![]() She always thought Maguire had made the appropriate disclosures. She said he was always talking about deals, but they then fell through. In one of their phone conversations, Berejiklian said to Maguire: “You will always be my numero uno.” She told the hearing this showed “in my personal life I placed importance on how I felt about him”.īerejiklian repeatedly stressed to the hearing she had taken no interest in Maguire’s financial affairs or his business activities, although he constantly referred to them in the phone conversations. Berejiklian admitted to the hearing she had thought if that happened, they could be in a position to make their relationship public. The phone taps indicated Maguire was considering whether to resign at the 2019 election if he was in a financial position to do so. She told reporters she always applied the “highest level of integrity” in doing her public job. “I didn’t feel that I could stop being his friend during that time, rightly or wrongly, on compassionate grounds.” But she hadn’t broken with him earlier because he was “in a very dark place”. She said she had trusted Maguire, whom she had known for 15 years, but she had not told her family or friends of their relationship because it didn’t have “sufficient status”.īerejiklian said she had sacked Maguire from the Liberal party and engaged others to press him to leave parliament. But she said she wouldn’t consider resigning from her position because she had done nothing wrong. The relationship began in 2015 and lasted until after she gave evidence privately to ICAC in August.Īfter her Monday evidence, running for several hours, Berejiklian told a news conference: “I stuffed up in my personal life”. There had been no whisper until her disclosure of it on Monday morning. The premier’s colleagues and observers of NSW politics are gobsmacked at the revelation of Berejiklian’s “close personal relationship” with Maguire.
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