Federal Australian officials successfully persuaded the NSW corruption watchdog to “de-identify” a group of Pacific countries mentioned in last week’s report on Gladys Berejiklian’s and Daryl Maguire’s “corrupt conduct”.
But other evidence from the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) still publicly available on its website reveals the countries include Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Samoa. Those are countries where ICAC alleges the disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP Maguire sought to use his position as a NSW parliamentarian to advance his financial interests.
The Foreign Affairs and Trade Department (DFAT) argued that publishing the countries’ names would have “significant potential to negatively impact Australia’s international relations”, and ICAC agreed to censor them, according to a note attached to last Thursday’s Operation Keppel report.
Crikey can reveal that while DFAT managed to keep the countries’ names out of the report — where they are referred to as country A, country B, and so on — it did not try to persuade ICAC to hide numerous exhibits and hearing transcripts when the nations were discussed by name.
“DFAT did not request that the commission redact anything in the Operation Keppel exhibits or transcripts,” an ICAC spokesperson told Crikey.
On Friday afternoon, after Crikey contacted ICAC and DFAT about the exhibits revealing the country names, lawyers from both agencies were in touch with each other, poring over the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and other international laws to figure out if the censorship should be extended to the other material on ICAC’s website.
The names of the countries were widely reported by the media in 2020 during the public hearings concerning Maguire’s conduct in office. For example, a quote from Maguire rendered in the report as “[country C] is definitely a go” was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald on September 21 2020 as: “Samoa is definitely a go”.
The quote was from a phone call between Maguire and his Wagga Wagga business associate Phillip Elliott, who ran the company G8wayInternational together. Phone taps and other evidence indicated Maguire was hoping to make some money by helping a Chinese business contact establish a resort and casino in Samoa.
The business contact, Ho Yuen Li, was the president of business group Shenzhen Asia Pacific Commercial Development Association (SAPCDA). Maguire was the group’s honorary chairman.
“Mr Maguire agreed that he assisted Mr Li to explore the project of getting a resort and an
accompanying casino licence off the ground by arranging meetings,” the final report said. “He saw such a resort and licence as a possibility of a profit-making venture for G8wayInternational through some management opportunities for Mr Elliott, and possibly profits for himself and Mr Elliott, as well as Mr Li.”
The identities of the countries can also be easily deciphered by comparing the report to the exhibit list on ICAC’s website.
For example, the report quotes a letter by Maguire dated June 16 2016 that says:
I can confirm on my return to Australia I have met with [country A, country B, country C and country D] who have all given in principal [sic] support to joining the association. Commitments have been given by [country D] to extend the invitation to [country E] and [country F] to join. This meeting will be arranged by [country D] in Canberra soon.
A document published by ICAC says the June 2016 letter was tendered as exhibit 0557. The un-redacted exhibit on ICAC’s website reads:
I can confirm on my return to Australia I have met with Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji and Samoa who have all given in principal support to joining the association. Commitments have been given by Fiji to extend the invitation to Vanuatu and Tonga to join. This meeting will be arranged by Fiji in Canberra soon.
(Samoa was designated as country C elsewhere in the report, but it appears the authors mistakenly labelled it country D when discussing the June 2016 letter.)
Several foreign public officials were also given secret identities in the report, including a former vice-consul known as Mr X, a “provincial official” known as Mr Y, and Mr G, a former “consul-general for country G”.
A note attached to the Operation Keppel report sets out to explain “why certain people and countries have been de-identified in the text of the report”.
“In preparing this report, the commission communicated with DFAT concerning the potential for foreign diplomats, consular officials, foreign government officials or foreign nationals to be identified in the report in connection with the activities of Mr Maguire,” the note said.
“DFAT expressed concern that identifying specific officials or specific countries whose officials were approached by Mr Maguire ‘has significant potential to negatively impact Australia’s international relations’ and may be inconsistent with Australia’s obligations under [international law].”
ICAC wrote in the note that it agreed to remove the countries’ names from the report “after carefully considering the advice of DFAT”.
DFAT did not issue a response to repeated requests for comment by Crikey over the past five days. Following the publication of this article, the department sent the following statement:
“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade works to maintain Australia’s obligations under the Vienna Conventions on diplomatic and consular relations. This can include making representations to state and territory investigative authorities.”
Maguire’s dealings with the Pacific nations through his chairmanship of the NSW Parliament’s Asia-Pacific Friendship Group (APFG) were, according to ICAC, “undertaken with a view to his personal pecuniary benefit”.
