The secretive group of young Christian men at the centre of this week’s explosive Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry were worried. “We’re losing the culture war and it’s our fault,” says a training manual developed by the group that came to call themselves the NSW Reformers.
The document lists a series of supposed culture war defeats, including the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the introduction of safe access zones around abortion clinics, as evidence of the malaise afflicting the nation.
The solution, it proposed, was joining the right wing of the Liberal Party and pushing for conservative Christian change from within.
Just a thousand or so new members of the NSW Liberal Party, if judiciously used to stack the right branches, could tilt the whole axis of politics decisively to the right.
“We had wild dreams,” a co-founder of the Reformers, Robert Assaf, told the inquiry on Thursday. “We were 20-something-year-old guys dreaming big”.
Precisely how the goals of the idealistic young men of the Reformers allegedly became aligned with the interests of Lamborghini-purchasing, cocaine-sniffing property developer Jean Nassif is central to the ICAC’s investigation.
The sensational allegations aired in the first week of public hearings include that Nassif paid large sums of secret cash to young Liberal activists to allegedly smooth the way for developments and blackmail his perceived enemies.
Nassif and others allegedly funnelled money into two companies set up by Reformers and others working with them – Beckington Group and JPG Advisory – and the payments were allegedly hidden with sham invoices.
The idea for the Reformers was cooked up between two junior staffers in Canberra – Assaf and Christian Ellis, the inquiry heard this week.
Assaf and Ellis met and bonded while working for the “No” case in the same-sex marriage plebiscite. The pair discussed Latin mass, the Bible, and politics.
Ellis, who lives in Britain and has not given evidence at the inquiry, was doing an economics degree at the University of Sydney and later worked as a staffer in the electoral office of former premier Dominic Perrottet and the offices of federal Coalition ministers Matt Canavan and Michael Sukkar.
“He was a convert to the Catholic faith, so I was interested in that,” Assaf said. “He was quite well versed on matters of the faith, so I learnt a bit from him too, and, yes, also politically involved. Both of us were politically involved.”
Assaf, who like several key Reformers attended the Opus Dei-linked Redfield College in Sydney’s outer north-west, said his Christian values came first and the factional warfare, which he described as feeling “icky” about before he became involved, was a necessary evil.
He had initially been reluctant to join the party but in 2015, while a student at Notre Dame University, Assaf was invited to a talk by MP Damien Tudehope up the road at the University of Sydney Liberal Club.
Tudehope spoke in opposition to the federally funded Safe Schools program, a project to reduce bullying of LGBTQI children, and it resonated with Assaf’s beliefs.
“Afterwards, after the talk’s over, they may make you feel special and introduce you to Damien and give you the handshake and make you feel, you know, young kid being shown some love by a politician, and then they’d say, oh you should really join,” he said.
The modus operandi hit upon by Ellis and Assaf was simple – use petitions to gather information from people who had strong opinions about socially divisive issues such as transgender rights and use the data to match postcodes with Liberal Party branches.
If enough people with strong views were in a certain location, the Reformers would organise a gathering of like-minded conservatives, find a speaker likely to appeal to the audience, and sign up new members to the party’s hard right faction.
Their means were modest, with Ellis and Assaf scratching around for cash and struggling to hire venues, but their ambitions were not.
“It takes 45,000 voters to choose a Member of Parliament to represent them,” a draft of a Reformers founding document referred to at the inquiry reads.
“In a preselection, the voting choosing a party candidate to go to the election, it takes approximately 56 members.
“There are approximately 4000 members of the Liberal Party in NSW. If we recruit 5000 Christian conservatives, Christians will control the NSW division of the Liberal Party.”
Assaf and Ellis were soon joined by others at the core of the Reformers, including Jean-Claude Perrottet, the younger brother of former premier Dominic, and Dylan Whitelaw, who had joined the Mittagong Liberal Party towards the end of high school.
Whitelaw had taken a job at Catholic Schools NSW as a data entry clerk straight from school and was recruited by Assaf, who was working for the organisation as a communications manager, in addition to his Reformer duties.
