Gladys Berejiklian’s ‘serious corrupt conduct’

Samantha Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. It’s a ruling that will further damage voters’ trust in politics and politicians. The former, once highly popular New South Wales Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, denied it to the end. The state’s corruption watchdog has found she engaged in serious, corrupt conduct. Although she won’t face charges today. Investigative reporter Amy Greenbank on the phone taps that brought the former leader down.

Gladys Berejiklian: Well, I’ve already got you. I’ve already got you the Wagga Hospital.

Daryl Maguire: Well, they should have done it.

Gladys Berejiklian: I know. I did talk to Dom. I just spoke to Dom and I said, just put the 140 in the budget. He goes, no worries. He just does what I ask him to. It’s all fine.

Daryl Maguire: It’s meant to be 170.

Gladys Berejiklian: Whatever it is, 170. I said, I think it’s around 140. I said, Just put it in. He’s putting it in whatever it is. Okay.

Daryl Maguire: And the good news is we’ve done our deal. So hopefully that’s about half of all that gone now.

Gladys Berejiklian: That’s good. I don’t need to know about that bit.

Daryl Maguire: No, you don’t.

Gladys Berejiklian: I don’t want to argue with you. I just need to go and chill because you’ve stressed.

Daryl Maguire: Alright I’ll go and chill. You just throw money at Wagga.

Gladys Berejiklian: I’ll throw money at Wagga. Don’t you worry about that. Lot’s of it.

Daryl Maguire: Just listen to me.

Samantha Hawley: Amy, we’re hearing there some of the recorded telephone conversations of the former New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian and the former Liberal MP for Wagga Wagga, Daryl Maguire. These are the tapes that were key in the ICAC investigation, weren’t they?

Amy Greenbank: They certainly were, Sam. And look, these really lifted the lid on Gladys Berejiklian’s secret life, this life that she had away from the cameras.

Gladys Berejiklian: Thank goodness for that. Thank God that means we can actually go places together. Does that what it means.

Daryl Maguire: I won’t have any money, but we’ll be more… I won’t have any money unless I can pull these deals off.

Amy Greenbank: And ICAC ultimately found it amounted to a conflict of interest that breached the public trust.

Samantha Hawley: So, Amy, these are among the recordings that have ultimately been the undoing of Gladys Berejiklian and we’ll unpack the ICAC findings in a moment in more detail. But I want to just step back for the moment because it’s a pretty complicated story and it’s a story that unfolded over many years.

Amy Greenbank: And it really began right back in 2018 when Daryl Maguire’s name just pops up in an ICAC inquiry that was into the former Canterbury City councillors and public officials. Now this inquiry heard evidence that Maguire had tried to broker these property deals for multiple clients across Sydney.

Daryl Maguire: My client is mega big, okay, if he’s interested. My client is mega big and got mega money.

Amy Greenbank: Now, when this evidence came out, Maguire apologises and quits the Liberal Party.

Newsreader: It was a defeated Daryl Maguire, who left the commission at the end of damning evidence presented at the ICAC.

Daryl Maguire: And I’ve caused embarrassment and disappointment to a lot of people.

Amy Greenbank: Two years later, ICAC then reveals it’s been investigating him. Now this investigation is known as Operation Keppel. The public hearings for this operation began in September 2020, and that’s when it immediately becomes clear that his phone has been tapped. And these were the phone taps that would capture and reveal his relationship with Gladys Berejiklian. The ICAC investigators began hearing calls between Mr Maguire and Ms Berejiklian, who at the time had been in this secret relationship. It had begun in 2015 and it ended up lasting for more than five years.

Gladys Berejiklian: Did you hear my last thing of what I said?

Daryl Maguire: No.

Gladys Berejiklian: You need to stay healthy so that we enjoy all our time, our trips and everything.

Daryl Maguire: I’m healthy. Very healthy.

Amy Greenbank: So, as you can imagine, the investigators amassed hundreds, potentially thousands of phone calls between the pair, along with text messages as well.

Samantha Hawley: Let’s have a bit more of a look, Amy, at these telephone conversations that Gladys Berejiklian was having with Mr Maguire.

Daryl Maguire: Apart from that, things are good. I introduced my little friend to them. You know my little friend?

Gladys Berejiklian: Not really. I do. I don’t need to know. Who’s your little friend you’re talking about?

Daryl Maguire: With the polished head.

Samantha Hawley: These are the recordings ICAC relied on to show that the former premier had engaged in corrupt behaviour.

Amy Greenbank: And that’s right. There are a lot of recordings here and it’s good to remember when listening to these that Ms Berejiklian’s argument was that she was not in a serious relationship with Mr Maguire, certainly not serious enough that she thought she would need to disclose it.

Gladys Berejiklian: We’ll talk about it tonight. Why? What have you got planned?

Daryl Maguire: I don’t have anything planned, but I thought I might like to go and meet your parents now that I’ve got all this out of the way.

Gladys Berejiklian: Oh, okay. That’s nice.

Daryl Maguire: So, I thought.

Samantha Hawley: Yeah, right. But they’re pretty damning, aren’t they?

Amy Greenbank: They’re very revealing. Look, in one recording, Gladys Berejiklian is heard telling her former boyfriend that she would throw money at his former seat of Wagga Wagga. This is after he’d resigned from Parliament in 2018.

Gladys Berejiklian: You don’t see it. You don’t see it. I don’t want to argue with you. I just need to go and chill because you’ve stressed me out.

Daryl Maguire: All right, I’ll go and chill. You just throw money at Wagga.

Gladys Berejiklian: I’ll throw money at Wagga. Don’t you worry about that. Lots of it.

Daryl Maguire: Just listen to me.

