It’s sad that a politician as competent and hard-working as Gladys Berejiklian now finds herself forever tarnished by her association with spiv — and allegedly worse — Daryl Maguire. Berejiklian herself did nothing wrong and wouldn’t have gained anything by Maguire’s ever-more convoluted efforts to pay off his debts and land a big score. “Pie in the sky,” she called them.
But Berejiklian’s sin is not what she did, but what she tolerated and, to an extent, enabled: the toxic “Games of Mates” politics of NSW.
Games of Mates is the on-the-money term devised by Cameron Murray and Paul Frijters to describe how shonks and spivs — in the guise of property developers, miners, bankers and other business people — exploit political and bureaucratic connections to tilt the regulatory field in their favour.
NSW is infested with it. Always has been, under both sides, going back decades — and for that matter two centuries. At any one time, it seems guaranteed that some MPs in Macquarie St will be working assiduously not in the interests of their constituents, or to achieve good policy outcomes in their portfolio, but to secure a great deal for their family or a mate, usually by rezoning or planning decisions.
Berejiklian knew that Daryl Maguire was engaged in the same shabby game, desperate for a finders’ fee or tip from a grateful developer or property owner. She preferred not to know the details. “I don’t need to know about that bit,” she told him when he began telling her the details of yet another scheme.
Maguire traded on his connection with the premier. He handed her email address out to a property developer looking for a rezoning, suggesting she could “give a tickle from the top.”
There’s no suggestion Berejiklian did. And it would have been absurd to think she would have.
But Maguire’s use of his relationship with Berejiklian wasn’t confined to sharing her contact details with others. He took Louise Raedler Waterhouse, owner of a large property near Badgerys Creek, to Berejiklian’s office foyer for a meeting with an official about planning issues that would enhance the value of her property.
Maguire hosted another developer and Liberal fundraiser for several hours of drinks that led to visits to or from the offices of then-planning minister Anthony Roberts and Berejiklian.
Classic Game of Mates stuff. And if Berejiklian didn’t know about her office being misused and her contact details being bandied around — at one stage Maguire told Berejiklian to expect a call from a developer, prompting her to say she didn’t need to know about it — then it suggests a wilful blindness by the premier.
The office of the premier of NSW, the highest elected office in the NSW, should be a place of probity and integrity. Instead it appears to have been used as a market place for regulatory favours. If Maguire never managed a sale, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
It’s because premiers and senior ministers do nothing that the chancers, the grifters, the spivs and the outright criminals have long festered in Macquarie St, all looking to bend the rules to help themselves or their mates. The wretched NSW Labor party was rife with it during their far-too-long years in power.
Berejiklian’s judgement around Maguire appears to have been completely absent. Maguire was forced to resign from parliament in 2018 after he confessed to ICAC he’d tried to broker a deal to help a Chinese property developer — another “pie in the sky” deal that turned, like seemingly everything Maguire touched, to shit.
But even then, Berejiklian maintained their relationship, all the way through into this year. Even after her party lost his seat in the by-election resulting from his departure. Why she didn’t sever ties with this man in 2018 is inexplicable.
Yes, Berejiklian made a mistake in her personal life. We’ve all been there, and even the best of us have made far worse decisions than her. Yesterday must have been profoundly humiliating and painful for such a private woman. You can’t help but feel for her and misery her romantic choice has occasioned for her.
But it was a personal mistake that reinforced the fact that NSW is a toxic swamp of self-interest, sordid deals and grift.
All of us have definitely not been there Bernard, only a few of us….
Most of us have a sense of right and wrong, what we should accept or ignore, or refute.
Gladys knew well what Maguire was up to, but believed she would get away with turning a blind eye….poor morals and bad judgment, taking risks people in high office should no longer take and believe they are unassailable.
There is a growing series of contrasts where Labor people do the right thing voluntarily over quite minor transgressions, while LNP offenders tough it out and get away with it.
Its amazing how much some people know today about what Gladys knew then when until yesterday they knew zilch.
It is the same question that arises in these all too common occurrences –
“what didn’t X know and when did they not know it?”
They don’t owe her the benefit of doubt.
2014 NSW Ministerial Code of Conduct-extract:
Requirement for disclosure of conflicts of interests-Definitions-Family member, in relation to a Minister, means:–
(e) any other person with whom the Minister is in an intimate personal relationship. Potential to influence a Minister-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.Corrupt conduct-A substantial breach of the NSW Ministerial Code of Conduct (including a knowing breach of any provision of the Schedule) may constitute corrupt conduct for the purposes of the Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 1988
Open and shut, Lulu1.
Well called Lulu.
Exactly.
As the article says, the personal relationship part of this, on its own, is nobody else’s business. But it’s not on its own, because Berejiklian knew plenty about Maguire’s smelly deals. “The Standard You Walk Past Is The Standard You Accept.” Berejiklian has no excuses. It is worse than bad judgement. She is complicit in Maguire’s activities, even if it is only in a passive sense. That she did not seek personal gain is irrelevant.
She also lied about what she knew under oath.
It also occurred to me, it’s not just the fact that there is financial chicanery on the part of Mr Maguire, it’s the fact that he uses Gladys’ position/contacts etc. to grease the skids around the traps for his benefit. It’s not as though she’s the secretary of the Lightning Ridge CWA!
And I wish people would stop seeing her as a victim. That really is patronising. She has breached the Ministerial Code of Conduct. Period.
The clincher is her twice (that we know) uttered response “I don’t need to know”. I do feel for her in that she’s a hard worker but she did wrong professionally and not just personally by doing the Sergeant Schultz… I think there’s also a grants rort that Gladys is involved with so not entirely an innocent…
Exactly – her deliberate avoidance of details strongly implies she knew Maguire’s schemes were rotten, but she was ok with that so long as she could preserve some plausible deniability. Putting the most generous gloss on this behaviour, perhaps NSW politics is so corrupt that’s the best any politician can do? If she had got on some moral high horse and condemned Maguire back then, it’s quite possible the rest of her party and its paymasters would have felt so threatened they’d have quickly done her in.
Julia Gillard spent nearly all her years in politics being hounded, accused and mis-quoted about everything. She patently did ‘nothing wrong’, but that didn’t stop the L/NP from repeatedly trying to destroy her.
And you want us to just pass over what is, at the very least, decidedly questionable behaviour from Gladys, your ‘hero’, Bernard?
Get a life…that is NOT how this should end!!
This is such a insiders composition, how can you write this and say you are holding the powerful to account??
Berejiklian is an extremely intelligent woman who chose a personal relationship over the good government of NSW.
Just the fact that Berejiklian allowed someone like Maguire to shop around her name after what Berejiklian knew of his character show either a lack of integrity or intelligence.
More over there was an inherent responsibility for Berejiklian to advise ICAC that Maguire was still continuing to act in the maner he was dismissed and to advise her colleges to be wary
Well called Mark. Few want to discuss the principles of probity and integrity due to ideological prejudice or fear of being labelled mysoginist.