“The rich get richer, The poor get the picture" - Midnight Oil
On an otherwise unremarkable Monday morning in October 2020, Gladys Berejiklian stepped into the witness box of the NSW anti-corruption watchdog and uttered the words that turned politics in this state on its head.
The NSW premier, who in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic had become one of Australia’s most popular and powerful politicians, said she had been in a “close, personal relationship” with disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire since at least 2015.
However, evidence later revealed the relationship probably pre-dated that time.
The revelation, which stunned even Berejiklian’s closest colleagues in parliament, set off a year-long saga that would eventually lead to her resignation during the height of the pandemic, after the Independent Commission Against Corruption revealed she would be investigated for corrupt conduct.
On Thursday, more than two years later, the ICAC will deliver its findings. The long delay in its release has prompted criticism from both sides of the political aisle and calls for reform to the length of time the anti-corruption watchdog can take to hand down the results of its investigations.
“When you’re in public life and subject to an inquiry, extended delays mean that your life in many cases is in abeyance while you’re waiting for those findings to be released,” Premier Chris Minns said on Tuesday.
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It was baffling how, with his fussy mannerisms and dapper suit with a crisp white shirt and a pink silk tie, the country MP sitting across the table from me could have possibly come across the extraordinary information he was imparting.
Three days earlier, on July 23, 2017, my phone pinged with a text message from state member of parliament Daryl Maguire. “I have something of interest that came my way re Meditch (sic),” he said.
Sliding doors moment for Berejiklian, Maguire and Moses
On Thursday, Gladys Berejiklian will learn her fate when the Independent Commission Against Corruption finally releases its report into the conduct of the former premier.
But since her hasty resignation in 2021 after the commission revealed she was being investigated, Berejiklian appears to be living her best life. Her new, well-paid job as an Optus executive doesn’t require holding those cursed daily press conferences that characterised her final months as premier.
Then there’s the romance with high-flying barrister Arthur Moses, SC. Berejiklian’s Northbridge home is up for rent, and Moses bought in the suburb last year, which leads us to believe things are going rather well.
But a forgotten detail, buried amid the several hundred exhibits revealed during the ICAC probe, shows how different things could have been. Berejiklian’s disgraced ex Daryl Maguire had tried to hire Moses before his first appearance at the ICAC in 2018, according to intercepted phone conversations between the two right after the Wagga Wagga MP was first summonsed.
Moses was busy at the time, and referred Maguire to another barrister. While Moses could not represent Maguire, he later acted for Berejiklian when she fronted the corruption watchdog over her “close personal relationship” with her erstwhile colleague. The rest, as they say, is history. If Moses had time for Maguire back then, who knows if he and Berejiklian would be a thing.
Maguire, meanwhile, who in the same 2018 phone call described being summoned by the ICAC as “exciting”, was in court this week after being charged with giving false and misleading evidence to the commission.
DOING PYNE
Since the change of government last year, it’s been a lean time for Liberal-linked lobbying firms, who have watched big-name clients march out the door to the many booming outfits run by former Labor staffers.
But one former Liberal doing well in the lobbying game is ex-defence minister Christopher Pyne, whose Pyne and Partners continued its recent run of success by signing tech giant Google as a client.
Pyne did not respond to CBD’s request for comment by deadline, but Google aside, much of that success has come thanks to defence companies – the AUKUS pact being of particular interest to the professional South Australian and his firm.
As CBD reported recently, Pyne and Partners flew a bipartisan parliamentary delegation to the United States for an AUKUS-related junket in April. That trip involved a swanky dinner at Washington DC’s Cosmos Club with missile manufacturers Northrop Grumman, attended by US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, where the new ambassador to the United States Kevin Rudd gave a speech.
INSULAR PENINSULA
Residents of Sydney’s northern beaches are a famously parochial mob. So when flyers started landing in letterboxes introducing NSW Liberal Andrew Bragg as “Senator for Mackellar”, the good burghers of Bilgola were not amused.
Bragg lives in Paddington, south of the bridge and a long way from the insular peninsula. And since the voters of Mackellar turfed out Liberal MP Jason Falinski last year, this once blue-ribbon seat is teal country.
The Liberals aren’t the only ones claiming a slice of the beaches – Labor’s Tony Sheldon, also a southerner, has sent out recent media releases calling himself the Senator for Mackellar.
We hear the pamphlet is part of Bragg’s pitch as the local duty senator, a system where both parties assign their upper house pollies a handful of electorates around the state. It’s a job that includes standard ribbon-cutting duties – Bragg showed up at St John’s Narraweena to talk to the year 6 children this week.
The moderate senator has responsibility for seats like Warringah, Wentworth and North Sydney – giving him the dubious privilege of representing all the teal electorates.
PRICE IS RIGHT
Herald columnist Jenna Price and former Liberal MP Tim Wilson have been duelling since back in 2014, when then-attorney-general George Brandis made Wilson human rights commissioner.
Price’s pointed criticisms ran in The Canberra Times, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald – she once referred to Wilson as a “henchcommissioner” of Tony Abbott’s government, prompting a rejoinder from Wilson printed in The Crimes.
She later called for his resignation from the commission and was back for another crack in 2019 as Wilson, then an MP, prosecuted an effective campaign against Bill Shorten’s ill-fated franking credits policy, which Price alleged fell short of decent parliamentary standards.
Spoiler alert: he didn’t resign. But he did lose Goldstein to teal independent Zoe Daniel last year, and is doing a bit of consulting these days, so Price had an idea.
Why not put some of Wilson’s campaigning nous, for which the columnist harbours a grudging admiration, to use in the cause of the faltering Yes-case for the Indigenous Voice to parliament, she wrote in this masthead.
Wilson must have enjoyed that one, posting some of Price’s back-catalogue on his socials and quipping: “I always admire that some people are prepared to change their mind” and “we are all on a journey and we should respect that journey”.
He’s also made a screenshot of Price’s Voice column his Facebook cover photo.
Sadly, this is not the tale of reconciliation you might hope for. Price told us on Tuesday that it would take more than a couple of social media posts for her to change her mind about Wilson.
The former MP did not respond to a request for comment.