The legendary Gladys Lillian Moncrieff was known as “Australia’s Queen of Song”, or, more simply, Our Glad.
To the best of my knowledge, she wasn’t corrupt, nor did she hang out with petty criminals. As far as I know, she never lied under oath, nor was she hauled before public tribunals for bringing her country into disrepute. And she never locked anyone up or forced unnecessary and dangerous medical procedures on anyone. No one ever called her a “hot mess”. She was never a “social media meme queen”. Mercifully, the internet has never “gone wild” over her.
(For the uninitiated, a hot mess is:
… a person or thing that is spectacularly unsuccessful or disordered, especially one that is a source of peculiar fascination).
Pity we cannot say the same about Our Glad’s modern namesake, the former NSW Premier and, along with her ghastly equivalent in Meanjin – sorry, Brisbane, before the Queensland Premier renames it – one of the two Unspellable, Unspeakable Premiers.
As everyone would know now, NSW Gladys has been found to have been seriously corrupt by the Independent Commission Against Corruption, in its Keppel operation. An instant reaction?
First, it is good news, but it is also a great pity she could not have been prosecuted as well. ICAC has given its reasons for this, which may or may not be compelling.
Second point, it is a pity that the findings weren’t stronger for the simple reason that it has allowed egregious Liberals like Matt Kean to whinge about ICAC, to call it a “soap opera” – that, risibly, coming from a minister in the soap opera that was the unlamented NSW Liberal Government – to claim Berejiklian’s “innocence” of a “crime” and to repeat the lie that she was some sort of great premier of the Rum Corps State. The Leader of the Opposition (Mark Speakman) chimed in thus:
“She was an outstanding MP for NSW. She was an incredibly popular premier because she wanted what was best for the people of NSW,” Speakman said.
The brave attempts to minimise Gladys’s crimes and to praise her leadership merely reminds us that the Liberal Party in New South Wales simply doesn’t have a clue. Still. Has no self-awareness. They cling to the belief they were a good government. No, Matty Boy, “just dating a weirdo” doesn’t cut it.
On another view, perhaps the NSW Liberals are not so clueless after all, but engaged in clever narrative-creation. Get in first and bed-in the idea that you want embedded. Modern politics 101. Mount a coordinated and aggressive defence of the indefensible and, lo and behold, the punters just might believe it.
Berejiklian herself has mounted a brief self-defence, post ICAC:
Gladys Berejiklian has responded to the ICAC report that found she had engaged in serious corrupt conduct.
“Serving the people of NSW was an honour and privilege. At all times I have worked my hardest in the public interest,” Berejiklian said in a statement.
“Nothing in this report demonstrates otherwise. Thank you to members of the public for their incredible support. This will sustain me always. The report is currently being examined by my legal team.”
Clearly, Gladys’s definition of “working in the public interest” is at variance with my own. And, in terms of her “incredible support”, I would hope that her perception here is not an accurate reflection of the mood of the NSW voting public. Which, I trust, still has some hankering for good governance, keeping your promises, not wasting public money, not doing things for which you had no mandate, maintaining probity, not treating the polity as your personal plaything and fiefdom, defending freedom and rights against Big Brother – rather than assuming the mantle of Big Sister yourself – and safeguarding ministerial responsibility. On all counts, I would give the seriously corrupt Gladys Berejiklian close to a nought out of ten.
Third, criticisms of ICAC for being too slow in completing its inquiries are utterly beside the point here, and suggest a classic “look over there” feint by the former Premier’s brave defenders. A distraction from the main game.
Fourth, Gladys’s true crimes – relating to Covid policy, above all – are still allowed to slip on by. They don’t even get talked about. On the contrary, she is regarded not as a Covid pariah – which she most definitely was – but rather lauded as some sort of Covid hero. All because she wasn’t as bad as Daniel Andrews. Well, it is at least arguable that Ceausescu wasn’t as bad as Daniel Andrews. That is praising with faint damn.
The list items of Berejiklian’s Covid crimes are familiar.
She gave Brad Hazzard the Health job. She kept Kerry Chant on as Chief Health Officer. Both were serial liars about the nature of the Covid threat, they encouraged belief in the false binary of lockdown versus vaccines-driven freedom and they pretended that the vaccines were safe and effective. They insulted those who didn’t bow before what they themselves described as “the new world order”. They lied and people died. Gladys took their advice without demur. She shut down the Parliament. She locked down Western Sydney and sent in army helicopters to police the idiotic curfews she imposed. She allowed the all-but-forced jabbing of children. She let loose Victor Dominello, the Minister for contact tracing and the coming digital super state. She imposed vaccine mandates. She stopped the unvaccinated from participating in the normal activities of life. Like visiting Big W.
