NSW Labor is demanding the Premier and her Ministers end a culture of cover-up, after a parliamentary inquiry heard documents relating to the approval of grants in the $252 million Stronger Communities Fund were shredded and deleted from a senior staffer\u2019s computer.
\nGladys Berejiklian\u2019s senior policy advisor Sarah Lau said the Premier marked documents during the approval process, which Ms Lau later destroyed in the shredder and removed from her computer.
\n95% of the funds were given to Councils in Coalition-held seats.
\nThe Premier\u2019s former Chief of Staff, Sarah Cruickshank also told the inquiry that Gladys Berejiklian did not declare her relationship with Daryl Maguire when she issued $40,000 in six grants to his Wagga Wagga electorate in 2017 and 2018.
\nMs Cruikshank said the Premier should have disclosed the relationship because it was a conflict of interest.
\nThe NSW Labor Leader Jodi McKay said: \u201cThe Premier has repeatedly refused to disclose a conflict of interest.
\n\u201cGladys Berejiklian didn\u2019t disclose her relationship when handing out thousands of dollars in grants from the Premier\u2019s discretionary fund. She didn\u2019t mention it during a $1.5 million Badgery\u2019s Creek deal that would have cleared her partner Daryl Maguire\u2019s debts.
\n\u201cThis is a breach of the Ministerial Code of Conduct. Senior Ministers also have a responsibility to do their duty under the Code. Right now they\u2019re tolerating bad behaviour.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a cartel of cover-up from a desperate Government protecting an embattled Premier. And it must stop,\u201d Ms McKay said.
\n\u201cGladys Berejiklian is undermining the office of the Premier and the integrity of the NSW Government. The Premier should resign.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NSW Labor is demanding the Premier and her Ministers end a culture of cover-up, after a parliamentary inquiry heard documents relating to the approval of grants in the $252 million Stronger Communities Fund were shredded and deleted from a senior staffer\u2019s computer. Gladys Berejiklian\u2019s senior policy advisor Sarah Lau said the Premier marked documents during … Continue reading “Cartel of cover-up: documents shredded, conflict of interest not declared”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nswnews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}