Former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire is revealing himself to be ‘domineering, self-obsessed and bordering on abusive’ as more of his exchanges with Gladys Berejiklian are played at the ICAC inquiry.
Audio of telephone calls between Mr Maguire and the former NSW premier are coming with a ‘language warning’ before being played by counsel assisting Scott Robertson, due to the former MP’s foul language.
Ms Berejiklian’s successor Dominic Perrottet was also dragged into the corruption inquiry.
A tapped phone call featured Ms Berejiklian speaking about funding projects in Mr Maguire’s seat of Wagga Wagga and saying of Mr Perrottet: ‘He does just what I ask him to.’
During the call, Mr Maguire said he ‘heckled’ the then treasurer Mr Perrottet and said he would have a ‘f**king riot on your hands’ if his electorate did not get funding for projects including Wagga Wagga Base Hospital and Tumut Hospital.
In one intercepted conversation, Mr Maguire complains to Ms Berejiklian about a series of issues.
‘The Tumut bomb fire, the Tumbarumba bomb fire going, I’ve got all those god damn issues going …. he’s got that f***ing bushfire happening in Tumbarumba and there’s no money for Tumut hospital…. hello, guys, this is the key to win the god damn vote up there…,’ he said.
Ms Berejiklian responds by quietly saying, ‘Can you please not get yourself worked up again because all you do is shout at me sometimes.’
‘I’m an excitable person, that’s all,’ Maguire responds.
Audio of telephone calls between Mr Maguire and the former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian are coming with a ‘language warning’ before being played because of Mr Maguire’s foul language
‘Can you please not get yourself worked up again because all you do is shout at me sometimes,’ Ms Berejiklian is heard to say to Mr Maguire in one secretly recorded conversation
‘Domineering, self-obsessed, bordering on abusive at times,’ A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw Tweeted about Daryl Maguire on Friday
‘He treats her with disdain,’ Ms Grimshaw Tweeted, referring to Mr Maguire’s recorded conversations with Ms Berejiklian
Veteran journalist Tracy Grimshaw, host of A Current Affair, took to Twitter to provide her view of some of Mr Maguire’s distasteful remarks.
‘He treats her with disdain,’ Ms Grimshaw Tweeted, referring to Mr Maguire’s recorded conversations with Ms Berejiklian.
‘Domineering, self-obsessed, bordering on abusive at times.
‘Valid investigation but excruciating.’
Author Sally Rugg also Tweeted: ‘Irrelevant to ICAC proceedings but imagine talking to your partner as rudely as Daryl Maguire talked to Gladys Berejiklian, my god…’
Sky News commentator and NSW Liberal Democrat Senate candidate John Ruddick also weighed in on Mr Maguire’s character.
‘Everything else aside, Daryl Maguire sounds like an absolute p***k of a person who is a serious bully … and Gladys, the premier of the great state of NSW, is cowered by this jerk.’
‘Irrelevant to ICAC proceedings but imagine talking to your partner as rudely as Daryl Maguire talked to Gladys Berejiklian, my god…’ Tweeted author Sally Rugg
Sky News commentator and NSW Liberal Democrat Senate candidate John Ruddick weighed in on Mr Maguire’s character. ‘Everything else aside, Daryl Maguire sounds like an absolute p***k of a person’
In one call played at the hearing this morning Mr Maguire boasts that people are ‘s**t scared’ of him.
‘They’ve invited all these people to shake hands and suck d***s,’ he said.
‘The problem is, They’re all that f***ing s**t scared of me now and they’re, and they’re – they don’t know what I’ll do. So whether I’ll just go feral or, or whatever.
‘F*** them. They can get f***ed.
‘If they wanna solve a problem, they want to resolve an issue, then they better get off their fat arses and make something happen.’
‘He treats her with disdain,’ A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw Tweeted about Mr Maguire’s recorded conversations with Ms Berejiklian. ‘Domineering, self-obsessed, bordering on abusive at times’
Some social media users social media users attacked Mr Maguire’s behaviour towards Ms Berejiklian as ‘coercive’ and ‘controlling’: Pictured: Mr Maguire appearing at the ICAC hearing
Other social media users also attacked Mr Maguire’s behaviour towards Ms Berejiklian as ‘controlling’.
‘The way he speaks to Gladys Berejiklian is despicable,’ one person Tweeted. ‘I would have knocked him out for speaking to me like that.’
‘I would hate to see how he treats people he isn’t in a relationship with,’ another person posted.
Ms Berejiklian was pressured by Mr Robertson on Friday morning as to why she did not disclose her relationship with Mr Maguire.
‘We didn’t share finances, we didn’t live together, I wasn’t confident in his commitment, I did not regard him as a member of my family,’ she replied.
‘I didn’t regard there to be any impact on my public responsibility and I did not think the relationship had sufficient status.’
The name of the current NSW premier was raised when Mr Maguire said Mr Perrottet had told him there was no money in the budget for those projects but there was money for a planned crack down on graffiti.
Ms Berejiklian responded: ‘I’ll fix it’.
She called back later and said: ‘I’ve already got you the Wagga hospital. I just spoke to Dom (Perrottet) … He just does what I ask him to.’
She added: ‘We’re giving Wagga more money than ever before,’ she said. ‘I just got you the one hundred and seventy mill … you can’t tell me you’ve been hard done by.’