Love, power and secrecy: NSW anxiously awaits ICAC’s Gladys Berejiklian report

The NSW corruption watchdog’s long-awaited report finishing the investigation into the state’s ex-premier Gladys Berejiklian will drop next Thursday.

It will mark an end to a drawn-out probe that caused chaos at the top of the NSW government, ended the political career of Berejilkian, and exposed a tale of love, secrecy, power and money that captivated the Australian public during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

A former ICAC insider tells Crikey it’s far from certain the report will find corrupt conduct on the part of Berejiklian. She has consistently denied all wrongdoing. 

Investigators with the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) began looking into ex-Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire in 2016, as part of an earlier investigation into a Sydney council. 

After the ICAC investigators heard Maguire speaking on a tapped phone in May and June 2016 about his plans to broker a land sale as a representative of a private company, they trained their focus on him and opened a new investigation, known as Operation Keppel. 

When they began that probe — tapping Maguire’s phone and dispatching undercover agents to photograph him in NSW Parliament — they were following leads that suggested he had tried to use his political office for personal monetary gain. 

What the investigators did not expect was to discover Maguire had been leading a long and secret relationship with the state’s most powerful person.

Berejiklian was dragged into the scandal in October 2020, when she was added to a witness list and asked to give evidence at a public hearing. 

Giving evidence to ICAC is not in itself controversial. Most witnesses, including politicians, who are called before the corruption commission are not suspected of any wrongdoing. 

Neither was Berejiklian when she first took the stand. But a question in the first few minutes of her appearance changed her political career forever and raised uncomfortable questions that would eventually set her on the path of being a target of ICAC herself.

“Ms Berejiklian, have you ever been in a close personal relationship with Mr Maguire?” counsel assisting the ICAC Scott Robertson asked. 

“Yeah, I would like to state at the outset that Mr Maguire was a colleague of 15 years. He was someone that I trusted. He was a trusted…” Berejiklian began replying, before being urged to answer the question more directly.

“Yes, sure. And that, and that, and that developed into a close personal relationship,” she continued. 

The revelation from Berejiklian — a notoriously private person who had never shared much of her personal life with her colleagues — shocked the other Liberals in state Parliament. 

The fact the person who held the state’s top political job, and previously held the purse strings as state treasurer, was in a secret relationship with an MP who had been forced to quit Parliament in 2018 over corruption allegations set off a political firestorm. 

But the popular career politician from Sydney’s northern suburbs managed to survive several motions of no confidence in Parliament, and looked set to continue leading the state. 

“I think she’ll be the premier next week, I think she’ll be the premier next month, I think she’ll be the premier that leads the government to the next election, and I think she’ll keep leading NSW for many, many years to come,” then-tourism minister Stuart Ayres said in October 2020.

However, by Christmas 2020, it had become clear Berejiklian’s involvement in Maguire’s scandal may deserve greater scrutiny. 

In early December, ABC’s 7.30 program revealed Berejiklian oversaw a fund that reserved $5.5 million in grant funding for the Australian Clay Target Association (ACTA) in Wagga, which Maguire later attempted to profit from. 

Information about the ACTA grant had been buried in the ICAC evidence made public as part of the public hearings in October 2020. The famously secretive ICAC said nothing about the new questions raised in the media. But behind the scenes, investigators continued to piece together the puzzle. 

In October 2021, the ICAC announced it had broadened its investigation to include allegations Berejiklian breached the public’s trust in the course of her secret relationship with Maguire. 

She promptly resigned as premier and then took the stand again, this time with the focus sharply on herself. 

The allegations she faced included whether she failed to report, or actively encouraged, allegedly corrupt conduct by Maguire, and whether she had a conflict of interest when she advanced funding requests by Maguire. 

Robertson opened the second round of questioning of Berejiklian with a simple query: “Ms Berejiklian, if you were able to have your time again, would you disclose your close personal relationship with Mr Maguire to your ministerial colleagues or any of them?” 

“I didn’t feel it was of sufficient standard or sufficient significance in order to do that … I would not have,” she replied. 

The commission played recordings of phone calls between Berejiklian and Maguire where they discussed public funding, politics and personal matters. 

In one phone tap, the pair were heard strategising over how to retain Wagga for the Liberals after Maguire’s resignation. 

“Just throw money at Wagga,” Maguire was heard saying.

“I’ll throw money at Wagga, lots of it, don’t you worry about that,” Berejiklian replied.

In another phone call, Berejiklian relayed a discussion she’d had with the then-treasurer of the state, Dominic Perrottet. 

“I just spoke to Dom and I said, ‘Put the [money] in the budget’. He goes, ‘No worries’. He just does what I ask him to.” 

After listening to the recording, Berejiklian said of herself and Mr Perrottet, “neither of us would have done anything which was not appropriate” and that proper processes were always followed. 

Berejiklian denied all the allegations against her, including in subsequent statements to the press. 

Geoffrey Watson SC, a former counsel assisting ICAC with extensive experience in anti-corruption matters, tells Crikey he remembers getting the impression Berejiklian was “reluctant to cooperate” throughout the public hearings. 

However, he said he wasn’t sure if any of the evidence would amount to clear evidence of corruption on her part. 

“I did not see where anything had been put to her clearly crossed the boundary between bad politicking and corruption,” Watson said. 

“In other words, there didn’t seem to me to be the basis to establish corrupt conduct on her part. 

“I thought that she tended towards being uncooperative and unresponsive, perhaps as a defensive response to difficult circumstances. Being examined in these environments is pretty hard, it’s a tough environment.” 

Since the public hearings finished in November 2021, there has been mostly silence from the ICAC on Operation Keppel. 

The watchdog has been criticised harshly for the time it’s taken to finish the probe. Ruth McColl, the commissioner overseeing Operation Keppel, has acknowledged several times that she “remains conscious of [her] obligation … to furnish investigation reports as soon as possible”. 

The Daily Telegraph reported last week she would have been paid more than $1 million during the three years she’s headed the probe. 

Given the report won’t be released until next week, voters in NSW weren’t allowed to know the outcome before they went to the polls in March. Perrottet, who took over as premier after Berejiklian, lost the election to Labor. 

In an update on Wednesday, the commission said the Operation Keppel report will be furnished to NSW Parliament at 9am next Thursday. 

In an unrelated development, Maguire was charged last year with criminal conspiracy over an alleged visa fraud that began when he was MP for Wagga. He has not yet entered a plea in the matter and the case remains before the courts, NCA NewsWire reported.

“If the presiding officers make the report public, it will be made available for download from the ICAC website,” the note said. 

Berejiklian was contacted for comment.