Friday 19th of April 2024
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conflict of interest?....

gladysgladys

Gladys Berejiklian's own Treasury officials appear to have initially advised against setting aside $5.5 million for a grant pursued by Daryl Maguire, but the grant was later approved and came from a fund overseen by Ms Berejiklian, according to an internal government memo obtained by 7.30.

 Key points:
  • NSW Treasury appeared to not support approving a grant for the Australian Clay Target Association, an internal document shows 
  • The then-sports minister Stuart Ayres initially declined to support granting funding to the association
  • The grant was being pursued by former state MP Daryl Maguire

Last year 7.30 revealed that Ms Berejiklian oversaw a fund that set aside $5.5 million for the Australian Clay Target Association [ACTA] clubhouse and convention centre in Wagga Wagga when she was state treasurer.

Those revelations raised fresh questions about the Premier's role in facilitating grants in Mr Maguire's electorate, where he stood to gain a political benefit, and whether Ms Berejiklian ever declared a personal conflict of interest during the grant process.

After 7.30 first revealed details of the clay shooting grant in December last year, ICAC announced it was undertaking further investigation into Mr Maguire, who is currently the subject of an extensive probe into his business dealings.

Last month 7.30 also revealed that Ms Berejiklian intervened in the assessment of the $5.5 million grant and that Mr Maguire had written to Ms Berejiklian asking for her assistance to fund the project.

Since then the Premier has faced a number of questions at her daily press conferences about the ICAC investigation and whether she is a person of interest in the inquiry, which she has denied.

The circumstances of a December 2016 Expenditure Review Committee meeting where the funding was set aside — which Ms Berejiklian would have ordinarily chaired as treasurer — have become a source of intense political interest.

Legal experts have previously told 7.30 that if the Premier approved a funding reservation for the project at that meeting, it may amount to a conflict of interest.

The Premier has previously said her relationship with Mr Maguire was not of "sufficient status to" require disclosure.

7.30's questions about the grant last year sparked a flurry of internal government queries, with various government officials seeking to understand how the grant had been approved, after a submission was put forward by the Office of Sport while Stuart Ayres was sports minister.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-13/berejiklians-officials-initially-advised-against-funds-for-grant/100457128

 

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the fall gal for scomo's sports rorts?...

 

Gladys Berejiklian has announced she will quit as NSW Premier after the Independent Commission Against Corruption announced she was being investigated by the corruption watchdog.

Ms Berejiklian says she will also leave Parliament as soon as a byelection can be held.

 

“Resigning at this time is against every instinct of my well-being ... I love my job and serving the community but I have been given no option following the statement.

“I’m extremely confident that whoever succeeds me will be more than capable to continue the job.

“Please give them your trust and confidence. We will come through this. Stronger, more resilient and appreciating what really matters in life. I felt strong, energised and optimistic about the future of NSW.”

 

Read more:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/icac-investigation-live-updates-gladys-berejiklian-investigated-over-daryl-maguire-dealings-20211001-p58wfi.html

 

ScoMo may have done far worse on a national scale, but there is no national ICAC in Kanbra... LIke Gladys, Scomo claims that he did nothing wrong... One goes — one stays with his submarines...

 

assangezassangez

fairness for the liars and fudgers...

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has doubled down on attacks against NSW’s anti-corruption body while defending former premier Gladys Berejiklian who is under an integrity probe.

The prime minister launched a tirade against the investigation in parliament on Thursday after Liberal backbencher Bridget Archer crossed the floor in a bid to bring on debate about a federal integrity commission.

Mr Morrison wanted a federal body to focus on criminal investigations and not “vexatious, baseless, politically motivated and time wasting referrals”.

 

“Our model does provide procedural fairness,” he told ABC radio on Friday.

“[It] doesn’t allow for coercive powers to be used in an inappropriate way, that does safeguard against vexatious, baseless, politically motivated and time wasting referrals.

“This should focus on criminal conduct, not who your boyfriend is.”

