‘Scott and Damien are afraid’: senior Liberal quizzed at Icac about former staffer’s message

NSW shadow attorney general, Damien Tudehope, tells inquiry Jean-Claude Perrottet had a talent for recruiting

The leader of the opposition in the New South Wales upper house has admitted to leaking a confidential draft report from a 2023 parliamentary inquiry to a member of a group of young conservative Liberal powerbrokers now under investigation by the corruption watchdog, an inquiry has heard.

On Tuesday, Damien Tudehope, the NSW shadow attorney general and Liberal leader in the upper house, gave evidence as part of the Independent Commission Against Corruption ’s (Icac) Operation Rosny.

The inquiry is investigating allegations the Reformers solicited or accepted illegal donations to recruit or renew members to the party, a practice known as branch stacking, which is not itself illegal.

Tudehope, who has stood aside from his shadow cabinet roles during the inquiry, is not named in any allegations by Icac.

On Tuesday afternoon, counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer SC, asked Tudehope about a parliamentary inquiry which preceded Icac’s probe. Tudehope had been the leader of the government in the upper house, under then-Liberal premier Dominic Perrottet, until February 2023.

Tudehope was asked if he could recall coming into possession of a confidential draft copy of the inquiry’s report in that month. He said he could not, but was aware of the obligation to keep a draft parliamentary report confidential.

He was shown an email in which he had sent the report as an attachment to Reformer Jeremy Greenwood. Dwyer asked: “Did you send that report in draft to Mr Greenwood?”

The inquiry has heard that Reformers Greenwood, Christian Ellis and Jean-Claude Perrottet, the younger brother of Dominic Perrottet, avoided appearing at the inquiry. Under questioning from Dwyer, Tudehope claimed to have had discussions on Jean-Claude’s whereabouts with Dominic Perrottet.

“I did have a discussion with Dom at one stage, and it was a very casual discussion ... I just said, ‘Where is Jean-Claude?’ And he said he didn’t know. But then, in a subsequent discussion, I think he may have told me he was in Fiji,” he said.

Jean-Claude Perrottet has previously denied any wrongdoing. At the time of the parliamentary inquiry, Dominic Perrottet, who is not accused of any wrongdoing, rejected allegations his brother had tried to orchestrate a branch-stacking operation to unseat federal Coalition MP Alex Hawke, saying “leave my family out of it”.

On Tuesday, Icac heard evidence from businessman Frits Maré, the key witness at the parliamentary inquiry, about a 2020 meeting in which Perrottet and Christian Ellis asked him to contribute $50,000 to an operation to unseat Hawke.

Tudehope, whose name has been mentioned frequently during the first two weeks of hearings, gave evidence about the time Jean-Claude Perrottet and Christian Ellis spent in his electorate and ministerial offices.

He admitted that Jean-Claude Perrottet had a “talent” for recruiting and renewing new members to the party, which he said was essential for any Liberal member looking to hold their seat at preselection.

“[Jean-Claude] had a fairly wide connection of friends, which he was able to marshal together and exploit. Which is well, I won’t say exploit, but sort of get to do things for him.”

Jean-Claude worked in Tudehope’s electorate office in 2018 and in his parliamentary office in 2019, when Tudehope was minister for finance.

Asked about a 2018 message in which Jean-Claude wrote to other Reformers that “Scott and Damien are afraid”. Recognising “Scott” as the former head of his electorate office, Tudehope said he did not recall raising concerns or being aware that Jean-Claude may have been using his hours as an electorate officer in recruiting Liberal members, although it may have “potentially arisen”.

Tudehope described a later incident in which his chief of staff “blew up” about a newspaper article about staffers spending ministerial hours on recruitment against their code of conduct.

The inquiry heard that Ellis was only employed as a staffer in Tudehope’s ministerial office for three months before being terminated in July 2019. Tudehope said that the article “was probably the precipitating event” for Ellis’s dismissal.

The Reformers, who were part of same the conservative right faction as Tudehope, wanted more conservative policies on same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia. Tudehope, who admitted to speaking at multiple Reformers recruitment events, defended himself as “a warrior for social issues for the party”.

After being shown evidence of a bank transfer and one message from Jean-Claude in which he wrote that “Damien” had paid for a venue for an event, and another – “Damien got it” – which suggested he had contributed $5,000 for a Reformers table at a right faction event, Tudehope admitted he may have made payments to the Reformers.

His son, James Tudehope, is not named in allegations but has declined a request to give evidence to Icac after moving to New Zealand earlier this year.

Tudehope told the inquiry on Tuesday that his son, while an employee of Catholic Schools NSW, had raised concerns “at a Sunday lunch” about payments allegedly being made by the schools governing body to Beckington, a lobbying company controlled by Ellis.

“He said to me that, ‘I’m being pressured to pay an invoice for Christian Ellis, and I just don’t think we should be paying it’.”

Tudehope’s former business partner , hotelier Michael O’Hara, is alleged to have made political donations to the Reformers, prohibited because of his involvement in the liquor and gambling industries.

Under questioning from counsel assisting, Peggy Dwyer SC, Tudehope accepted that he introduced Reformers Ellis and Robert Assaf to O’Hara and that he was aware O’Hara was “generous” and would be likely to support their factional work financially.

But like O’Hara, the inquiry’s first witness last week, Tudehope disputed whether payments to the Reformers, who were not a registered party, would count as political donations.

“If you think that I would expose a friend of mine to that level of scrutiny that he was exposed to, 83 years of age with stage ... four cancer, do you think that I would have done that in circumstances where I knew that he would be a prohibited donor for the purposes of the Electoral Funding Act? Not on your life.”

Before Tudehope’s evidence on Tuesday afternoon, the NSW Liberal Leader, Kellie Sloane, told reporters at a morning press conference she believed there was a “pathway back” for Tudehope to her frontbench.