Gladys Berejiklian has been required, by dint of her relationship with a cad, to share more personal information than any political leader.

Berejiklian has been required, by dint of her relationship with a cad, to share more personal dating information than any sitting Australian political leader.
The indignity
On Monday, the famously private woman endured, good naturedly, the indignity of being asked about the status of her five-year possibly more relationship with ex-colleague Daryl Maguire, who admitted last week to using his political office for personal gain.
“It wasn’t a normal relationship,” she said. “He wasn’t my boyfriend. I hoped he would be. I didn’t want to introduce him to anyone in my network.”
Later, she was peppered with questions at a COVID-19 press conference that would have been unimaginable, a few weeks earlier, for the indignity they afforded a proud woman leading Australia’s largest state.
“So premier you said it wasn’t a substantive relationship, and then you said it was a serious relationship so which one was it?” a female journalist asked.
She tensed her lips and gave short, evasive answers. Three ministers behind her looked like they would have rather been standing on the Sun.
Sexism?
It is impossible to know if a male politician would be treated the same way.
No doubt, part of the fascination is driven by Berejiklian’s intense privacy about her personal life, and the fact she never married or had children, assets that form part of most male politicians’s marketing schtick.
At the same time, it is impossible to argue there is no substance to the criticism of Berejiklian’s choice in partner.
As Berejiklian has acknowledged, Maguire was one of many MPs who lobbied her.
While denying she did anything for him, wiretaps of their conversations made her sound indifferent, at best, to the ethical pitfalls posed by his potentially corrupt money-making schemes.
As everyone in NSW politics knows, the new airport at Badgerys Creek in Western Sydney is a honeypot of government contracts.
The federal Department of Infrastructure, for example, recently became the subject of a Federal Police investigation over an airport land purchase from the wealthy Perich family.
Berejiklian is an experienced politician and careful communicator.
When she told Maguire “I don’t need to know about that bit,” on news his long sought-after Badgerys Creek deal had come through, it caught the ear of investigators.
“I probably wasn’t paying attention,” was how she explained the remark on Monday.
Now, everyone is. Especially her colleagues.