Gladys Berejiklian defiant over former lover: 'I trusted him'
Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian says even when Daryl Maguire was called to the state's corruption watchdog she gave him the "benefit of the doubt" and didn't think she had anything relevant to report on their conversations about property developers.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiry is investigating how Ms Berejiklian's secret relationship with the disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP may have affected the way she dealt with projects he was pursuing.
In her second day in the witness box, the former premier was asked by counsel assisting the commission Scott Robertson about a tapped phone call in July 2018 in which Mr Maguire told her he had been summonsed to appear as a witness at the ICAC.
Ms Berejiklian agreed it was in "black and white" in the transcript that Mr Maguire had made representations to property developers but she didn't know all the people he mentioned.
"Whether or not I listened or cared is another matter," she said on Monday.
"I did not assume any wrongdoing."
In the tapped phone call, Mr Maguire told her he had introduced a former councillor to Chinese property development company Country Garden.
He maintained he had never "accepted a dollar" nor "done a deal" and Ms Berejiklian told him to "be honest and listen to your lawyer".
Ms Berejiklian said she trusted Mr Maguire even after he was summonsed.
"I had no reason to disbelieve him when I pressed him a number of times and he said he'd done nothing wrong," she said.
"I trusted him."
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Berejiklian insists there was 'nothing' to report
NSW ministers are required under the ICAC Act to report suspicions of corrupt conduct to the commission.
Ms Berejiklian said she didn't think there was anything she needed to report.
"There was nothing that I could recall, nothing I retained," she said.
"I'm not sure what I would have reported."
The hearing was shown a series of text messages between her and Mr Maguire in July 2018 in which he told her to get a second phone and asked her to download instant messaging service WeChat.
Ms Berejiklian was asked again about an intercepted phone call in which she can be heard saying she got "$170 million in five minutes" for a hospital in Mr Maguire's electorate.
She said that money had already been allocated and she might have been referring to the fact that she could give the project its own "line item" in the budget papers so members of a particular electorate can see that an MP's funding commitment had been delivered on – which was "part of the normal process" .
"I am a stickler for making sure everything is done by the book," she said.
The call was one of several intercepted phone calls played to Ms Berejiklian during five hours of questioning on Friday.
In another, she says a public servant would be sacked but only after he "fixed" a grant proposal Mr Maguire was pushing.
She agreed the pair loved each other, contemplated marriage and discussed having a child, but denied Mr Maguire constituted a family member but he was part of her "love circle".
Even in hindsight, she would not disclose her relationship with Mr Maguire, she said.
Despite their feelings, Ms Berejiklian insisted he did not get any preferential treatment from her and she supported a $5.5 million upgrade to the Wagga Wagga Clay Target Club because she thought it would improve the government's standing in the area after a damaging by-election loss in 2018.
Ms Berejiklian's lawyers will have the opportunity to cross-examine her later on Monday.
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