Oh dear. Be still my beating heart. With yesterday’s “Yes I loved him, but I’ll never speak to him again” front-page story, the Gladys Berejiklian affair has officially jumped the bedpost and gone from political soap opera to full Mills and Boon.
The NSW Premier gave her first interview since the scandal erupted a week ago, but The Sunday Telegraph exclusive was with the paper’s gossip writer Annette Sharp. That says it all really. It’s a cynical and desperate piece of spin.
Sharp writes that the “romantically inexperienced politician” is “shattered”; she’s “shedding bitter tears in private” and “paying a painful price” for “ loving and trusting” disgraced MP Daryl Maguire, the man she had to sack “brutally” over corruption allegations in 2018.
The cringeworthy story was complete with a photo of the doe-eyed premier in jeans but still with her signature jacket. “I’ve given up on love,” she declared.
So what exactly did we learn from all the dross? She loved him. She thought they could be married even though she also said the relationship wasn’t of “sufficient status” to tell even her closest family before her sensational appearance at the Independent Commission Against Corruption hearing last Monday.
It’s not clear if she was so obsessively private that she did not trust them with her secret, or whether she was just embarrassed that Dazza might not exactly be the Prince Charming they expected for their Glad.
Again she skirted around the grubby details of exactly what transpired in private between them, stating only “it wasn’t a traditional type of relationship”.
But her attempts to avoid the word “intimate” were undermined by the paragraph where Sharp wrote that “according to her, [it] became something more around 2015 when the pair became intimate”.
It’s clear the piece, presumably brokered by Berejiklian’s media director, former Seven reporter Sean Berry, aimed to exploit female sympathy and the “poor Gladys” narrative to divert attention away from the broader issue of corruption.
Conveniently, The Sunday Tele story was accompanied by a YouGov poll claiming that women believe she has done nothing wrong.
What next? An #IStandWithGlad” campaign by the Murdoch press which has traditionally been unsympathetic to Berejiklian as a woman, a moderate and a mate of Malcolm Turnbull?
Scott Morrison was hardly a huge fan either, and her superior PR during the summer bushfire crisis only exacerbated tensions and claims of undermining between the two offices. (Some Canberra staffers were even rumoured to have nicknamed her “Anne Frank” for her resemblance to the famous photo of the teen Nazi victim).
When a second disaster hit, the PM learned to publicly laud her popular efforts, even though he was a tad tardy to #StandWithGlad this week. He must have seen those polls, because within a day he came to the defence of our damsel in distress.
To be fair, not all the fairytales yesterday were being spun on the Lib side.
On the same day, the rival Nine Sunday paper The Sun-Herald featured an opinion piece by former Labor premier and now Senator Kristina Keneally using feminism in her call for Berejiklian to resign.
“I have walked this path,” declared Keneally.
Indeed she has — all the way to the ICAC witness box. Even though ICAC accepted Keneally’s evidence that her actions stopped attempted corruption by Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi, she is still dogged by her close political ties to the two power brokers.
The current premier continued the pitiful “poor Gladys” performance on radio this morning: “I wasn’t experienced in dating”, “privately there were tears”, “he wasn’t even my boyfriend”.
It might have worked for now, with #poorGladys trending on Twitter this morning. But for how long?
This article was updated on October 20, 2020.
Why does the phrase “I did not have sexual relations with that man” keep echoing through my brain? Where have I heard something similar before? Come on, Gladys is a smart, clever, capable, veteran political operator, she didn’t get to become premier and leader of a blokey Conservative party by lacking smarts, intuition, tenacity and ego. So, to now turn around and try and spin her as the victim in a Mills and Boon tale is to treat the public as fools.
I wonder if the ABC will make a “hilarious” sitcom like they did for another female leader I can recall… how about In Bed With Gladys?
Keeping Up With The Berejiklians
The Premier’s allegedly poor decisions about her former boy friend do raise concerns about some of her other interesting decisions.
– Destruction of existing stadiums
– PowerHouse Museum destruction / retention/ destruction
– Bulldozing of heritage buildings
– Purchase of ferries,heavy and light rail rolling stock from overseas and not from local manufacturers
– Destruction without replacement of WWI War Memorial swimming pool
– Gross budget overruns of light rail projects
– Inaction over the Icare shambles
– Reduction of funding for ICAC
– Concerns from Auditor General
– Secret reversal of koala habitat regulations
– Forced over development of suburban areas
– Sale of a coal fired power station valued at several hundreds of millions of dollars at essentially nil purchaser price
– Small pay increases for essential service workers in health, education and bush fire protection versus very much larger increases for politicians and senior public servants
– Favouritism in local government grants
– Her apparent refusal to consider community opinion
When former NSW premier Neville Wran was (falsely) accused of corruption he did the right thing and stood aside while the case was heard. This premier should do the same. The difference, of course, is that Wran knew that there were no plausible contenders and he’d be welcomed back, whereas Gladys knows there are are least two wide-boys keen to step into the role and doubtless keen to keep it not hand it back.
Have to say this ICAC business has generated some great lines – “unfortunate tractor accident” , “sufficient status”, “off-again, on-again” and now ‘not a traditional type’. Only heightens more prurient speculation as to it’s meaning. Even though she is being portrayed as my maiden Aunt , she is actually Premier and therefore a creature of the politics required. Will Daryl be a complete cad and do a Barnaby cash-for-comments to monetise the ‘interest’ ? .