you’re welcome.
so the Premier’s duty to notify is a legal obligation irregardless of the sexual relationship. Plus the unlucky in love nonsense run by her apologists is at odds with what the Premier says. She categorically states she was not an intimate relationship with Maguire. Here is why>>
as Sam Maiden has reported, “intimate relationship” is a term of art under the NSW Ministerial Code of Conduct; and the Code is in turn incorporated into the ICAC Act by Regulation 5.
the ICAC Act s 9 also limits reportable conduct and specifically includes the Ministerial Code.
so her ICAC Act s 11 general duty to disclose as a minister of the Crown is not limited by the ICAC Act s 9 limitations on reportable conduct and in fact is specifically included by s 9(1)(d) - the applicable Code, the whole of which is attached by ICAC Regulation 2017 s 5. Okay.
which brings us to the Ministerial Code itself. This is where the Maiden report has landed the whale. Tucked away in the ICAC Regulations 2017 Appendix NSW Ministerial Code of Conduct s 11 Definitions “family members” is the intimate partner.
if Berejiklian is relying on her claim that the sexual relationship was not an intimidate relationship to avoid accountability for breaching the Code and falling foul of the Act? 1/ that is a legal not a moral construction. Which makes her an evasive politician, not a good egg.
2/ ministerial conduct is codified and regulated by the Act BECAUSE ministers routinely act immorally and unethically and refuse to resign under Westminster accountability doctrine which is WHY the narrow legal interpretation is available to her in the first place.
3/ it is the s 11 definition of “family” (and not “immediate family”) that brings “intimate partner” under the ICAC Act via the ICAC Regulations vis the Code. Berejiklian has said the sexual relationship was a close personal relationship rather than an intimate relationship >>
and 4/ her narrow definition to evade responsibility may be interpreted away. Elsewhere in the Code we see “family members or other persons with whom [ministers] have a personal relationship” (noting that shareholdings are not the alleged potential breach here).
to;dr reliance on a narrow legal definition of “family - intimate relationship” (and admission of a personal relationship) may not survive submissions on correct interpretation of a Code that includes “family members or other persons with whom they have a personal relationship”.
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