Anthony Albanese refuses to call for Gladys Berejiklian's resignation and slams anti-corruption body for airing phone tap recordings of her speaking to her disgraced ex-MP lover

Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese refuses to demand NSW Premier quit

Gladys Berejiklian's leadership is shaky after anti-corruption probe revelations

NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay wants her to resign over lover Daryl Maguire links

Mr Albanese said Independent Commission Against Corruption privacy breach 

Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese is refusing to call for Gladys Berejiklian's resignation following taped phone call revelations about her secret lover. 

The New South Wales Premier's leadership is shaky after she admitted to the Independent Commission Against Corruption she had been in a clandestine relationship since 2015 with disgraced former Liberal MP and property lobbyist Daryl Maguire.

Mr Albanese has nonetheless declined to call for her resignation, putting him at odds with NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay.

 

Read more:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8832867/Anthony-Albanese-slams-NSW-ICAC-playing-private-calls-Gladys-Berejiklian-talking-boyfriend.html?src=ilaw

 

 

As a dear friend says:

 

If you or I, or any other ordinary citizen, fail to report an indictable crime in NSW, we can be packed-off to jail for up to two years.

 

In NSW, a breach of public trust is an indictable crime punishable by up to five years in jail but “Our Gladys” said not a word.

 

She is guilty as sin in my view & by the same standards that you & I & everyone-else is expected to observe, she should be in the slammer.

 

Woof! See also: a corrupt old town... in before the zingers of the future…

The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, dined at Daryl Maguire’s Wagga Wagga home with a business associate he partnered with to run a cash-for-visa scheme, Icac has heard.

A massive dump of exhibits uploaded to the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s website on Thursday evening also reveals Maguire tried to convince the federal oil and gas peak lobby group to help him sell Chinese mining technology to its clients.

One of the key allegations against Maguire is that he used his office to help run a cash-for-visa scheme through his silent involvement in a company known as G8wayinternational Pty Ltd, which claimed it had access to “high levels of government” and offered introduction services and visas to Chinese business groups for money.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/16/gladys-berejiklian-dined-with-daryl-maguire-and-his-partner-in-visa-scheme-icac-documents-show

 

Read from top.

If any other Australian leader had given the sort of evidence Gladys Berejiklian did to the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Monday, they'd probably have been out of their position by the end of the day.

The NSW Premier was protected, in the immediate term, in part because the disclosures about her five-year secret relationship with disgraced former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire seemed so bizarrely out of character with her unsullied past and apparent conservatism in her private life.

Also, she has been a highly competent Premier, especially during COVID. The pandemic fireproofed her.

Her political performance this year is certainly one reason why the Prime Minister is standing with her. As Scott Morrison has said repeatedly, NSW has set the "gold standard" during the coronavirus crisis.

But Berejiklian's personal and political reputation should not obscure the seriousness of her actions, or rather her inactions, in relation to Maguire.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-16/gladys-berejiklian-icac-maguire/12771580

 

 

Read from top. 

 

Gold standard???? Fuck!!! 

The Flowers of Evil Daryl

Bribes (sins)

— Pride

Daryl dressed in gold, purple and pink beauties.
His genius and love were easy buddies.

I kneaded mud and turned him into gold.

He carried the strength of his heart in his eyes.
        In Wagga Wagga, like dessert with fire and load,
        As strong as a beast, as free as fleeting lies.



Apologies to Baudelaire.



                               Jules Letambour.

The INDEFENSIBLE was a premierSHIP that should have been sunk off Wagga Wagga's Murrumbidgee River shores, by a salvo from HMS ICAC, but all men and women of COMPROMISED POLITICS manned pumps made in HYPOCRISY county, all disguised as GOOD WILL agents, femo-fatalists and BLEEDING HEARTS...

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile at the gate of purgatory:

 

The Liberal Party appears to have rallied around the besieged NSW premier, Gladys Berejiklian, despite the ongoing revelations from the ICAC investigation into her former long-time partner Daryl Maguire, who has admitted to carrying out blatantly corrupt activities while he was the member for Wagga Wagga. Berejiklian’s five-year lapse of judgement will be passed over, apparently, with three of her senior ministers expressing support for her leadership today: Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello, Planning Minister Rob Stokes and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet. The treasurer, who as deputy leader would be the logical frontrunner to replace Berejiklian were he not recently implicated in the icare scandal, refused to say whether he would put his hand up for the top job in the event of a spill or resignation, mouthing those ill-fated words: “The premier has our full support.” Prime Minister Scott Morrison, too, has hitched himself to the Berejiklian wagon, telling reporters: “Gladys Berejiklian is the premier that NSW needs in these difficult times. She has been an extraordinary leader, particularly setting the right bar, the gold standard, as I’ve called it, when it comes to contact tracing and testing arrangements here, and outbreak containment. Keeping NSW open while keeping NSW safe … no one has done that, I think, better than Premier Berejiklian. And she has very strong support, obviously, from the deputy premier and the many members of her team.” It is a political gift for state Opposition leader Jodi McKay, who ought to be grateful that the Coalition appears intent on sticking with such a damaged leader, who will be asked questions about Maguire all the way to the next state election, in March 2023. 

