Gladys Berejiklian angrily rejects Labor charge she is a 'sounding board for corruption'
The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, is facing mounting pressure on her leadership after Labor accused her of being used as a “sounding board for corruption” – a claim she called “extremely offensive” while daring the opposition to repeat it outside of parliament.
The exchange during question time on Thursday following evidence by Berejiklian’s former lover, Daryl Maguire, the disgraced MP for Wagga Wagga.
In his second day in the witness box at the Independent Commission against Corruption (Icac), Maguire said he sought “guidance” on “what I was doing ... to solve some issues” in relation to his debts in his calls to Berejiklian.
But he couldn’t recall whether that related to a western Sydney land deal or other deals for which he hoped to receive a commission.
Counsel assisting the inquiry, Scott Robertson, returned to the phone intercepts of calls between Maguire and Berejiklian from 2017, which on Monday revealed the existence of their five-year secret relationship.
In the tapes between the pair, Maguire refers to “Jimmy” and to “the Badgerys Creek stuff”.
Berejiklian does not ask what or who he is talking about.
When Maguire was asked whether he had introduced Berejiklian to Jimmy, he was also unable to recall. He agreed “Jimmy” was Jimmy Yang, the managing director of UWE, another company with whom he was attempting to do a property deal in return for a commission.
The inquiry has previously heard he hoped to make a $1.5m commission from one property deal and that he hoped to pay off his debts.
Asked about the relationship, he said it was “a bit on and off again” and had run for about five years, but he acknowledged that as a result of the Icac hearing it would not be rekindled.
Icac went into private hearings just before lunch to discuss matters that related to evidence in the phone taps between the premier and Maguire. The hearings will resume on Friday.
During question time in parliament at 2pm, the drama continued.
A furious Berejiklian labelled Labor’s suggestion that she was “a sounding board for corruption” as “extremely offensive” and invited them to repeat it outside the parliament, where there is no protection from defamation.
When it was put to Berejiklian that she knew the figures Maguire was trying to do business with and that “he stood to profit from property deals he was trying to do”, Berejiklian replied that she had done nothing wrong.
“I never have and I never will,” she said.
Meanwhile, there are more problems brewing. Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane has been given permission to return to the legislative council from 22 October, after being told he is not the focus of a foreign influence investigation by the spy agency Asio.
The additional vote would shift the numbers in the upper house and allow a no-confidence motion to pass next week, on the votes of Labor, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and One Nation. It was defeated this week only on the casting vote of the president.
This would be more of a symbolic vote and would not prevent the premier from sitting in the lower house. However, the minor parties have threatened to oppose government legislation in the upper house unless Berejiklian steps down.
Greens MP David Shoebridge has also successfully secured an order that the premier and the treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, must now produce
documents from their previously secret email accounts relating to grants programs.
The existence of Berejiklian’s private and previously secret email was revealed during the Icac hearings.
The upper house has been trying to get documents relating to a $255m community grants scheme.
There are also moves afoot to suspend one of Berejiklian’s key supporters, the arts minister, Don Harwin, after the government failed to produce any paperwork bar a few emails on the program. The government insists there is no paperwork and Harwin cannot be suspended.
He said no emails from this account had ever been produced to the upper house under orders for papers.
There are also questions about a $30m grant from a regional growth fund, which was given to the Riverina Conservatorium of Music in Wagga Wagga in August 2018.
Labor said the grant was larger than all grants to regional conservatoria put together.
It followed an unsolicited proposal from the Riverina conservatorium, which had the backing of Maguire.