Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian has failed in her bid to overturn a finding of serious corrupt conduct against her.
On Friday morning, a 2-1 majority of the NSW Court of Appeal dismissed Berejiklian’s application for judicial review of the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s findings that were handed down last June.
It comes after Berejiklian resigned from her role as NSW Premier in October 2021, after the state’s corruption watchdog investigated a number of public funding decisions she made while in a secret relationship with former Wagga Wagga MP, Daryl Maguire.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption did not recommend any criminal charges against Berejkilian, but did make a finding of serious corrupt conduct against her and Maguire.
The report stated that Berejiklian breached public trust in 2016 and 2017 in relation to grants to the Australian Clay Target Association in Maguire’s Wagga Wagga electorate, without disclosing the relationship she had with Maguire. It noted she was in a “position of a conflict of interest between her public duty and her private interest, which could objectively have the potential to influence the performance of her public duty”.
The report said Berejiklian engaged in serious corrupt conduct by failing to notify ICAC of her suspicion that Maguire had engaged in activities which concerned, or might have concerned, corrupt conduct.
In relation to Maguire, the ICAC said he improperly used his office, and the resources to which he had access to as a member of parliament, between 2012 and August 2018.
Berejikilian filed a judicial review in September, with her lawyers arguing that the assistant commissioner who presided over the inquiry, Ruth McColl, acted beyond her authority in preparing the report because her term of office had expired on October 31, 2022. She was engaged as a consultant beyond that point.
The NSW Court of Appeal dismissed Berejiklian’s arguments and dismissed the case with costs.