Berejiklian inquiry day one as it happened: Michael Toohey tells ICAC former NSW premier’s relationship with Daryl Maguire a ‘conflict of interest’

• Mr Toohey said there was an “idea being thrown around” that the Australian Clay Target Association’s facilities were going to be relevant to getting the Invictus Games in Sydney. “[The] Invictus Games doesn’t have shooting events. The claim that this was somehow related to the bid was imaginative,” Mr Toohey said.
• The NSW government has described the role of the expenditure review committee (ERC) as being to assist cabinet and the treasurer in “framing the fiscal strategy and the budget for cabinet’s consideration”. As at 2016 and 2017, the relevant period, the NSW Treasurer was Gladys Berejiklian.
• An email shown at ICAC suggested Ms Berejiklian had requested the Australian Clay Target Association funding submission be put on the ERC agenda for December 14, 2016.
• Mr Toohey said $5.5 million in funding for the project was approved by the ERC in late 2016 but it was conditional on a business case being prepared and approved first, among other things. Mr Toohey said that in spite of those conditions Mr Maguire announced the funding in January 2017 and did not make clear the money was not guaranteed. Mr Toohey said he felt the announcement was trying to “wedge” bureaucrats and ensure the funding was guaranteed ahead of other steps being completed.“It makes it very difficult for the business case process ... I thought it was a premature statement. It makes it very difficult for people to say no,” he said.
• Counsel assisting ICAC, Scott Robertson, said in his opening address this morning that the corruption watchdog is investigating whether Ms Berejiklian exhibited the “high standards of probity” that she set for herself and her ministers when she failed to disclose her secret relationship with Mr Maguire and any conflict of interest it might have presented.

• The inquiry heard Ms Berejiklian had disclosed other potential conflicts of interest in the past, including the fact that two of her cousins work in the NSW public service and she had attended functions with a person the government was considering appointing to a board. But “as far as the material presently available to this commission reveals, Ms Berejiklian never gave a disclosure under the NSW ministerial code of conduct in relation to Mr Maguire”, Mr Robertson said this morning.
• Mr Robertson says there are cases in which a person’s “ordinary entitlement to privacy must be subordinated to their public duty. Put another way, public duties come first”. “While a person holds office of public trust, for example, like the office of premier or that of treasurer, it may be necessary for that person to disclose that she or he is in a personal relationship with a particular person if the existence of that relationship is something that could objectively have the potential to influence the performance of the officeholder’s public duties,” he said.
• Mr Robertson says the watchdog is also investigating whether it should accept evidence previously given by Ms Berejiklian that she did not suspect Mr Maguire of corruption even when he first appeared at ICAC in July 2018. “I was in shock. I didn’t know what to think.... I hadn’t read what was happening. I can’t remember what I thought at that time,” she said. The reason this is relevant to ICAC’s inquiry is that Ms Berejiklian had a legal duty to report any reasonable suspicions about Mr Maguire to ICAC.
• It is important to note that the inquiry is ongoing and no findings have been made. Ms Berejiklian, who is represented by a number of barristers including high-profile silks Bret Walker, SC, and Sophie Callan, SC, has denied wrongdoing and says history will show she acted in the best interests of the people of NSW.

This is Michaela Whitbourn signing off on the blog for today. I will be back at 10am tomorrow when Paul Doorn, who was also a bureaucrat in the Office of Sport, is expected to give evidence.

Emails shown at ICAC suggest the then NSW treasurer (and later premier), Gladys Berejiklian, also supported the funding submission being brought before the ERC in late 2016.

ICAC is investigating the conduct of both Ms Berejiklian and Mr Maguire in relation to the grant. The pair were in a secret relationship from about 2015 to 2018, the inquiry has heard.

Ms Berejiklian has denied wrongdoing.

Mr Toohey said he did not become aware of the relationship until it was revealed at the ICAC in hearings in October last year.

“Would you have done anything differently, would it have affected what you did [if you knew about the relationship]?” Mr Robertson asked.

“Absolutely. I would have expressed my concerns ... to say I thought this was problematic. ”

He said he would have asked why the Office of Sport was being asked to draft a funding submission for an allocation of funds to a project in a local member’s electorate based on “scant information” when the person was in a personal relationship with the then NSW treasurer.

