Gladys Berejiklian, ICAC: Stuart Ayres defends Daryl Maguire’s pet project

NSW Trade and Industry Minister Stuart Ayres has told an Independent Commission Against Corruption probe into former premier Gladys Berejiklian that he thought a controversial gun club project had ‘a lot of merit’.  

Mr Ayres was Sport Minister in 2016 when then Liberal MP Daryl Maguire was lobbying the state government for a $5.5 million grant for the Australian Clay Target Association (ACTA) in his electorate of Wagga Wagga. 

Ms Berejiklian, who was then the NSW Treasurer, was in an undisclosed relationship with Mr Maguire at the time. 

The ACTA project is one of two ‘case studies’ at the centre of the inquiry. 

Mr Ayres is not accused of any wrongdoing. 

Mr Ayres told Mr Maguire in March 2016 that he could not provide funding available for the project. Mr Maguire wrote again to the minister, seeking a meeting. 

In mid-2016 Mr Ayres visited ACTA’s site in Wagga Wagga.

‘I thought the project had a lot of merit. They had a world championship (clay shooting) event coming up in 2018,’ Mr Ayres told ICAC counsel Scott Robertson.

He said he thought increased tourism to Wagga Wagga was a benefit of the proposal.

‘I was quite predisposed particularly to the clubhouse concept,’ he said.

Mr Ayres agreed with Mr Robertson that Mr Maguire had made representations to him multiple times about the funding. 

He said he was ‘almost certain’ those representations were made in person and not just in writing, but this was not unusual and many MPs were ‘assertive’ in making a case for projects in their regions.

Mr Ayres also said it was ‘pretty standard activity for local members’ to contact the treasurer as well as a particular minister about a project they were advocating for.

As a former NSW Treasurer, Ms Berejiklian has a head for numbers. But the number 0.88 is not one she will be have been pleased was aired at ICAC yesterday.

The ICAC heard evidence from a senior public servant that he understood in early 2017 that then-NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and her office wanted a project funding proposal revisited, after it failed to meet government benchmarks.

The proposal was for her secret boyfriend Daryl Maguire’s pet project – a $5.5million clay target shooting centre in Wagga Wagga. 

An initial business case had estimated the benefit to cost ratio (BCR) for the project being pushed by Mr Maguire at 0.88, which was too low to justify state agency Infrastructure NSW backing the plan. 

A BCR of below 1 meant a project would not return to the state as much money as it cost to fund it. 

A subsequent version of the business case put the ratio at 1.1, which was high enough to justify funding.

The public servant said he was given the impression Ms Berejiklian’s office wanted the critical figure ‘revisited’. 

‘I was clearly of the impression that the premier’s office and the premier wanted that business case revisited,’ Chris Hanger, deputy secretary in the Department of Regional NSW, told the ICAC on Thursday.  

The $5.5million grant for an upgrade of facilities at the Australian Clay Target Association (ACTA) in Wagga Wagga, in Mr Maguire’s electorate, was conditional on a satisfactory business case for it being finalised.   

Mr Hanger was asked by Scott Robertson, counsel for ICAC, what he would have done if he had known the time about the relationship between Ms Berejiklian and Mr Maguire. 

He replied that he would have ‘put in place ways of identifying and managing … conflicts of interest’ and notified his senior managers.

He agreed this was due to there being a potential conflict of interest that needed to be managed.

In earlier evidence, Mr Hanger said he first became aware of the Wagga Wagga grant after the state government’s expenditure review committee (ERC) made the decision and that he took this ‘as a positive indication that the government wanted this project supported’. 

At the time, Ms Berejiklian was the state Treasurer and head of the ERC. 

However, in an email received by Mr Hanger in early 2017, another bureaucrat recalled a conversation with then NSW Office of Sport director Michael Toohey.

Mr Toohey was said to have indicated the government was interested in providing funding to ‘though the bureaucracy does not support the project’. 

As she stepped out after one of the most difficult days of her political life, Ms Berejiklian couldn’t stop grinning. 

But her broad smile may be short lived given the corruption watchdog has announced her former boyfriend Daryl Maguire will give evidence next week.  

Joining him on the witness list for the ICAC hearings is her former deputy premier John Barilaro, one-time chief of staff Sarah Cruickshank, and Ms Berejiklian herself.  

But she does at least have one heavyweight figure in her corner. 

Graham Richardson – who was once known as the ‘Senator for Kneecaps’ – jumped to Ms Berejiklian’s defence in a radio interview on Thursday.  

ICAC is investigating if Ms Berejiklian is corrupt. 

Mr Richardson said he and Ms Berejiklian ‘have never been close’ but the idea that she is corrupt is ‘absurd’. 

‘There’s always going to be personality differences, and she and I have had our share,’ he told presenter Ben Fordham on Sydney radio station 2GB.

‘All of us need to stand up and say that this ICAC thing has got out of hand. If she is corrupt then I don’t understand the meaning of the word,’ he said. 

Mr Richardson said he has known Ms Bereijklian 20 years ‘and there’s no way in the world you can describe this woman as anything but an honest woman.

‘I think it’s just terrible what’s happened to her,’ he said. 

He said ‘the only crime she’s ever committed’ is to not openly acknowledge her relationship with disgraced former Liberal MP Daryl Maguire. 

