How Gladys Berejiklian threw an old friend, chief of staff Sarah Cruickshank, under the bus

Gladys Berejiklian rejected her chief of staff’s evidence of a crucial conversation about Daryl Maguire, claiming her staffer’s memory was clouded by ‘a few wines’.

The former NSW Premier’s then chief of staff Sarah Cruickshank, pictured, was renowned for her fierce loyalty to her boss. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

Buried in the corruption watchdog’s scathing report on Gladys Berejiklian is a hidden tale of betrayal – not of the public trust, but of one of her closest confidants and oldest friends.

The former NSW premier’s then chief of staff, Sarah Cruickshank, was renowned for her fierce loyalty to her boss – at least until Berejiklian threw her under the bus, suggesting her staffer’s evidence to the inquiry might have been clouded by alcohol.

Cruickshank revealed how the then premier had rung her one evening in July 2018, on the same day corruption allegations against MP Daryl Maguire had become public. Berejiklian was distressed. She wanted to tell Cruickshank of a “historic” relationship with the Wagga Wagga MP – but claimed it was all over.

That was a smokescreen, ICAC concluded: a form of damage control. Berejiklian was telling Cruickshank about the relationship but downplaying its significance by lying about its nature, its length and intimacy, and placing it at a time remote from the firestorm that was now engulfing Maguire.

She was lying to her friend to save her own political skin, ICAC concluded

By early July 2018, the heat on Maguire was becoming intense. ICAC was closing in on the member for Wagga Wagga over his involvement in a corruption scandal at the Canterbury council. Maguire urged Berejiklian to switch to an encrypted messaging service and get a private phone, correctly assuming his conversations were being bugged.

Gladys Berejiklian with disgraced MP Daryl Maguire

At a public hearing of ICAC’s Canterbury council investigation, known as Operation Dasha, on July 13, 2018, Maguire admitted he was engaged in a money-making exercise along with a member of the council.

Berejiklian – who had already been told by Maguire he was appearing – was on the first day of her holidays. She’d just arrived in her hotel room when a member of her staff rang to tell her “it wasn’t looking good”.

Cruickshank, also on leave, had been out to dinner with friends that evening when Berejiklian called “in a state of distress”. Berejiklian wasn’t just her boss; the two had known each other since their student politics days at university.

Cruickshank stepped away to take the call. Berejiklian said she wanted Cruickshank to know she had been in a “historic relationship” with Maguire.

It had simply involved a few dinners and was over before she became premier, she told Cruickshank.

But she had never had reason to believe Maguire had done anything untoward, she told Cruickshank repeatedly.

Cruickshank was puzzled but thought Berejiklian was telling her in case there were inquiries through the media along the lines of: “Wasn’t Mr Maguire close to the premier or weren’t they friends, or something like that?”

More than two years later, Cruickshank was as shocked as everyone else when Berejiklian revealed her romantic relationship with Maguire at the first ICAC hearings in Operation Keppel. Cruickshank had no idea the relationship had continued until just before the hearing.

She was “slightly mortified”, she later told ICAC, given the “free character assessments” of Maguire she’d given to Berejiklian after he resigned from parliament in disgrace.

Cruickshank was “categorical”: if Berejiklian had told her the relationship was continuing, she would have acted very differently over what would have been a clear conflict of interest – and a need to disclose to ICAC.

Gladys Berejiklian while being questioned at the ICAC inquiry.

Berejiklian’s accusation was an affront to the loyal staffer’s professionalism. As Cruickshank said, had she known the relationship was ongoing, she would have sat down with Berejiklian and gone through the implications, quickly getting to the question of whether or not the premier had made relevant disclosures under the Ministerial Code of Conduct.

But that was not what Berejiklian told ICAC about her conversation with Cruickshank.

“I left her in no doubt that I was close to Mr Maguire,” Berejiklian testified. “The exact words or what we spoke about, I can’t confirm.”

“I suggest to you that you’re not being honest,” Hugh White, acting for Cruickshank, said in a terse exchange.

“I can only reflect my recollection and I can’t do any better than that,” Berejiklian replied.

In her later submissions to the inquiry, while “expressly eschewing” any suggestion that Cruickshank was deliberately misleading, Berejiklian nevertheless attacked her staffer’s evidence.

She said Cruickshank’s recollection of the call was vague and varied; that it wasn’t a genuine independent recollection of the conversation itself, but a reconstruction influenced by “conscious consideration of what should have been said or could have been said”, and; most cuttingly, that Cruickshank had taken the call after “a few wines”.

Sarah Cruickshank. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

ICAC rejected those claims and aspersions. It found Berejiklian had lied to her friend.

“The most significant reason for her doing so was probably Ms Berejiklian’s concern that telling the truth about those matters may implicate her in, or suggest she may have knowledge of, some of Mr Maguire’s activities, which had been exposed in his Operation Dasha evidence,” the commission concluded.

ICAC accepted Cruickshank as a credible and reliable witness who gave evidence “in difficult circumstances having regard to her personal and professional relationship with Ms Berejiklian”.

Berejiklian, by contrast, “was not a satisfactory witness”.

“It is patent that Ms Berejiklian was concerned to distance herself publicly as much as possible from Mr Maguire to ensure the political controversy, which had erupted with his evidence, did not engulf her as well.”

Cruickshank left the premier’s office in February 2020 and is now deputy secretary of the NSW Department of Customer Service.