevent the North Wagga Public School from closing, one of many trips to the seat. She was then NSW treasurer.

A friend of Maguire would later tell investigators she could ­recall meeting Berejik­lian over dinner at Maguire’s home and during an evening out at the restaurant in the city’s Romano’s Hotel, famed for its $20 chicken schnitzel.

By then ICAC was already on Maguire’s tail after secretly ­recording him discuss property deals involving a Chinese developer. The corruption watchdog’s ­Operation Dasha was investigating allegations of dishonest conduct at the former Canterbury City Council.

In July 2018, Berejiklian forced Maguire to resign from the Liberal Party and move to the crossbench after his name was brought up during the ICAC inquiry.

Despite sacking him, Berejiklian said she continued her relationship with Maguire on “compas­sionate grounds”.

Berejiklian with lawyer Arthur Moses.

Though he was a minor character in Operation Dasha, ­Maguire soon became the focus of a separate ICAC investigation, Operation Keppel, in which Berejiklian would become entangled.

Two days after the premier ­revealed she had been in an intimate relationship with Maguire, the former MP made a series of stunning admissions that he had used his parliamentary position for his own financial benefit.

Maguire admitted he had ­accepted cash deliveries to his ­parliamentary office relating to a visa scheme for Chinese nationals, agreed he ran a private business from his parliamentary office, and concealed his involvement in that firm.

Maguire told ICAC that Berejiklian knew nothing of the finer points of his business dealings.

The Keppel investigation was scheduled to wind up last December and Berejiklian seemed to have escaped further scrutiny, by now in a new relationship with the man who defended her in the ICAC hearings, barrister Arthur Moses.

But then the corruption watchdog announced the inquiry was to be extended for “further ­investigative steps”.

ICAC had decided to look into a $5.5m funding grant Maguire procured for the Australian Clay Target Association, ­located in his electorate of Wagga Wagga, during 2017.

An attempt to secure the grant in 2016 failed, but documents ­obtained by NSW parliament show a second attempt the following year, using an updated business case and the oversight of Berejiklian was successful.

The terms of ICAC’s new investigation refer to the Clay Target club and grant funding to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music.

But the scope of the inquiry is much wider than that, going to whether she breached public trust by failing to report any matter she suspected to be corrupt conduct by Maguire.