Gladys Berejiklian didn’t want the Valentine’s Day exchange published.
She didn’t want the world to see the conversation in which her secret lover, the disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire, had complained she had been mean to him, before telling her, in no uncertain terms, that he was “the boss”.
“Yeh but I am the boss, even when you’re the premier,” Maguire said to Berejiklian in an intercepted phone call on 14 February 2018.
Berejiklian, attempting to placate Maguire, told him that she agreed. She explained that she found it hard to reverse the roles they held in their professional lives, where she was the premier of Australia’s most populous state and he was a lowly backbencher.
“So therefore it’s hard when I had to switch it around,” she said.
Maguire responded: “Glad[ys] even when you are the premier I am the boss alright.”
The extraordinary exchange goes to the heart of the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s damning findings against Berejiklian – delivered after an excruciating wait on Thursday.
Given the dynamics of their relationship and its “profound” importance to both, how could she not disclose it to her government?
How could she leave her ministerial colleagues blind to it while personally agitating for millions of dollars to fund pet projects in Maguire’s electorate, namely a new gun clubhouse and a recital hall?
The texts also highlight a tension that has played out during the protracted theatre of Operation Keppel: when does the painfully private become a matter of critical public importance?
After an interminable wait, Icac handed down a resounding answer to both questions on Thursday.
It found Berejiklian had engaged in serious corrupt conduct by supporting a $5.5m grant to the Australian Clay Target Association for a new clubhouse in 2016 and 2017 without disclosing her close relationship to Maguire, whose lobbying for the money prompted some within the government to rename it the “Maguire International Shooting Centre of Excellence”.
Berejiklian was similarly found to have acted corruptly in her handling of a $10m grant for the Riverina Conservatorium of Music (RCM) in 2018, also “advanced by Mr Maguire”.
Icac found she was “influenced by the existence of her close personal relationship with Mr Maguire, or by a desire on her part to maintain or advance that relationship, in connection with funding promised and awarded”.
The closeness of their relationship had also given Berejiklian knowledge of Maguire’s property dealings, in which he brokered land sales in the hope of digging himself out of personal debt.
Berejiklian, Icac found, should have told the watchdog of her concerns about Maguire’s actions.
Placating an ‘insecure’ man: when the personal crosses into the public
The Valentine’s Day exchange was secret until Thursday.
Berejiklian was initially asked about the conversation behind closed doors, during a private hearing of Icac. She had resisted attempts to have the contents of the call disclosed in the final report.
The conversation was a private interaction between a couple, she argued, and had nothing to do with her work or the matters being probed by Icac.
It didn’t represent her real view of the dynamic between them, she said. All it showed was her appeasing an insecure man, attempting to convince him they were equals in a relationship.
“When you have a position of power, it’s very difficult in a personal relationship to address that position of power, and that’s what I was referring to,” she told the closed hearing of Icac. “It’s very personal and private.”
The commission found the explanation was plausible.
But even so, it added to the “mosaic” of evidence about how the dynamics of their relationship may have influenced Berejiklian in exercising the duties of her office.
Her personal concern for Maguire, her need to placate him and ease his insecurities, could be “expected to have manifested itself in a continuing desire to assuage his feelings and support him to the best of her ability”.
“That would include supporting him bringing to fruition two Wagga Wagga projects for which he was a fervent advocate,” Icac found.
The inquiry exposed repeated instances where Maguire, seeking support for something in his electorate, would pester Berejiklian until she acted for him.
When a hospital in his electorate missed out on $170m in the 2018 state budget, he complained to the then-premier. In another covertly recorded phone call, Berejiklian told Maguire: “I’ll fix it.”
Two hours later, the money was in the budget. Berejiklian said she had told Dominic Perrottet, the then treasurer, to fund the hospital.
“I said, ‘Just put the $140m in the budget.’ He goes, ‘No worries.’ He does what I ask him to,” she said.
Maguire, apparently not won over, continued to complain. “But it’s meant to be 170.”
Berejiklian, referring to Maguire as Hokis – an Armenian term of endearment – responded: “OK can you please not get yourself worked up again because all you do is shout at me sometimes Hokis.”
In call after call, text after text, the tension between Berejiklian’s public office and the dynamics of her private relationship is on display.
In a 2017 conversation, Maguire urged Berejiklian to hold off sacking a senior public servant “until he fixes my conservatorium”.