Amy Greenbank: She also asked for his advice about what projects would need to be funded to retain his seat. And in one phone call from May 2018, Mr Maguire had complained about his struggle to get funding for several projects, including Wagga Wagga and the Tumut hospitals. And she said to him at the time that she would deal with it, and I fix it, is the quote.

Gladys Berejiklian: Well, I’ve already got you, I’ve already got you the Wagga Hospital,

Daryl Maguire: But they should have done it.

Gladys Berejiklian: I know.

Daryl Maguire: Why didn’t they? Why?

Gladys Berejiklian: I just spoke to Dom and I said, just put the 140 in the budget. He goes, No worries. He just does what I ask him to. It’s all fine.

Daryl Maguire: Well, I said to Brad now, well I’ve been to them. They asked me for the list. He said, What’s your list?

Gladys Berejiklian: Please don’t get yourself worked up again because all you do is shout at me sometimes Hokis you’ve already told me. I got it. Okay.

Daryl Maguire: I can’t believe they left Wagga Hospital off it. What is wrong with them?

Gladys Berejiklian: I’ve just fixed that one. I can’t fix everything else, but I’ve got that one on for you. 170 mil.

Amy Greenbank: Now, in another phone call in 2017, Ms Berejiklian and Mr Maguire can be heard discussing another proposal. This is for the State Government to provide funding to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music. The former member for Wagga Wagga had been directly advocating for funding for this project to his partner at the time, Ms Berejiklian.

Daryl Maguire: Well, I had ah what’s his name come and see me today. They rang me

Gladys Berejiklian: I can’t stand that guy Yeah, his head’ll be gone soon. Mmm.

Daryl Maguire: Not until he fixes my conservatorium. He’s the only one that’s come to do it.

Gladys Berejiklian: Yeah. Okay. All right. Good. Tell him to fix it. And then after he fixes it, I’m sacking him.

Amy Greenbank: And she can be heard expressing interest in a possible grant of $5.5 million to the Australian Clay Target Association, which is another shooting complex in Wagga.

Samantha Hawley: Okay. So Amy, let’s move now to these ICAC findings. And just so it’s clear, the reason she was being investigated in the first place is because as a NSW minister, she has a duty to report corruption or any suspected corruption to ICAC, to the corruption watchdog, doesn’t she?

Amy Greenbank: That’s right. And another key issue in the inquiry was whether she breached the ministerial code of conduct by failing to disclose her relationship with Daryl Maguire, which may have influenced decisions by the State Government to sign off on millions of dollars in grants or promises for his electorate.

Samantha Hawley: And the Commission has really brought into question Gladys Berejiklian’s assertion that she wasn’t in a close relationship with Mr. Maguire.

Amy Greenbank: Yeah, what we’ve found from this report today, the ICAC has rejected her suggestion in the witness box that it was not of sufficient substance to disclose.

Gladys Berejiklian: I’m a very private person and I didn’t feel the relationship had sufficient substance for it to be made public.

Amy Greenbank: It found there were clear mutual feelings of love during the relationship. That’s the terminology it used. The pair also discussed marriage, children and holidays together. The findings also point to a lot of text messages between the pair. In one text, Gladys describes him as family.

Samantha Hawley: So the commission certainly does think this pair was in a serious relationship that should have been disclosed. And it’s also found that the former premier engaged in serious, corrupt conduct in a number of ways. What are they?

Amy Greenbank: It did find that look specifically she was overseeing as treasurer the awarding of a grant in 2016 and 2017 to the Australian Clay Target Association in Wagga Wagga, but she hadn’t disclosed her personal relationship with Mr Maguire and it found this did create a conflict of interest between her public duty and her private interest. She was also found to have been influenced by her relationship with Mr Maguire or, quote, by a desire to maintain or advance that relationship when she promised funding for a recital hall at the Riverina Conservatorium of Music, which was also another project in Wagga Wagga in 2018.

Samantha Hawley: Gladys Berejiklian. She’s issued a written statement saying her legal team is examining ICAC’s report. So, Amy, what happens to her now? We know no charges are going to be laid, but what’s next for Gladys Berejiklian?

Amy Greenbank: She could potentially appeal this adverse finding to the Court of Appeal. She definitely won’t be going to jail, but it is a, reputationally, it is a huge blow for her. Remember, she was greatly respected and liked by much of the electorate when she was in office and she led NSW through most of the covid pandemic and was credited at one point as the woman who saved Australia. That was in one newspaper back in 2020, even some people laying flowers outside her office when she resigned. And some voters at that point thought that she was being wrongly persecuted for making a bad dating decision in her personal life rather than for engaging in corrupt conduct.

Samantha Hawley: There might be some people who still feel that way, but there’ll also be others, of course, that will be really disappointed that someone who they trusted someone in a political position with political power has been found by ICAC to have been involved in serious corruption. It goes to trust in politics, doesn’t it?

Amy Greenbank: It certainly does. And look, this was one of the reasons the ICAC made these 18 recommendations for changes to the code of conduct, which is something that governs MPs saying that it wanted to address this fact that it could lead to an erosion of public trust. It’s called for more professional development and I guess clearer guidelines around what does constitute a conflict of interest. But it certainly may not dispel the notion that some politicians are in it for themselves. Some may be looking after their own interests rather than what the voters want, which could lead to more disappointment out there in the community.

Samantha Hawley: Amy Greenbank is an investigative reporter based in Sydney. ICAC has now referred Daryl Maguire to the Director of Public Prosecutions for possible criminal charges. He’s already been charged with giving false and misleading evidence to ICAC during its investigation. This episode was produced by Veronica Apap, David Coady, Flint Duxfield and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is Stephen Smiley. Over the weekend, catch This Week with Sarah Dingle, where she’ll be looking at the mania surrounding Taylor Swift. I’m Sam Hawley. ABC News Daily will be back again on Monday. Thanks for listening.