Ms Berejiklian resigned under investigation for potential breaches of public trust linked to her secret five-year relationship with former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption needed to get the balance right after taking the scalps of three NSW premiers.

“I make the point that three premiers lost their jobs [and] in the case of two of them, [there were] not adverse findings against them,” he told Sky News.

“[But] we’ve yet to see, obviously, the final outcome of the issues involving Gladys Berejiklian.”

Multiple attempts by Labor and crossbench MPs and senators to set up an integrity commission have been blocked by the government.

 

The government has released its own draft model for consultation but has not brought it on for debate in parliament.

The government’s model has been criticised for being a toothless tiger and setting the bar for corruption too high.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/11/26/morruson-nsw-icac/

 

 

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ScoMo is an angry man. He is an ugly liar. He acts as a can’t do and won’t do — possibly too lucky and deceitful — Mr Magoo... Let's make sure he politically vanishes from this fair country's landscape...

 

assangez

gladys gloom....

Gladys Berejiklian's supporters have rallied around the former NSW premier, with some urging her to legally challenge the corruption watchdog's findings. 

Key points:
  • Experts say a legal challenge to the ICAC findings would be difficult
  • Gladys Berejiklian has flagged her legal team are looking through the findings
  • The ICAC revealed there were many personal conversations between Ms Berejiklian and Daryl Maguire it chose not to publicise 
 

The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) found that Ms Berejiklian engaged in "serious corrupt conduct" and had a conflict of interest that may have influenced her public duties. 

It also found she substantially breached the ministerial code, and condemned her withholding of an intimate relationship with Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire, which they concluded was of "profound importance" to her.

Yesterday, Ms Berejiklian flagged the report was being examined by her legal team.

READ MORE:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-30/gladys-berejiklian-supporters-rally-around-former-colleage/102545338

 

 

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poor gladys......

 

by  

 

Forget the notion of ‘poor Gladys’. Anti-corruption body, ICAC, has done its job in finding NSW’s former premier engaged in serious corrupt conduct, writes former NSW Minister Michael Yabsley.  

‘Our Gladys,’ as adoring parts of the NSW electorate saw her, now hovers in the invidious grey zone between hero and villain. This is familiar territory for Liberal Premiers in NSW: Nick Greiner was there over Terry Metherell, Barry O’Farrell over a bottle of wine. 

Now Gladys Berejiklian is there for what the ICAC terms “grave misconduct” and “breach of public trust” and more generally, a failure to disclose. For Gladys, this is unambiguously serious stuff. 

ICAC has today told us partly what we already know: that Daryl McGuire, the former premier’s former boyfriend, is up to his eyeballs in corrupt conduct and is in the process of having the book thrown at him. Big time. 

Shades of grey

Gladys Berejiklian on the other hand is now a tainted one-time hero. For Gladys, this is something of a Ben Roberts-Smith moment, where a bright light has been shone on wrong doing but criminality remains a shade of largely unexplored grey.  ICAC is not recommending criminal charges agianst her. 

The ICAC Report is an uncomfortable reminder that arguably much corrupt behaviour does not fall within the scope of criminal behaviour. This is anathema to many in the community at large. 

So why, in the wake of the ICAC inquiry into the life and times of Daryl Maguire, is it still a case of  ‘poor Gladys’.

Yes, we have all had a Daryl in our lives … but

From the political class, including the Macquarie Street press gallery through to the punters in outer Western Suburbs electorates, we were told that this self-confessed “goody two shoes” – and the popularly elected head girl from central casting – could do no wrong. 

‘Leave our Gladys alone’ was the message that echoed around the State.

Other mere mortals would’ve been ripped apart limb by limb before being shown the door within hours of her relationship with dopey Daryl being revealed. That was in October 2020. She lasted another year before resigning. 

Teflon performance

Nick Greiner, Barry O’Farrell, Michael Gallacher, Margaret Cunneen QC and a host of other luminaries, who have been called to account by the ICAC, were dress-circle spectators to Gladys’s teflon performance.