Berejiklian replied “yeah OK”, and the Icac report noted he was still in his position in 2021.
In another call in 2017, a heavily indebted Maguire boasts to Berejiklian that a potential land deal he had brokered could net him $1.5m, prompting Berejiklian to respond “I don’t need to know about that bit”.
Maguire agreed. “No you don’t,” he said. “You do not.”
(March 3, 2003) Elected MP for Willoughby
(February 20, 2011) Appointed transport minister as the Coalition sweeps to power
(February 20, 2014) Begins secret "close personal relationship" with Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire before becoming treasurer
(January 29, 2017) Becomes NSW premier following the resignation of Mike Baird and reappoints Maguire as a parliamentary secretary
(August 29, 2023) Tells Maguire she hopes he will quit parliament at the 2019 election so their relationship can become public
(September 29, 2017) In an intercepted phone call, she tells Maguire she "didn't need to know about that bit" as he discussed his financial interest in a Western Sydney International Airport land deal that would net him a large financial windfall
(August 29, 2018) Maguire resigns after being exposed in a separate ICAC inquiry, and Berejiklian remains in contact with him
(March 3, 2020) Her approval rating soars and her profile expands to the national stage as the Covid-19 pandemic takes hold
(September 9, 2020) Icac announces it has opened a specific investigation into Maguire. Berejiklian cuts contact
(October 29, 2020) She admits to a "close personal relationship" with Maguire at a public Icac hearing
(October 29, 2021) Resigns as premier as the investigation, dubbed Operation Keppel, turns its focus on her. She denies any wrongdoing
(June 29, 2022) Joins Optus as managing director of enterprise and business
(March 29, 2023) Coalition loses office
(June 29, 2023) Icac finds Berejiklian and Maguire both engaged in "serious corrupt conduct"
Similar conversations had been happening way back in 2014, when Maguire openly discussed his property dealings with Chinese developers to Berejiklian.
“Hawkiss [sic] good news,” he wrote in February 2014. “One of my contacts sold a motel for 5.8 million I had put her in contact so I should make 5k.”
Berejiklian: “Congrats!!! Great News!! Woo hoo.”
In mid-2018, upon learning he was in the sights of Icac, Maguire texted Berejiklian to convince her to get a private phone with encrypted messaging. Berejiklian suggested WhatsApp.
Maguire said: “They can read texts but not the little green man, it leaves no trace.”
Icac’s counsels assisting said the phone calls suggested that Maguire, a self-described “serial pest”, was prepared to badger Berejiklian consistently until he got his way.
“They also contended that it was apparent that Ms Berejiklian was prepared to take steps to placate Mr Maguire including in circumstances where he gets ‘worked up’ and ‘shout[s] at [her] sometimes’,” the report said. “They argued that those dynamics were suggestive of the impact that Mr Maguire was capable of having on Ms Berejiklian and illustrated why she is likely to have exercised functions in line with Mr Maguire’s desires and not otherwise.”
The former premier issued only a short statement in response to Icac’s findings on Thursday.
“Serving the people of NSW was an honour and privilege. At all times I have worked my hardest in the public interest,” she said. “Nothing in this report demonstrates otherwise.”
There were no immediate changes to her executive position at Optus and she has signalled a potential appeal.
‘Gobsmacked’: relationship should have been disclosed
Even among Berejiklian’s colleagues, there remains a degree of shock that the relationship was kept secret.
Even the opposition leader, Mark Speakman, vocal in his praise of Berejiklian on Thursday, said he was gobsmacked by its existence.
“It came as a complete shock, I think to every MP and the government, that she had any sort of connection with Daryl Maguire,” he said after the report’s release. “I think we [were] all gobsmacked when that emerge[d].”
It’s a view that was shared by the members of the powerful expenditure review committee who in late 2016 were considering the proposal to fund the Australian Clay Target Association’s new clubhouse.
The committee included then premier Baird and then deputy premier John Barilaro, who both said the relationship should have been disclosed. Barliaro said the committee “would have done everything differently” on the grant proposal, had it known.
Nigel Blunden, Baird’s head of strategy, said he would have sought advice from the Department of Premier and Cabinet about a potential conflict of interest, had he known. He also gave an insight into just how tightly kept the secret was.
“I’m meant to know about those things in my job and I had no idea.”