“It was an abuse of his position as a member of Parliament and chair of the APFG for Mr Maguire to use the weight of his office, and the diplomatic and consular ties it afforded him, and parliamentary resources, to advance private business interests for SAPCDA, with the ultimate hope, if possible, to gain some personal profits for himself,” the report said.
ICAC believed some of Maguire’s contacts with one of the Pacific nations were “highly inappropriate and apt to risk damaging Australia’s consular and/or diplomatic relations with a friendly nation and very important trading partner”.
ICAC also accused Maguire of participating in several other allegedly corrupt schemes during his time as Wagga Wagga MP.
In a statement issued through his lawyer on Monday, Maguire addressed several of ICAC’s allegations related to other projects — including a shooting club and music conservatorium in Wagga.
Daryl Maguire is proud of his many achievements serving the electorate of Wagga and NSW and strongly denies all allegations referring to the projects above.
Lawyer Jim Harrowell
The statement did not address the matters related to the Pacific nations, and lawyer Jim Harrowell said no further comments would be made.
ICAC recommended that the NSW director of public prosecutions (DPP) look into whether Maguire should be prosecuted for his activities related to G8wayInternational, the APFG, and for allegedly misusing his parliamentary position to advance his financial interests. It also recommended the DPP look into whether Elliott should be charged for offences related to giving false evidence and mishandling documents.
Maguire is facing court over other allegations related to his time as an MP.
Berejiklian is not accused of participating in Maguire’s alleged schemes abroad, nor did ICAC recommend the DPP look into charging her. But she was faulted by ICAC for failing to report suspicions of corrupt conduct by the MP, with whom she led a five-year secret relationship. She was also reprimanded for failing to disclose her relationship with Maguire, even though she used her position as treasurer and premier to fund some of his pet projects in Wagga.
ICAC deemed some of her conduct in office amounted to serious corruption. Berejiklian has denied wrongdoing and indicated she may appeal the findings.
Love how “national security” and “international relations” are used randomly.
Dutton a few weeks ago publicly stated that the vehicles we were sending to an active war zone were not up to scratch which both undermined said war effort and said relations with said recipient….
But that’s fine….
However we can’t know of a boat full of refugees has been intercepted (unless there’s an election in which case we’ll get a text message).
Also we need to be very careful with our “international relations” except when we’re sabre rattling with our largest export partner.
And don’t even mention the war crimes committed by our soldiers….
Hypocrite Dutton. Though most thinking punters already knew.
This is as dodgy and damning as anything Eddie Obeid did, probably worse as it was sanctioned at the very top of the LNP power structure rather than merely existing in the shadows. And the media and the LNP have spent a decade dredging Obeid over and over again. It was also merely the tip of the iceberg. Yet Kean and Gladys are still oblivious and claiming they did nothing wrong.
Kean, Berejiklian and plenty more Liberals go further than just saying they did nothing wrong. They also insist that their rorting and grifting is all normal, routine, everyday, run-of-the-mill politics. They insist it is the very essence of politics. It is, in their view, what real politicians go into politics to do.
If instead they claimed they did nothing wrong, and anyway it was a bit of an aberration — and that claim was at all credible — I would not mind so much.
I struggle with “rorting”.
First as a term it is overused generally to attack any kind of government spending which reinforces that government spending is bad.
Second don’t all voters expect their local member to lobby in their interests? Isn’t that just democracy 101? Rorts of this nature are sort of corruption in reverse – politicians bribing voters for their votes.
Third the notion that there is any real “evidenced based approach to spending” is kind of made up and just invites a whole load of expensive auditors to, erm, rort the system. We’re not talking about hard science here. Now sure there might be specific issues with say granting planning for thousands of houses in a flood affected area or area with no infrastructure, and certainly any specific payments to individuals v communities, would be unacceptable, but the notion that a local MP shouldn’t be pushing to get funding for their local sports team?
I have never encountered this alleged generalisation, so can you provide evidence?
That would be acceptable. The rorting and grifting in querstion is the local members and their party using public money in their own interests and the interests of their mates and cronies, while pretending it is in the interests of voters. Try asking yourself why it is only voters in marginal seats who seem to have interest worth addressing, while voters in safe seats can be left to rot.
This is quite hilarious. Government spending done properly is agreed by parliament and allocated by clear rules applied impartially. The rorting and grifting is directed by ministers who make it up on the hoof either according their whims and prejudices, or else to some purpose when trying to flip marginal seats and help mates and cronies. In some well-known instances the minister goes further and allocates money without any legal authority at all – SportsRorts is a clear example.
