Good afternoon and thank you for reading our live coverage of day 10 of the ICAC’s public inquiry into former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and former state Liberal MP Daryl Maguire.
The ICAC is examining the circumstances in which the state government granted or promised millions of dollars to two organisations in Mr Maguire’s electorate while he was in a secret relationship with Ms Berejiklian, which started in 2015 when she was NSW treasurer and continued when she became premier in January 2017.
The corruption watchdog is also considering whether she failed to report suspected corruption involving Mr Maguire, or failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest arising from that relationship.
The inquiry has heard the Berejiklian-Maguire relationship continued even after she asked Mr Maguire to quit politics in July 2018 following his evidence at an earlier corruption inquiry into the former Canterbury Council.
He was not a central focus of that earlier investigation and no corruption finding was made against him, but the ICAC subsequently recommended the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions consider charging him with giving false and misleading evidence at the hearing.
Ms Berejiklian, who denies wrongdoing, started giving evidence today. Here’s what she had to say:
On the potential conflict of interest
- Ms Berejiklian said that if she had her time again she still would not have disclosed her secret relationship with Mr Maguire to her colleagues in government.
- Under the NSW ministerial code of conduct, a minister “must not knowingly conceal a conflict of interest from the Premier”. The code says “a conflict of interest arises in relation to a Minister if there is a conflict between the public duty and the private interest of the Minister, in which the Minister’s private interest could objectively have the potential to influence the performance of their public duty.” The private interest does not need to be financial and can be a personal relationship.
- Ms Berejiklian said she had “never regarded [Mr Maguire] as family in terms of the ministerial code” but he was part of her “love circle”. The pair had discussed marriage and having a child and Mr Maguire had a key to her house, although she changed the locks last year.
The former premier was shown an April 2018 text message in which she told Mr Maguire: “You are my family.” She told the ICAC she had “very strong feelings for him” but would not have regarded him as a relative, and she was “never assured of a level of commitment” to make the relationship public or introduce him to her family. Asked whether the text message indicated that she regarded Mr Maguire as part of her family at that time, Ms Berejiklian said: “In terms of my feelings, but definitely not in any legal sense”. “We’ll let the lawyers argue about the law,” counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, said.
- Ms Berejiklian was asked why she disclosed other potential conflicts of interest, including that two of her cousins worked in the public service, but did not disclose her relationship with Mr Maguire. Ms Berejiklian said that she did not believe there was a kind of “private personal benefit” that she might obtain as a result of decisions involving Mr Maguire. Asked what personal benefit she believed she might get from decisions indirectly involving her cousins, Ms Berejiklian said: “I would have been concerned that that may be treated in a particular way, or it might be assumed that they’re getting favour because they’re related to me.”
On Daryl Maguire’s access to her
- Ms Berejiklian insisted that all MPs had the same level of access to her to make representations about projects to benefit their communities, and she did not treat Mr Maguire any differently.
- In a tapped phone call on May 16, 2018, Mr Maguire complained to her about the lack of funding for hospitals in his electorate. Ms Berejiklian responded that she would “deal with it” and “fix it”. Within hours, she called back and said: “I’ve already got you the Wagga hospital. I just spoke to [then treasurer, and now premier] Dom [Perrottet] ... He just does what I ask him to.” Mr Perrottet is not accused of wrongdoing.
- Ms Berejiklian said in the same call that she had secured $170 million for Mr Maguire for Wagga Wagga Base Hospital “in five minutes” but he would need to speak to Health Minister Brad Hazzard about Tumut Hospital because she wouldn’t fix everything for him.
- Asked why she did not disclose her relationship with Mr Maguire, Ms Berejiklian said: “Building a hospital is not a personal benefit to me. It is a community asset.”
On whether she suspected Maguire of corruption
- The ICAC is also investigating whether Ms Berejiklian failed to report suspected corruption involving Mr Maguire. She was played a tapped phone call in September 2017 in which Mr Maguire told her that he was in debt to the tune of $1.5 million but a Badgerys Creek land deal would result in him being “debt free”. Asked if she suspected him at this time of corruption, she replied: “I did not. He was always talking big and I didn’t pay much attention to that. I never thought he was doing anything untoward.”
On proposals in Maguire’s electorate
- Ms Berejiklian was also asked about her support as NSW treasurer in December 2016 for a multimillion-dollar plan for the state government to fund the upgrade of a gun club in Mr Maguire’s electorate, the Australian Clay Target Association. NSW Treasury had indicated that the proposal did not deliver a net benefit to the state. Ms Berejiklian said regional issues were at play because the Coalition had recently lost a seat to the Shooters and Fishers Party.
- In another tapped phone call from 2017, Mr Maguire discusses with Ms Berejiklian a proposal for the state government to give millions of dollars to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in his electorate. Ms Berejiklian said of a NSW bureaucrat in the call: “I can’t stand that guy. His head will be gone soon.” Mr Maguire told her that she should not do so until the bureaucrat fixed the conservatorium proposal. “Tell him to fix it, and then after he fixes it, I’m sacking him,” Ms Berejiklian said. Asked about whether she delayed sacking a person so that they could finish work on Mr Maguire’s proposal, Ms Berejiklian told the ICAC: “That person is still in the public service today.”
On Maguire’s first appearance at the ICAC
- In a tapped phone call in July 2018, Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian that he has been summonsed to give evidence at an earlier corruption inquiry into the former Canterbury Council, Operation Dasha. He said he had been “subpoenaed to go to ICAC, summonsed to ICAC, so that’s exciting”. He told her he had introduced an “idiot” former councillor to a Chinese property development company, Country Garden, but he had “never accepted a dollar; never done a deal”. Ms Berejiklian told him: “Two rules: be honest and listen to your lawyer.”
- As it transpired, phone taps played at the 2018 Operation Dasha inquiry featured Mr Maguire speaking in 2016 to that former councillor about potential commissions they could earn from property deals with Country Garden. He said in the call: “My client is mega big and has got mega money and wants two or three DA approved projects right now. Today.” Ultimately, Mr Maguire did not receive any commission. Ms Berejiklian asked Mr Maguire to quit politics after his evidence in that inquiry, but she remained in a secret relationship with him.
- In the same 2018 phone call with Ms Berejiklian, Mr Maguire likened the ICAC to the “Spanish Inquisition” and suggested “they could be taping your conversation with me right now. You wouldn’t know.” Mr Maguire said in the call that “what they’re doing is marginalising the art of politics”, in an apparent reference to the ICAC and bureaucracy, and “our job is mixing with people”. Now, “you can’t meet with a developer”, he said.
- He told Ms Berejiklian it was “ironic” that he was called to give evidence at the 2018 inquiry because “I spend my life trying to keep people out of trouble”. “I must’ve killed a bloody black cat ... and um, walked under a couple of ladders”.
- Ms Berejiklian raised concerns in the call about why Mr Maguire knew Country Garden, and whether it was even connected to anything in his electorate. She also said that she regarded the same councillor as “dodgy” and she didn’t mix with them. Mr Maguire said he had “never asked anybody for a dollar in my life”. (He subsequently admitted at the ICAC last year that he had sought to monetise his public office for private gain).
- Counsel assisting the ICAC, Scott Robertson, asked Ms Berejiklian if the phone call gave her pause for thought that Mr Maguire was engaged in “wrongdoing in relation to property deals”, which would have triggered an obligation to report her suspicions to the ICAC. She replied: “I trusted him. He told me he’d done nothing wrong.”
This is Michaela Whitbourn signing off on the blog for today. I will be back before 9am on Monday when Gladys Berejiklian will continue giving evidence at the ICAC.