Here she was as Premier in September 2021:
The New South Wales government will make it illegal for unvaccinated people to access venues and businesses across the state, Gladys Berejiklian says.
“At 70% [two doses], if you’re not vaccinated, it will be a health order and the law that if you’re not vaccinated, you can’t attend venues on the roadmap,” she said. “You can’t go into a hospitality venue. You can’t go to ticketed events unless you are vaccinated.”
It’s the first time the premier has confirmed her intentions to make it explicitly illegal for unvaccinated people to attend venues and businesses, and the first time she’s indicated it will be the responsibility of businesses to regulate their patrons.
These were sick-making words then, and remain so now. For this, she should be endlessly excoriated, yet she remains unpunished. She also said:
I wouldn’t want to be in the same room with lots of unvaccinated people.
Then there was this:
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian says she doesn’t want to hear complaints from unvaccinated residents as those fully protected from COVID-19 are afforded greater freedoms once the state hits its 70 per cent target.
Not to mention this:
New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian says it’s an epidemic of the unvaccinated and the statistics are the best source of truth.
Totally false. And not a million miles from the Jacinda ministry of truth. More damned lies than statistics.
None of this should ever be forgotten. Now that we all know what we know about the jab. And what she must have known then. Not needed. Dangerous. Ineffective. A little like Gladys herself.
Speaking of her crimes more generally, she bequeathed the pointless Dominic Perrottet to the State as the direct result of her own corruption and resignation. She allowed Michael Photios to pick her first Cabinet. She allowed the all-powerful Liberal factions to run riot. She did nothing – how could she? – to reform the State Party. She oversaw and cheered on the homosexualisation of the State, through her Government’s alignment with, and funding of, all things Pride, her oversight of the Education Department’s grooming-in-schools programs and the sexualisation of young children, her endless appearances at the annual gay march and the perks she provided to Alex Greenwich MP in return for his support of her minority Government. She welcomed with glee the State’s new horrific abortion laws, aka infanticide on demand, her support for which she kept mightily quiet during the 2019 election campaign. She wasted billions on vanity projects, like the Sydney CBD light rail. She must also be the first ever leader to knock down a perfectly good football stadium only to build another almost exactly the same on the same site. She allowed her Government to be run by unelected lobbyists. Compared to all this (and much more), what she did with Daryl Maguire was a drop in the bucket.
Fifth, Gladys’s avoidance, as a Liberal wet (Moderate, to some), of a criminal charge and possibly jail time allows her ugly faction to keep on keeping on. Pretending that their recent electoral defeat was “honourable” and closely run. Berejiklian has been described to me as “a leftist robot”. In this perfectly apt description, the key word for me is “leftist”. She was always a creature of the Moderates faction, and so a member of the PGGWC (progressive, green, globalist, woke, Covid) class.
Sixth, it allows yet another corrupt politician to slither off into the mid distances, and sidelines (and therefore postpones) the bigger argument we need to have about the endemic corruption of our political system. And how on earth to address it. As I always say to those for whom ICAC is a problem, the worse problem is endemic political corruption and when we get rid of that, then, I agree, we won’t need an ICAC. Systemic corruption is real and everywhere. This isn’t about a few bad apples. Politicians have long since lost their sense of right and wrong. Their moral compass. They think they live in some version of The West Wing or The House of Cards. Berejiklian and (then Nationals leader) John Barilaro agreed in 2021 that they were pork barrelling – itself a corrupt practice – but just said, in response to criticism, well, everyone does it. They almost seemed proud of it. ICAC doesn’t think much of pork barrelling, either, as a recent public forum and report by Professor Anne Twomey established.
https://www.icac.nsw.gov.au/newsletter/issue60/jersey.html
There is no further need to argue the case that corruption is endemic when our leaders speak thus. When we are simultaneously facing a crisis of executive overreach and the wholesale abandonment of ministerial responsibility, then we have an existential threat to our democratic system. The two problems, big government with totalitarian tendencies and corrupt behaviour, are closely linked, of course. And they are destroying, piece by piece, our whole system of governance. They know they are screwing us, and they don’t care.
Finally, I have lost what little respect I might have had for Chris Minns, the Labor Premier. Not to mention Peter Dutton. Minns praised Gladys Berejiklian. For Covid. Truly bizarre:
Chris Minns, the freshly elected Labor premier of NSW, did not seize on the findings to criticise Berejiklian, instead defending her handling of the Covid pandemic and lamenting the drawn-out process of releasing the Icac findings.
