In a dramatic day of intercepted phone calls,text messages and emails,the state’s corruption watchdog heard Mr Maguire’s account of the “close personal relationship” now at the centre of an extended corruption probe.
Daryl Maguire and Gladys Berejiklian.ICAC/Nick Moir
Ms Berejiklian will begin two full days of evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Friday,following nine days of testimony from bureaucrats,a former premier,former deputy premier and,on Thursday,her ex-boyfriend:the disgraced former member for Wagga Wagga.
The inquiry is examining whether Ms Berejiklian breached the public trust or encouraged corrupt conduct during her undisclosed relationship with the former MP.
Telephone intercepts played to the ICAC on Thursday revealed Ms Berejiklian told Mr Maguire she could overrule the NSW bureaucracy and reassured him she knew the “three top things” she needed to do in his former electorate.
She made the comments in July 2018,nine days after a separate corruption probe forced Mr Maguire to quit politics,triggering a critical byelection in Wagga Wagga.
Sensational evidence has been heard at ICAC of Gladys Berejiklian and Daryl Maguire’s secret relationship.
“I don’t want to argue with you. I just need to go and chill because it’s stressing me out,” Ms Berejiklian said in the call on July 30,2018.
“Just go and throw money at Wagga,” Mr Maguire urged her.
Ms Berejiklian replied:“I’ll throw money at Wagga,don’t you worry about that ... lots of it.”
“Do what’s right on your end,otherwise you’ll kill me,” she added,in an apparent reference to the upcoming byelection.
One of Gladys Berejiklian’s barristers,Sophie Callan,SC,outside the ICAC on Wednesday.Janie Barrett
Ms Berejiklian agreed when Mr Maguire told her to give the electorate a stadium,despite bureaucrats having already struck out the idea.
“I’ll do that too,” she said. “I can overrule them.”
In other phone taps played on Thursday,Mr Maguire told Ms Berejiklian in 2017 that,if she kept listening to him,the Wagga Wagga electorate would be “the blazing star of the southern universe”.
Mr Maguire,who gave evidence via video-link,told the commission that he and Ms Berejiklian had considered having a child together and getting married.
He said he would holiday with Ms Berejiklian,stay with her in Sydney and had a key to her house. However,Mr Maguire also said the pair did not share finances or a diary and never met each other’s families.
“You loved her?” counsel assisting the commission Scott Robertson asked.
“Yes,” Mr Maguire said.
“And so far as you can ascertain,she loved you as well?” Mr Robertson asked.
“Yes,” Mr Maguire said.
The revelations followed an unsuccessful bid by Ms Berejiklian’s legal team for a private session to hear evidence containing intimate details “of the highest order”,which could lead to humiliation and harm.
“There is no public purpose served by plumbing the depths of the private life of my client about intimate details of this relationship,” barrister Sophie Callan,SC,argued.
Ms Berejiklian has previously said the relationship was not of a sufficient status to report.
Counsel assisting the commission Scott Robertson said understanding the nature of the relationship was central to assessing whether Ms Berejiklian was in a position of conflict.
He added that Mr Berejiklian had already spoken to the media about the relationship since last year,including revealing their marriage plans and that she would never speak to him again.
The inquiry is focused on two multimillion-dollar grants issued to a gun club and a music conservatorium in Mr Maguire’s electorate while the pair were in a relationship and Ms Berejiklian was treasurer and later premier.
Mr Maguire on Thursday said it was standard procedure for him to repeatedly lobby ministers,insisting that “the more doors you knock on ... the better your chances of securing something”.
The commission has previously heard the controversial $5.5 million gun club grant was rushed for approval by the government in late 2016,but was conditional on a satisfactory business case.
Mr Maguire actively lobbied for the gun club and has been linked to a company that assisted the association in importing furniture from China. He said he had nothing to do with the furniture supply but acknowledged an associate of his may have received a commission.
“No one works for nothing,Mr Robertson,” he told the commission.
Amid delays to the grant process in March 2017 he sent an email to Ms Berejiklian,which said:“Typical of our bullshit government.”
Asked if he was inviting her to intervene,Mr Maguire said:“You could read that as an invitation. You could interpret it as that.”
The second case study at the centre of the inquiry is the Riverina Conservatorium of Music,which was granted $10 million to relocate to a government-owned site.
The ICAC has heard Mr Maguire published an inaccurate media release in February 2018 announcing a “world-class music recital space” and “permanent new home” for the conservatorium,before a funding decision had been made.
On Thursday Mr Maguire agreed he may have published the announcement in the hope of pressuring the government to agree to the plan.
In a phone conversation in May that year,Mr Berejiklian told Mr Maguire:“we ticked off your conservatorium the other day,so that’s a done deal now”.
During the same call,Mr Maguire said he was concentrating on “money projects” for his electorate,telling the ICAC it was in part a reference to potential plans to leave politics at the next election.
He agreed it was a possibility that if he retired at the 2019 election,he and Ms Berejiklian would publicly announce their relationship.
By July 2018,however,Mr Maguire was forced from politics after being disgraced during another ICAC inquiry. It triggered a byelection,during which a further $20 million for a music recital hall was promised.
In a phone call to the Liberal candidate who was running in the byelection,Mr Maguire quipped:“Stick there for a while,cause a byelection,and you’ll get everything you want.”
The commission heard private communications between Ms Berejiklian and Mr Maguire in the days following his resignation.
“Hokis[an Armenian term of affection],get stuck into me,kick the shit out of me. Good for party morale,” Mr Maguire said in one text message. In another:“You have some tough decisions to make soon.”
Assistant Commissioner Ruth McColl,SC,asked Mr Maguire if his messages were an attempt to tell Ms Berejiklian “what she should do in this difficult political circumstance”.
“Yes,in a way,” he said. “She ultimately would have to make the decision,but yes,commissioner.”
Earlier the ICAC heard another intercepted telephone call between Mr Maguire and his friend and property broker William Luong about a potential land deal outside his electorate.
In the call Mr Maguire referred to a confidential map that outlined the proposed route of the M9 orbital at Cawdor,in the Wollondilly Shire.
an investigation was launched into whether the leak of three maps gave Chinese mega-developer Country Garden an inside running to snap up land before the route was announced.
Transport for NSW at the time dismissed suggestions Country Garden was ever leaked sensitive government information despite concerns of its bureaucrats.
Mr Maguire on Thursday agreed that he had talked to Mr Luong about passing on confidential information from sitting MPs that would have potential commercial benefit for them both.
Ms Berejiklian will give evidence to the ICAC on Friday and has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
The inquiry prompted her immediate resignation as the state’s 45th premier,as well as her exit from State Parliament.
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