“Can Gladys Berejiklian survive as premier?” has been the question of the week. Should she survive is a whole other question.
The revelations have come at dizzying speed since Berejiklian first appeared at ICAC at the beginning of the week. The straight-as-a-die premier’s secret affair with an MP bent on a path of corruption has made for a seductive narrative of a trusting woman wronged by a cad.
Yet it obscures the central force of the case that confronts Berejiklian, which is that she failed in one of her most important KPIs: to maintain the integrity of her government.
Being premier means Berejiklian is also the custodian of government probity. MPs like Daryl Maguire must report their extra-parliamentary interests formally to her.
And, as Crikey’s trawl through ICAC exhibits reveals, that is precisely what happened. The question is how can Berejiklian square away Maguire’s written declaration of interests with the knowledge she had from their private conversations which directly contradicted those declaration?
Here’s the timeline:
September 5, 2017
Telephone call between Maguire and Berejiklian:
MAGUIRE: It looks like we finally got the Badgerys Creek stuff done, that’s good, mmm. I’ll be glad when that’s done ‘cause I’ll make enough money to pay off my debts [laughs], which would be good. Can you believe it, in one sale.
BEREJIKLIAN: I can believe it.
MAGUIRE: Mmm, yep. I only want to pay off the house, that’s all I want to get rid of [unintelligible] having me debt free, the rest of it I don’t care about.
September 6, 2017
SMS from Maguire to Berejiklian:
MAGUIRE: Also good news we clinched the land deal! For my Friends [tongue face emoji]. I should be back in the Black soon
September 7, 2017
Telephone call between Maguire and Berejiklian:
MAGUIRE: The good news is William, William tells me we’ve done our deal so hopefully that’s about half of all that gone now.
BEREJIKLIAN: That’s good.
MAGUIRE: Hmm.
BEREJIKLIAN: I don’t need to know about that bit.
MAGUIRE: No you don’t.
October 9, 2017
Maguire sends a letter to Berejiklian to inform her of changes to his interests over the previous 12 months. He declares some assets previously owned with his wife were now in his name only. He also attached a declaration which revealed no income-producing interests beyond a number of rental properties.
The declaration omits any reference to business enterprises Maguire had mentioned to the premier in the weeks prior, covering one large deal in particular: the sale of land near the site of Sydney’s second airport at Badgerys Creek, yielding a large potential commission for Maguire.
Questioned at ICAC on her knowledge of Maguire’s business deals, Berejiklian’s mantra was that she was “aware” Maguire had business interests but that she “assumed that he disclosed all of those at the appropriate time”.
“I always had made the assumption that he was always doing the right thing in terms of his disclosures and his interests,” she said.
Despite this, Berejiklian claimed in later evidence said that she had not looked at Maguire’s pecuniary interest register. “No,” she said, “but I knew that he had rental property and other things, so I never assumed he was in difficulty.”
It is a serious breakdown of the system of transparency when a premier fails to even look at a member’s declaration of interests provided to her under the rules — even more so when the premier may be privy to information that contradicts the declaration.
The premier’s failure as custodian of standards has caused immense damage, whichever way the government spins it.
I was alone and attracted sour respnses in suggesting Glad was low standard, contrived token woman (she is always depiced as an agony madonna) to divbert ateention from the submediocrities O’Farrell and Baird, let alone the rank and file crooks and crimmy cringes. She has been frightfully empty of sense, decency, foresight, ability, covering the arse, all things associated with leadership. NSW is a sick joke, dying.
GD’s actions and dissembling don’t stand the Pub Test and as for the Duck Test; I think your article proves that this particular little black duck is a duck with quite a few shortcomings when it comes to ethics and a moral compass.
She sort of did well around the bushfires, mainly by getting out of the way and letting Shane Fitzsimmons have the lead. She’s sort of done well re Covid, although there was that Ruby Princess thing.
Actually, no, she’s just been lucky, NSW could have been as bad as Victoria re Covid. So far we have mainly been saved by having better health administration structures which have worked, and not having a quarantine debacle. Great, she has met the almost competent test, provided we forget Ruby Princess.
Unlike BK, I don’t think NSW is well governed by the LNP (or Labor). Truth is there is nothing behind GB except for an arch neoliberal ideologue in Perrottet (how’s that iCare scandal going Dom?).
Matt Kean, standing up against fossil fuel puppets in the party, stands as the only hope for some good leadership in NSW.
She has not made any great policy advancements.
The bushfires were delegated.
Covid includes the Ruby Princess, so no plaudits there.
Back in 2015 as treasurer she managed to swindle the people of NSW when she sold an entire peninsula in Lake Macquarie, with a power station on it (Vales Point), for the paltry sum of $1mio.
How do you get that much land on Lake Macquarie, with a power station, with some of the world’s best/cheapest coal nearby and a guaranteed/captive market on your doorstep?
Easy, be a major LNP donor.
Vales Point was revalued at $730mio before 36 months was up, and reportedly had made $200mio profit selling over-priced electricity back to the NSW Govt amongst others!
I would love to get a seat at the table when these “privitisations” are going on – they are just cover for massive swindles of government assets and I would have had no problem finding $1mio back in 2015 for an asset purchase like that.
Meanwhile, GB claims that she works tirelessly for the “people of NSW”.
Pulease!
I have absolutely no affection for he Liberal Party, the political mafia of big business. I do concede though that Berejiklian has been a generally a good premier of the corruption cesspit that is NSW. Bit the evidence is that she clearly breached the ICAC Act by not reporting what any reasonable person would have known from what Maguire has told her. That, and the disastrous judgment shown by getting romantically involved with such an obvious crook means she really has no choice.
I agree. She’s clearly done a good job throughout the bushfire crisis, and the Covid crisis, but to suggest she didn’t know what her sleazy boyfriend was up to, (and how or why an otherwise apparently intelligent, independent woman could even be attracted to him is beyond me) is ridiculous. She must have done and she’s now paying the price. So she’s actually not that politically smart because in this day and age she was always going to be rumbled eventually. And she should have known that too.
It is not just breaching the ICAC Act, it is the very basis of our parliamentary democracy to be be transparent and accountable, though they are appear to be in short supply here as well as at a Federal level
Yes,
Transparency and accountability hinge on the last two of the four articles of faith for Australian Government and their henchmen in the public service:
(With apologies to Jay and Lynn who wrote “Yes Minister”)
Until we get rid of those we will never have real democracy.
This is reality TV at its finest, right up there with “I’m a Celebrity” and “Geordie Shore”. It’s comforting that none of the celebs have real jobs.