“Firstly, this report has taken way too long. I think that has been generally recognised across the political spectrum in NSW. The second point here is that nothing in this report takes away, I don’t think, from premier Berejiklian’s handling of the Covid emergency, which I still regard as being excellent,” he said.
If the new State Premier thinks that anyone in Australia handled Covid “excellently”, then he needs to be taken to a lonely island, left there, and given ample opportunity to reflect on what he has just said, and evidently believes. To consider what exactly is excellent about shredding people’s rights and freedoms, about lying to the public, about causing (with her political class colleagues) the destruction of the Australian economy, about going along with her peers in fabricating an emergency. Minns’ statement is profoundly inaccurate, ignorant and, on yesterday of all days, inappropriate. Tone deaf. It reminds us all that Minns is part of the Lib-Lab Covid UniParty. Criticising politicians on the other side of the aisle over Covid is the same as criticising one of your own. It is down the memory hole as far as Minns is concerned. And is a reminder that all of the Covid crimes remain unpunished.
As for Dutton’s claim that Gladys is “not a corrupt person”, and simply chose a “bum” as a boyfriend. Get real Dutts. Bum? Weirdo? She. Was. Corrupt.
https://www.aap.com.au/news/berejiklian-not-a-corrupt-person-dutton/
My old colleague AJ Brown, the legal scholar, of Transparency International, has a far more balanced and accurate view of the ICAC findings and of ICAC more generally, as SBS reports:
Political activist group Transparency International's AJ Brown stressed that "corruption is not always criminal", and said there was a public interest in exposing the impact public figures' undeclared interests had on their decision-making.
"We have clear evidence now and findings that the premier herself failed to declare important interests," he said.
"She turned a blind eye or worse to the evidence she had that her then-boyfriend was engaging in corrupt activity. She compromised decision-making processes as a result of her undeclared personal interest. Those things are also clearly corruption.
"Just the fact that the precise circumstances of that mean that a criminal charge isn't justified or is unlikely to succeed, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be recognised and identified as corrupt conduct."
Mr Brown said the report confirmed the ICAC did have the "right powers" to pursue corruption effectively.
"They really must, in circumstances like this, conduct this kind of inquiry transparently for there to be public confidence in it. That's been done," he said.
Mr Brown accepted delays in releasing reports could corrode public confidence, saying "every effort should be made to speed up all parts of those processes".
But he said this delay was possibly the result of the ICAC being under-resourced.
"I very much doubt that the quality of the inquiry is something that people should be having any second thoughts about," he said.
Indeed.
The great fear is that public corruption is so much part of political life that it has become ho-hum, that its acceptance by the electorate is now just another part of the deal. It is alarming that observers with the (normal) acuity of Chris Merritt of The Australian can fall for the Lib-Lab Gladys narrative so carefully constructed this week. That corruption has, for him, almost defined itself out of existence. (Of course, Merritt has an obsession with ICAC).
When exonerating Gladys, we might keep in mind just what she and her peers did to us for two years, expressed neatly in a review by Richard Kelly at The Brownstone Institute of John Stapleton’s astounding book, Australia Breaks Apart:
Reading it is like reading Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago – page after page of open-mouthed shock at the things humans can do to one another and the things that power can corrupt.
It’s essential reading for the dissident, the disenfranchised, the disillusioned. We’re not alone, our eyes were not deceiving us, it was not all just a nightmare from which we will one day wake up. It actually happened. Its legacy will be a millstone Australia will carry for decades. This book won’t make up for the tragedies of lives and livelihoods shattered by wilfully stubborn governments and petty tyrants, but it will certainly help.
Nightmare. Disenfranchised. Millstone. Legacy. Petty tyrants. Gladys.
We now await, without much interest, whether Gladys will seek to have her tarnished reputation restored through a challenge to the NSW Supreme Court. Just like Nick Greiner did, to his considerable career benefit, three decades ago, after a similar ICAC finding. Just so long as no one in the Moderates faction thinks that Gladys for Canberra is still a thing. Though, in these depraved times of political amorality, easily forgiven and forgotten political crimes and, literally, anything goes, nothing would surprise me about a Berejiklian mark two.
Good riddance, Ms Berejiklian. Oh, and it must nearly be time to review my continuing relationship with Optus, methinks.
Paul Collits
30 June 2023
thanks Julie. Were you living in a nasty blue state during Covid?
“...Ceausescu wasn’t as bad as Daniel Andrews”. I can’t wait to read your send off for Kim il Dan when they day comes, as it surely will. Great essay, thanks