Disgraced former Liberal Premier of NSW Gladys Berejiklian gets no joy from her Supreme Court appeal of ICAC corrupt conduct findings

IMAGE: Nationwide News, 26 July 2024

Gladys Berejiklian joined the Liberal Party of Australia in 1991 whilst at the University of Sydney and was President of the NSW Young Liberals in 1996 - 1997.

Between 1998 - 2003 she describes her employment as "Executive, Commonwealth Bank of Australia".

Ms Berejiklian was elected as the Liberal Member for Willoughby in the NSW Legislative Assembly in March 2003. An elected position she held for 18 years, 9 months and 9 days - first as a member of the Opposition, then as a Minster of the Crown, then as NSW Premier & finally as a backbench member of a Coalition Government she had recently led, until 'retiring' in disgrace on 30 December 2021.

In June 2023 Ms. Berejiklian was the subject of adverse findings made in a two-volume report (Vol 1 at pp.13-14) of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) titled “Investigation into the conduct of the then member of Parliament for Wagga Wagga and then Premier and others (Operation Keppel)”.

This report followed the October 2021 announcement that ICAC would conduct a further public inquiry in Operation Keppel investigating whether between 2012 and 2018, as a Minister of the Crown, as Treasurer or as Premier, Gladys Berejiklian had engaged in corrupt conduct.

Ms Berejiklian appealed the findings of the ICAC report in the Supreme Court-Court of Appeal, principally claiming material errors of law in or in relation to the ICAC report findings.

She lost in a judgment delivered on Friday, 26 July 2024, which stated in part:

"Decision: Amended Summons dismissed with costs.....

In the result, each ground of review has been rejected. Ms Berejiklian ’s application to quash the Commission’s findings of “serious corrupt conduct” or to have those findings declared as made without or in excess of jurisdiction should be dismissed, with costs."

The final outcome of Gladys Berejiklian's effort to quash the ICAC findings of "serious corrupt conduct", is a lengthy Court of Appeal judgment containing reasons which once more bring the details of her conduct to the attention of the general public and includes transcript excerpts of conversations with her then "intimate" friend and fellow member of parliament.

Currently Ms Berejiklian is on the executive board of telecommunications company Singtel Optus Pty Ltd as Managing Director, Enterprise and Business.

Annual director remuneration in Singtel subsidiary companies is posited to be in the vicinity of $1 million. [Singtel Annual Report 2024, Notes to the Financial Statements For the financial year ended 31 March 2024, p.157]

Singtel Optus is a fully-owned subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Limited (Singtel) headquartered in Singapore and is listed in AEC political donor annual organisation returns from 1998-99 to 2022-23.

https://www.optus.com.au/about/corporate/executive-profiles

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST APRIL 2024: Video of oral summary of the judgment as delivered by Justice Lee in the failed defamation suit, Lehrmann v Network Ten & Anor, as well as a link to the full written judgment transcript

 

The Guardian YouTube web page, 15 April 2024:

 

Note: The delivery of this judgment is broken by technical difficulties at 4:37mins into the video and recommences where broken delivery left off at 39:22mins into the video and continues uninterrupted to the end of proceedings.

The Guardian online, 15 April 2024:

Bruce Lehrmann has lost his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, bringing to an end a sprawling legal saga which has gripped the nation. In a live oral summary that took two and a half hours, Justice Michael Lee said the former Liberal staffer was not defamed by Wilkinson and Ten when The Project broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins on Monday 15 February 2021 in which she alleged she was raped in Parliament House. He found that on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann raped Higgins on the minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019. 

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At Page 145 of the judgment transcript:

600. Notwithstanding the need for pause, I am satisfied that it is more likely than not that Mr Lehrmann’s state of mind was such that he was so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins’ consent, and hence went ahead with sexual intercourse without caring whether she consented. This conclusion is not mandated by, but is consistent with, my finding that intercourse commenced when Ms Higgins was not fully cognitively aware of what was happening.

At Page 150 of the judgment transcript:

VI Conclusion on Rape

620. Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins.

621. I hasten to stress; this is a finding on the balance of probabilities. This finding should not be misconstrued or mischaracterised as a finding that I can exclude all reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence. As I have explained, there is a substantive difference between the criminal standard of proof and the civil standard of proof and, as the tribunal of fact, I have only to be reasonably satisfied that Mr Lehrmann has acted as I have found, and I am not obliged to reach that degree of certainty necessary to support conviction upon a criminal charge.

At Page 290 of the judgment transcript:

1071. Mr Lehrmann behaved disgracefully. He defended the criminal charge on a false basis, lied to police, and then allowed that lie to go uncorrected before the jury. He instructed his unwitting and hence blameless senior counsel to cross-examine a complainant of sexual assault, in two legal proceedings, on a knowingly false premise.

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Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment) [2024] FCA 369 as a written 324-page transcript can be found at:

https://www.fedcourt.gov.au/services/access-to-files-and-transcripts/online-files/lehrmann#103

and is also published in easily searchable form at:

https://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2024/369.html