“I can’t see how that’s anything but a conflict of interest,” Mr Toohey said.

She has denied all wrongdoing and insisted she acted in the best interests of the people of NSW at all times.

The NSW government has described the role of the ERC as being to assist cabinet and the treasurer in “framing the fiscal strategy and the budget for cabinet’s consideration”. As at 2016 and 2017, the relevant period, the NSW Treasurer was Ms Berejiklian.

A document shown at ICAC recorded the ERC approved the expenditure of $5.5 million.

But Mr Toohey gave evidence the approval also said the grant should be sourced from the state government’s Regional Growth - Environment and Tourism Fund and made as a grant to the Office of Sport, which was then paid to the Wagga Wagga association.

This detail wasn’t part of his original submission.

At this point, the project was no longer overseen by the Office of Sport but by another government agency, Infrastructure NSW. The grant was conditional and not guaranteed, Mr Toohey said, and required a satisfactory business case to be completed.

He sent an email on December 3, 2016, attaching the version of the submission that had been approved by the then NSW Treasurer, Gladys Berejiklian, to go before the government’s expenditure review committee in December 2016.

The grant to the association is one of two “case studies” being investigated by ICAC. You can read more about those case studies here.

ICAC has heard the grant to the Australian Clay Target Association was championed by the then Liberal MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire, with whom Ms Berejiklian was in a secret relationship between about 2015 and 2018.

As we have noted many times today, Ms Berejiklian has denied wrongdoing in relation to this and all matters being examined by ICAC.

He says just now that the figure sought by the association was reduced over time from $6.7 million to $5.5 million.

ICAC is investigating the conduct of former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and the former NSW Liberal MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire, in relation to $35 million in state government grants issued to the Australian Clay Target Association and the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in Mr Maguire’s electorate when Ms Berejiklian was NSW Treasurer in 2016/2017 and 2018.

The inquiry has previously heard the pair were in a secret relationship during this time, between about 2015 and 2018.

Ms Berejiklian has denied all wrongdoing and insisted that she always acted in the best interests of the people of NSW.

• Mr Robertson says there are cases in which a person’s “ordinary entitlement to privacy must be subordinated to their public duty. Put another way, public duties come first”. “While a person holds office of public trust, for example, like the office of premier or that of treasurer, it may be necessary for that person to disclose that she or he is in a personal relationship with a particular person if the existence of that relationship is something that could objectively have the potential to influence the performance of the officeholder’s public duties,” he said.
• Mr Robertson says the watchdog is also investigating whether it should accept evidence previously given by Ms Berejiklian that she did not suspect Mr Maguire of corruption even when he first appeared at ICAC in July 2018. “I was in shock. I didn’t know what to think.... I hadn’t read what was happening. I can’t remember what I thought at that time,” she said. The reason this is relevant to ICAC’s inquiry is that Ms Berejiklian had a legal duty to report any reasonable suspicions about Mr Maguire to ICAC.

• NSW bureaucrat Michael Toohey is giving evidence at the inquiry today. He is a director of the Office of Sport, which is an agency related to the Department of Communities and Justice. He says he was asked in 2016 to prepare an urgent submission to the government’s expenditure review committee for a multimillion-dollar grant for the Australian Clay Target Association. He says the urgency (a single day to complete the submission) was “extremely unusual” and there was an “inadequate” methodology used when assessing the benefit to cost ratio of the project.
• The NSW government has described the role of the expenditure review committee as being to assist cabinet and the treasurer in “framing the fiscal strategy and the budget for cabinet’s consideration”. As at 2016 and 2017, the relevant period, the NSW Treasurer was Gladys Berejiklian.
• Mr Toohey said there was an “idea being thrown around” that the Australian Clay Target Association’s facilities were going to be relevant to getting the Invictus Games in Sydney. “[The] Invictus Games doesn’t have shooting events. The claim that this was somehow related to the bid was imaginative,” Mr Toohey said.
• It is important to note that the inquiry is ongoing and no findings have been made. Ms Berejiklian, who is represented by a number of barristers including high-profile silks Bret Walker, SC, and Sophie Callan, SC, has denied wrongdoing and says history will show she acted in the best interests of the people of NSW.

You can read more about the inquiry from Lucy Cormack here.