Will ICAC watchdog claim a hat-trick?

As famous American baseball player Yogi Berra once remarked, it’s deja vu all over again.

Former NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell.

A Liberal premier, travelling well in the polls, becomes embroiled in scandal after an appearance in the witness box at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption.

For Barry O’Farrell it was a $3000 bottle of Grange Hermitage that ended his premiership.

For Nick Greiner, it was a political appointment that had a whiff of scandal.

But after Gladys Berejiklian’s explosive day of testimony on Monday, the question in NSW political circles on Monday night was whether the ICAC appearance story would have a different ending for the incumbent Premier who found herself answering some very difficult questions over a romance gone horribly wrong.

Her “close personal relationship” with former MP Daryl Maguire — the man at the centre of the current corruption inquiry — was the focus of intense questioning. A defiant Ms Berejiklian said she would not resign.

Both predecessors who found themselves on the ICAC witness stand were ultimately cleared of any corrupt conduct but by then their political careers were over.

Greiner set up ICAC in 1998, sniffing political dirt from Labor’s long reign under Neville Wran, only to become its first victim four years later.

Greiner was accused of misusing his position as Liberal Party leader to secure independent MP Terry Metherell’s resignation from state parliament to achieve political advantage.

In 2014, Mr O’Farrell was ­accused of accepting that expensive bottle of red from Nick Di Girolamo, then chief executive of Australian Water Holdings. It was alleged AWH lobbied Mr O’Farrell to facilitate the rolling out of water infrastructure with the company. The premier fell on his sword even though counsel assisting reiterated there was no suggestion he’d acted corruptly and ICAC later found “there was no intention on Mr O’Farrell’s part to mislead”.

Both premiers left the witness box mortally wounded. In each case, their failure to remember key events played against them. As a witness, Greiner couldn’t recall 20 key events under investigation. Mr O’Farrell denied receiving the Grange, only to be confronted with a “thank you” note he’d written to Mr Di Girolamo.