Time to close a few of these loopholes. Make the evidence of ICAC and NACC admissable. We need some big scalps to change behaviour at the top. Im happy to acknowledge that just exposing the bad behaviour is good in itself, but the lack of consequences that really hurt means that its just business as usual. Possibly the embassed persons wont reoffend but bystanders will think the lack of consquences means its worth trying on a bit of corruption. So on it goes forever.
You either have no idea what that would mean or you are mad. Until the 17th C English courts routinely used evidence obtained by coercion (including torture when the courts authorised it). John Lilburne, also known as Freeborn John, was an English political Leveller before, during and after the English Civil Wars 1642–1650. He was prosecuted several times by different English government for his radical views. He challenged the use of coerced evidence on the grounds the prosecution is supposed to prove its case on its own with its own evidence, not by forcing the accused to convict his/her self. This was finally accepted and has been fundamental to English jurisdictions and all those derived from it ever since, including Australia. (It is, for example, the basis of the USA’s Fifth Amendment.)
Any witness appearing at an integrity commission takes an oath to answer all questions truthfully and in full. There are penalties for not doing so. (Defendants at trial cannot be made to take that oath and answer questions as witnesses, although they can choose to do so if they want.) Therefore witnesses at a commission are being compelled or coerced to answer all the questions asked of them. If their answers can then be used to convict them we have scrapped a fundamental right for any society with any pretence of freedom for private citizens and gone back to medieval law, or the sort of law practised in Iran or Saudi Arabia.
and was DFAT doing while Maguire was swanning about the Pacific representing Australia?
Surprisingly remiss since one was informed by a DFAT Consul that they are in the top 2% of smartest people in Oz a la the normative ‘bell curve’ distribution, via then use of IQ tests, faux or junk psychometric science.
Popularised in recent decades and adopted by the US ideologues of the white right via Charles Murray, ‘The Bell Curve’ and applied to broad societal cohorts; whiff of eugenics and the pecking order.
How low is the bar set for a finding of corruption, as was the case with our Gladie, and yet no referrals for prosecution to the DPP because of the likelihood that a conviction is probably not possible? Everything is on tape and yet she is not referred for prosecution! I can’t understand it. I work in a department where an anonymous employee can refer another to the internal affairs unit based on lies and hearsay or misunderstanding and that can lead to deleterious consequences for that employee if they are found innocent.
ICAC and other such bodies such as the NACC have a definition of the conduct they can investigate that takes the notion of corrupt conduct that is in their remit well beyond the strict limit of criminal behaviour. Therefore their findings sometimes say corruption happened without there being any way to carry out a prosecution, because the particular corrupt conduct found falls outside any criminal definition. This is often decribed as the difference between ‘black’ corruption which is criminal and ‘grey’ corruption which is not criminal. The finding of ‘grey’ corruption does not end up in court but that does not mean there are no consequences. Such findings inform the public and other interested parties about what sort of people they are dealing with and accordingly they will make up their own minds about the dishonesty or lack of ethics that has been exposed.
I’m not sure why this is so baffling to so many people. The distinction has been around for decades at least. And I’m really glad the integrity commissions can make such findings. The alternative would restrict such commissions to only investigating credible allegations of criminal conduct. That would
If people would care enough to read “Game of Mates (Murray/Frijters), Publicious PL, available at all retail outlets and as an eBook, they would be quickly less-baffled.
Evidence produced in ICAC CANNOT BE USED in a criminal prosecution.
Evidence given by individuals in ICAC CANNOT BE USED in a criminal prosecution.
Effectively any criminal investigation has to start from scratch.
The bar for a finding of Malfeasance in Public Office is set very high.
ICAC found that although Berejiklian had committed corrupt conduct, the likelihood of obtaining a guilty verdict in a criminal prosecution WITHOUT ACCESS to any of the evidence produce in ICAC rendered referral to the DPP pointless.
As Geoffrey Watson SC, late of ICAC, made plain in his usual clear, concise, unshowy manner on RN’s Law Report, Tuesday 4July 2023.
Well worth a listen.
Geoffrey Watson is a national treasure.
He should have been appointed to the NACC………………………
The government would not dare to do something that might make it effective.
It was designed to fail – else Spud would not have been allowed within a bull’s roar of gelding.
It’s sole purpose is to produce nice earners for the time servers who staff it.