Mr Richardson said ICAC has ruined people’s reputations, even when ultimately no wrongdoing was found. 

‘You have to give people’s reputation a legitimate weighting in the decisions that you’re going to make, and I don’t believe that there’s ever a good reason, ever, that you destroy reputations when there’s no evidence of corruption.’ 

One of two ‘case study’ grants at the centre of the inquiry is a $5.5million grant given to a gun club in Mr Maguire’s electorate of Wagga Wagga when his then secret partner Ms Berejiklian was the NSW state Treasurer. The grant was passed by the government’s expenditure review committee (ERC).  

‘If you get a situation like that where there’s unanimity, it’s very very hard to then say the grant should not have been made,’ said Mr Richardson. 

But the former Labor senator had a warning about pork barrelling by both state and federal governments. ‘You make sure when you do these things that there’s a good case for them. 

‘You also make sure that you don’t give it all to your own side (in electorates that vote for you). When you do, that’s when you get into strife,’ he said.  

After a day of sensational evidence at the ICAC on Wednesday, counsel assisting ICAC Scott Robertson began Thursday’s proceedings by saying ‘I expect today to be quite a full day of evidence.’

The inquiry was expected to run for ten days but Mr Robertson said there is ‘quite a full and perhaps ambitious program’ of witnesses next week and there is a ‘serious prospect’ the inquiry will need to be extended into a third week.

He said Ms Berejiklian and Mr Maguire will need to be given a fair opportunity to test the evidence presented to the inquiry.    

However, in an email received by Mr Hanger in early 2017, another bureaucrat recalled a conversation with then NSW Office of Sport director Michael Toohey.

Mr Toohey was said to have indicated the government was interested in providing funding to ‘though the bureaucracy does not support the project’. 

He gave evidence to ICAC on Monday that he did not regard the proposal as urgent and it was not accompanied by a strong business case or feasibility study. 

Mr Hanger said the state department of industry engaged a company to produce a business case for the upgrade of facilities at ACTA in Wagga Wagga.  

Mr Hanger said ‘in the vast majority of cases’ the government does not pay an organisation seeking state funding to get a business case to support their proposal.

He agreed with Mr Robertson the difference in this case was the ERC had effectively directed that the business case be developed because it had already made a conditional grant to the association.

Mr Hanger told the ICAC that Peter Minucos, an adviser to the then NSW deputy premier John Barilaro, was a key figure in developing a business case for the ACTA facilities upgrade.

He said Mr Minucos, who is due to give evidence at ICAC on Monday along with Mr Barilaro, was the ‘key contact’ and was ‘heavily involved in the development of the project, in particular the advice back to the consultants … in regards to an addendum to the original business case’.

Neither Mr Minucos nor Mr Barilaro are accused of wrongdoing.

Mr Robertson asked if it was ‘unusual to have someone in a ministerial office involved in procuring a business case as an addendum to a business case?’ 

‘It’s peculiar for them to be involved in advice around that in the way Mr Minucos did,’ Mr Hanger answered.

Mr Robertson asked: ‘As a longtime public servant with responsibility for procurement of infrastructure, did you regard it as inappropriate that there was the kind of advice … provided at the political level rather than the agency or departmental level?’ 

‘We indicated that it wasn’t … where or how they should be providing advice,’ Mr Hanger said, adding that this view was expressed to Mr Barilaro’s office.

Mr Hanger also understood there was interest from the ‘premier herself’, Gladys Berejiklian, who replaced Mr Baird following his resignation in January 2017.

‘I was clearly of the impression that the premier’s office and the premier wanted that business case revisited,’ Mr Hanger said.

An initial business case had estimated the benefit to cost ratio for the project was below one (0.88), which was too low to justify state agency Infrastructure NSW backing the plan.

A subsequent version of the business case put the ratio at 1.1, which was high enough to justify funding.

Asked by counsel assisting the inquiry Scott Robertson whether he ‘understood the request was made to see if the benefit-to-cost ratio could become a one?’, Mr Hanger replied, ‘Yes’.

‘You understood that the request was made by the premier herself?’, Mr Robertson asked.

‘Yes,’ Mr Hanger said.

Ms Berejiklian has repeatedly and strenuously denied all wrongdoing.

Mr Hanger is also being questioned about a $30million grant for the Riverina Conservatorium of Music, which is also being investigated by the corruption watchdog.

The conservatorium, which is in Daryl Maguire’s electorate of Wagga Wagga, received funding in 2018.

Mr Hanger agreed with counsel that an initial funding proposal was sought to be brought under the government’s unsolicited proposals process in mid-2017, but did not meet the requirements of such a proposal.

Mr Hanger then worked for a regional NSW agency which sat under the Department of Premier and Cabinet and whose relevant minister was Mr Barilaro. 

In February 2018, Mr Maguire issued a media release announcing the Riverina Conservatorium of Music would be moving to Wagga Wagga, where a ‘world-class music recital space’ would be developed.

Mr Hanger told the commission that at that time the conservatorium had not secured the site and there was no allocation of funds to develop a recital space.

The conservatorium would later receive $30 million in funding. 

Mr Hanger said he was told to find a funding stream for the $20.5 million development of the recital hall to allow Ms Berejiklian to make an announcement during the Wagga Wagga byelection campaign prompted by Mr Maguire’s resignation.