Berejiklian was corrupt — ICAC’s findings matter and should echo outside NSW

Corruption in Australia has a specific image. Money in brown paper bags. Bureaucrats on the take from developers. Politicians giving themselves and their mates lucrative opportunities. And the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has served up plenty of those in its time.

According to ICAC, Daryl Maguire fits the pattern: an MP on the grift, always looking for an opportunity to make money and unafraid of using his political connections — including his girlfriend, the treasurer and later premier — to exploit them. In corrupt scheme after scheme, the former Wagga Wagga MP abused his office, public resources, code of conduct requirements and basic standards of integrity, albeit to little gain. It’s traditional “black” or “hard” corruption.

In contrast, Gladys Berejiklian gained nothing material from her corrupt conduct: intervening in decisions to allocate taxpayer funds; failing to disclose her conflict of interest; refusing to report Maguire’s obvious corruption to ICAC. There were no brown paper bags, except the ones she or Maguire brought the shopping home in at their shared residence. No lucrative opportunities, no private money ready to flow if a result could be delivered.

But she acted corruptly nonetheless, by allowing her affection for Maguire to influence decisions to allocate public money, to breach the ministerial code of conduct, and to fail to comply with her statutory obligation to report corruption. Her corrupt conduct was of the softer, “grey” variety — but corruption nonetheless.

To reach that conclusion, ICAC has relied in part on transcripts of messages between the two. Like any exchanges between intimates, they make for embarrassing reading. Only a strong public interest case justifies publishing such material (one that has never existed in the case of Brittany Higgins, for example), necessitated by Berejiklian’s insistence on downplaying her relationship with Maguire to ICAC. The material demonstrates the depth of their relationship, and thus the former premier’s motivation to behave the way she did — to look after someone she described as “family”.

The downplaying extends to many of her former colleagues, a number of journalists (beyond those at The Australian, which has a visceral hatred of the threat anti-corruption bodies pose to the Coalition), and even Labor Premier Chris Minns. Voters could have been mistaken for thinking he was talking about an ICAC finding against one of his own yesterday.

Part of that is a reluctance by major party politicians to accept that grants allocation decisions contrary to the public interest are corruption, not just the “no-one likes it but we all do it” sport of pork-barrelling. Politicians have been slow to accept the fact that giving them the discretion to decide who gets taxpayer money inevitably leads to partisan decisions and amounts to an abuse of public office and the overriding of the public interest. However much they might decry pork-barrelling from opposition, the moment politicians are in government, they crave the ability to make allocation decisions and resist attempts to impose scrutiny, accountability and public interest objectives on the process.

Berejiklian, a renowned pork-barreller when in office, went the extra mile in pork-barrelling Maguire’s electorate, elevating the now-notorious Australian Clay Target Association building proposal for consideration and interfering in the bureaucratic process of considering its (lack of) merits. That she failed to disclose her conflict of interest (as she failed to do for another project of Maguire’s that she backed, the Riverina Conservatorium of Music) was of lesser import than her active facilitation of a proposal to spend taxpayer money on something that should never have even been considered.

But whether her decision to interfere in grant allocation processes was motivated by love, politics or (likely) both, it was corrupt conduct. One of ICAC’s recommendations is that NSW Parliament drum into MPs and ministers that “public power to appoint to a public office must be exercised for a public purpose, not for a private or a political purpose. Further, a public power cannot be exercised in relation to the location of a public facility because it will assist the reelection of a party member, rather than it being the proper place for it.”

ICAC made a point of finding that Berejiklian also acted corruptly by failing in her statutory duty to tell ICAC of Maguire’s corruption. Some in the media think Berejiklian “failing to dob in her boyfriend” is a minor offence — overlooking not merely that she was obliged to “dob”, boyfriend or not, but that as premier of a state, one that for generations has been riddled with corruption at the highest levels, her duty as the most senior public official made informing ICAC fundamental to good governance.

Corruption thrives in darkness, in looking after mates and the exchange of favours, in keeping silent so the giggle keeps going — and in looking after your partner.

The findings rightly shift the goalposts on corruption away from the politically convenient threshold of criminal conduct to the abuse of public office and public money, and the failure to adhere to basic integrity requirements. Is interfering in a grant allocation process to look after your boyfriend as corrupt as pocketing a bribe from a developer? Yes, it is — pork-barrelling costs taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and sees deserving projects miss out in favour of politically more convenient spending.

The federal National Anti-Corruption Commission that is about to open its doors has a similarly expansive definition of corrupt conduct. It will look at breaches of public trust, abuse of office, misuse of information or causing a public official to behave dishonestly or in a biased way (the conduct must also be serious or systemic).

The broader remit is particularly important given there are likely to be fewer traditional bribery-style corruption cases at the federal level, due to the lack of direct power in areas like property, though allegations against Stuart Robert, which he strongly denies, might prove an exception.

The Berejiklian judgment moves the corruption debate into a sensitive place for major party politicians, around how they make discretionary decisions about public resources. It’s no longer just about brown paper bags and cash-stuffed envelopes.