Part of the explanation for this super-human but disarming performance is the discernible love affair between the public and the modest, believable, hard-working, no-nonsense daughter of Armenian migrants, for whom English was her second language.

“Having a long surname and being a woman” might matter in politics, but it is not on the ICAC’s radar. Let’s hope this never changes. 

Gladys smashed the glass ceiling without having to remind us ad nauseam how difficult it is to do it.  But to say Gladys has paid the ultimate career and reputation price for ‘kissing a frog’, or being ‘unlucky in love’ is disingenuous. It always was.  

The ‘unlucky in love’ line is one of those smoke screens that comes out when the accused is on the back foot. Smoke screens have been used throughout history to defend the indefensible through to the highly suspect.

But the romance with the electorate was not as benign and organic as this picture paints. Nor was the love affair with Maguire, as ICAC has found. 

A different ball game

The line that ‘everyone has had a Daryl in their lives,’ bowled over the last line of resistance to Gladys’ explanation about how all this went so wrong. Yes, the electorate nodded furiously ‘we all have had a Daryl,’  – leave our Gladys alone!

Yes, we have all had a Daryl in our lives. That’s just part of the occasionally lamentable tapestry of life. But when ‘having a Daryl’ intersects with the job of running the state, it’s a different ball game. 

Having a secret boyfriend who turned out to be a crooked colleague was not a case of naivete. Failure to disclose, not about having a boyfriend, but being privy to at least part of what was going on in McGuire’s nefarious world, was always on the wrong side of the integrity line. By a country mile.

It’s not that Gladys “stuffed up in her personal life,” as she was keen to stress. The truth, as far as the ICAC is concerned, is that Gladys stuffed up in her professional life as Premier of NSW. 

It’s worth remembering that McGuire’s track record is old news, going back to 2018 when the ICAC first found to be corrupt as he masterminded an audacious and utterly corrupt series of deals, reminiscent of Rex Jackson and Eddie Obeid days.

Apart from the shocking findings of corrupt conduct against Gladys, the second-tier, parenthetic focus has been on the excruciating length of time taken for the ICAC to report on Berejiklian. 

Excruciatingly long, but unjustified?

Let’s not pretend dragging the chain is unique to the ICAC. Nor should we claim that lengthy lead times in investigative reports being handed down is without justification, without knowing what is going on behind the scenes. 

From complicated murder and white-collar criminal investigations through to aviation and other transport tragedies, the processes aimed at uncovering the truth are notorious for moving at snails’ pace. Is that justified? Maybe, but perhaps not. Let the authorities involved be answerable for how long they take – including the ICAC.

Two footnotes. Firstly, this is a bad day for Gladys Berejiklian. A very bad day. Her life is irreversibly changed, but certainly not destroyed. She is a bright, authentic, admired, even loved, figure in the annals of public life in NSW. She has abundant prospects ahead of her. 

A return to politics is not one of them.

Get set for more ICAC bashing

Secondly, we are about to witness another round of ICAC bashing. That has been going on for over three decades, ever since the corruption fighting Commission, with some well aired imperfections, was established. 

The ICAC’s harshest critics are from the inner sanctum of politics, where arguably the most visible corruption call outs have taken place – now and most notably with Gladys Berejiklian. 

Outbreaks of bipartisanship, especially when they affect the largely self-granted benefits, entitlements, privileges, governance and freedoms of members of parliament, public officials and political parties should be treated with scepticism and thoroughly raked over. 

No one should underestimate the power, ability and willingness of the political class to look after itself. Bi-partisan support for policy, including  reform of the ICAC, may mean in the most practical sense a green light, but there are also occasions when it should mean a red flag.  Watch this space. 

 

https://michaelwest.com.au/gladys-berejiklian-was-not-unlucky-in-love-she-stuffed-up-something-far-more-precious/

 

 

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