Trifecta of ICAC trips-ups leads to downfall of Liberal premiers

A poor choice in a boyfriend and a grant to a regional shooting club will be added to a bottle of Grange and a job for the boys in the trifecta of trip-ups that has seen the downfall of three Liberal premiers.

While two former Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald look set to be jailed in the wake of industrial-sized corruption uncovered by the Independent Commission Against Corruption, a chain of less spectacular events has seen the political demise of Liberal premiers Nick Greiner, Barry O’Farrell and now Gladys Berejiklian.

Then NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian fronting the media after her revelations before a 2020 ICAC inquiry.Credit:Jessica Hromas

“Love is blind” is as good a political epitaph as any for Ms Berejiklian. Her choice of the backbencher nicknamed “Dodgy” Daryl Maguire as her secret lover was one thing, but her willingness to turn a blind eye to his activities appears to have been fatal.

Under the ICAC Act, a Minister of the Crown has a public duty to notify the commission of possible corrupt conduct. In an intercepted call with Mr Maguire in 2017, he was heard rattling on about his efforts to broker a $330 million land sale at Badgerys Creek. “I don’t need to know that bit,” said the then-premier, appearing to turn a blind eye to his worrying activities.

Almost 30 years ago ICAC found that then-premier Greiner had behaved corruptly in obtaining the resignation of Terry Metherell, a political rival, by offering him a lucrative public service job.

Mr Greiner said at the time: “If what the Minister for the Environment did and what I did was corrupt, then in my judgment every political appointment that has ever been made in this state was corrupt.”

Terry Metherell and Nick Greiner in July 1988. Credit:Archive

But Commissioner Ian Temby maintained there was a statutory requirement that any such appointment be made on merit and that the premier had sanctioned the appointment of a man who had become a political opponent without even an interview.

“I can assure the premier that the many people I spoke to at the time all agreed that the Metherell appointment was just about the silliest and shabbiest deal that had been pulled since the “Fine Cotton” ring-in,” fumed A.P. Durant in a letter to the Herald.

Mr Temby left it for parliament to decide whether Mr Greiner should continue as premier. In June 1992 three independents Clover Moore, Peter Macdonald and John Hatton sealed his fate by threatening a vote of no-confidence in the government if he did not step down. They reminded the premier that it was he who had declared that the ICAC Act must apply to anyone in public office, with “no exceptions and no exemptions”.

The Court of Appeal, in a 2-1 vote, overturned Mr Temby’s findings.

In 2014, the ICAC’s Operation Credo revealed how a cabinet minute allegedly doctored by Labor ministers Tony Kelly and Joe Tripodi almost resulted in a billion-dollar windfall to Australian Water Holdings, a company with links to the family of Eddie Obeid.

While the DPP is still deciding on whether this political potboiler will result in criminal charges against the former Labor officials, it was Liberal premier Barry O’Farrell who inadvertently lost his premiership.

The commission’s forensic accountants found an American Express payment of $2978 with a reconciliation that read “Gift to Barry O’Farrell and wife” in the water company’s accounts. Further inquiries revealed it was a $3000 bottle of Penfold’s Grange Hermitage which was delivered to Mr O’Farrell’s home not long after he’d become premier in March 2011.

The sender, Nick Di Girolamo, was trying to get the newly elected Liberal government to grant his water infrastructure company a billion-dollar public-private partnership. Mr Di Girolomo was later appointed to the State Water Corporation.

NSW premier Barry O’Farrell said he did not receive the $3000 Grange. “Having checked with my wife as recently as today we are both certain that it was not received.” Credit:Sasha Woolley

When Mr O’Farrell was questioned about the bottle of Grange, he was adamant that he would have remembered it, “particularly one that was of my birth year,” he said.

After leaving the witness box that day, the premier repeated all his denials before a packed media conference, providing the press with all the grabs they needed of Mr O’Farrell staking his premiership on the bottle of wine or lack thereof.

The following morning when Mr Di Girolamo produced a handwritten note from the premier thanking him for the “wonderful wine” and noting that “1959 was a good year.” His position as premier had become untenable. It wasn’t because of the ICAC, it was because of the brutal reality of politics.

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