Berejiklian keeps insisting that she has “done nothing wrong”, but the point is precisely that she did nothing. It is almost inconceivable that she did not know what Maguire was up to – as The Daily Telegraph reports, she even had dinners in Wagga with Maguire and his business partner in the cash-for-visas scheme, Phil Elliott, and his partner. 

This week’s ICAC revelations underline the importance of not just having an anti-corruption agency but having one with the right powers. Despite the nation’s collective shock at the flagrant corruption continually being exposed in NSW, it would be naive to believe that similarly dodgy deals are not being done in other states and territories. We know from history – through WA Inc or the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era in Queensland, to take just two examples – that NSW politics is not alone in being susceptible to corruption. The fact is NSW has the best and most powerful ICAC, courtesy of the former Liberal premier Nick Greiner, who established it in the 1980s.    

The federal independent member for Indi, Helen Haines, took advantage of the furore to highlight that, in the face of the Morrison government’s failure to introduce its own promised legislation for a Commonwealth Integrity Commission (CIC), she would introduce her own private member’s bill when parliament reconvenes in late October. In a tweet, Haines highlighted the differences between her proposed Australian Federal Integrity Commission (AFIC) and the Morrison government’s proposed CIC: Haines’s AFIC would be able to have public hearings (CIC wouldn’t); anyone could make a referral to AFIC (CIC wouldn’t take public referrals); AFIC would have full retrospectivity (CIC wouldn’t); AFIC would use a commonsense definition of corruption (CIC would only look at criminal conduct); and AFIC would have a focus on prevention, education and training (CIC would be “anti-corruption, not pro-integrity”). It is a handy list for when Attorney-General Christian Porter finally gets around to introducing a bill to parliament. Much as it would like to, the Morrison government can’t put it off forever.

 

 

Read more:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/paddy-manning/2020/16/2020/1602823625/digging

 

 

Read from top.

Legal experts have warned that Gladys Berejiklian is likely to have breached the state’s ministerial code of conduct by failing to disclose her secret relationship with the disgraced former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire.

In the witness box of the Independent Commission Against Corruption last week, the New South Wales premier defined her involvement with Maguire as a “close personal relationship” but said it had not been of “sufficient status” to disclose.

But on Sunday, Berejiklian said in an interview with Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph she had been in love with Maguire and thought they “could” eventually marry.

Labor says the disclosure, made in a soft-ball interview with the celebrity and gossip columnist Annette Sharp, contradicts the careful wording the premier has previously used to describe the relationship she maintained with Maguire since at least 2015.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/19/gladys-berejiklian-accused-of-breaching-code-of-conduct-after-admitting-she-hoped-to-marry-mp

 

 

Read from top.

The Auditor General's anticipated report into the funding arrangements for the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) will be handed down today.

The findings come a week after the Premier gave evidence to the corruption watchdog about former MP Daryl Maguire with whom she had a secret relationship for five years.

The ICAC has previously raised funding concerns and pushed for an overhaul to the arrangements.

Legal advice given to the ICAC, and tabled in Parliament, described the funding model as unlawful.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-20/sydney-news-north-head-fire-photographs-show-extent-of-damage/12783618

 

 

Read from top.

Corruption claims, cash for visas connected to a disgraced politician ousted as a premier’s secret lover, and more evidence on the suspicious overpayment for airport land.

It’s hard to believe so many scandals could fit into one single day of Senate estimates. But Labor senators raising the claims against the Coalition on Monday did their best to pack in as many punches as possible.

Among the revelations was news that federal immigration officials have opened an investigation into disgraced former NSW MP Daryl Maguire’s “cash for visas” scam.

The inquiry will – among other things – attempt to find out whether federal politicians were involved in the rort.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure department reported a staff member had been stood down and more workers were under scrutiny with no fewer than four investigations into the $30 million Leppington Triangle land purchase.

In the controversial deal, the federal government paid $30 million for a block of land for Western Sydney Airport that was later valued at just $3 million.

Senate estimates hearings can often be dull, but not so on Monday.

Maguire ‘cash for visas’ investigated

Disgraced former NSW MP Daryl Maguire is already under investigation by the state’s ICAC, but he now faces fresh scrutiny from the federal Home Affairs department.

Last week, after his secret five-year relationship with state premier Gladys Berejiklian was revealed, he admitted to running his political office for personal benefit, including a ‘cash for visas’ scheme for Chinese nationals.

As part of his G8way International business, Mr Maguire’s company set up foreigners with potentially dodgy work visas through businesses in his electorate of Wagga Wagga, netting up to $20,000 per placement.

 

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2020/10/20/cash-for-visas-maguire-senate-estimates/

 

 

Gladys and her secret beau should be "placed in a shaff bag and dropped out to sea"... Same with the other "corrupt" officials... etc etc...