The chief executive of the schools body was Dallas McInerney, a Liberal Right powerbroker and a mentor to the young group. Jean-Claude, another Redfield alumni, ended up working for Catholic Schools as well.
As the Reformers’ momentum built and hundreds of Christians began to trickle into branches, the group needed money to sustain its activities.
According to Assaf, he and Ellis turned to Damien Tudehope, who had become a mentor to the young men and an ally on the Right.
Tudehope hosted a Reformers event at his home in the Hills – a barbeque attended by about 30 people and addressed for former Herald columnist Miranda Devine, who gave a speech that criticised then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.
It provided the occasion for the Reformers to meet Michael O’Hara, a former colleague of Tudehope’s in a Strathfield law firm, who had become a pub owner and property developer.
O’Hara, who told the inquiry he had later become frustrated with both former premier Dominic Perrottet and prime minister Scott Morrison for going “woke”, was happy to kick in a few thousand dollars a month to promote Christian values within the Liberal Party.
Initial payments from O’Hara went to the Reformers’ own bank account but later switched to Beckington.
O’Hara, a prohibited donor due to his business interests in hotels and gambling, could not coherently explain why his cash was invoiced as “strategic wealth strategy investment advice” on invoices to Beckington from his company Paslibdan Pty Ltd.
The businessman told the inquiry that Tudehope would probably have known about Paslibdan donations, but he couldn’t recall discussing the issue.
Tudehope has not been accused of any wrongdoing. He has stepped down from the opposition front bench because he has been called as a witness.
Did anyone see the need to declare the money that people were giving to the Reformers, ICAC counsel assisting Peggy Dwyer asked Assaf on Thursday.
“I cannot recall that, no,” Assaf replied. O’Hara was of the same view, when cross-examined.
With regular funds fuelling their activities, the Reformers were able to intensify their activities, holding up to 40 events a year. Senior Liberal and National Party figures began to be drawn into their orbit.
As well as Tudehope, Dominic Perrottet was described by Assaf as “supportive”. The former premier spoke at an event in Sydney alongside current National Party Leader Matt Canavan.
Assaf advised a contact to show “discretion” ahead of that event because it risked veering away from the Reformers’ primary objective of finding new members, the inquiry heard.
“There would have been a lot of people who wanted to suck up to Dom and Matt, so we wanted to protect the seats for non-members,” Assaf said.
Federal Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has denied making payments to the Reformers and, through a spokesperson, pointed out that he is not party to the ICAC inquiry.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott was described at the inquiry as being supportive of the Reformers’ work in bolstering the right, and spoke at events.
Former NSW planning minister Anthony Roberts was also described as supportive. There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by any of the senior politicians named so far in the inquiry.
Along with Tudehope, a key factional ally was McInerney, the chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW who is a target of the ICAC inquiry because he allegedly directed regular payments from the schools body to Beckington under the guise of lobbying work.
Actually, the Catholic Schools NSW money was used to fund Reformer work, the inquiry has heard.
Whitelaw initially told the inquiry he was “shocked” that Catholic Schools NSW money was being used by the Reformers, but apologised when he was shown contradictory evidence by the commission.
“As I’m sure the commission can appreciate, I’m fairly stressed at the moment,” said Whitelaw. “I’ll retract the previous evidence and say ‘Yes, I was aware of the Beckington contract to Catholic Schools NSW’.”
Beckington had been established by Ellis and another Liberal right activist Jeremy Greenwood, another Redfield graduate, ostensibly as a lobbying and government relations firm. Catholic Schools NSW was its first client.
But Dwyer alleged in her opening address on Monday that one function of the company was to “wash” prohibited donations to the Reformers that would be used for Liberal Party recruiting.
The allegedly bogus “consulting” fees for Beckington payments allegedly included kickbacks for some of those involved, including Assaf.
Assaf told the inquiry on Friday there was some confusion about the exact amount, but he believed he would receive 10 per cent of the value of a contract. The money was paid to Assaf’s wife, Carmel.
Text messages show how money was discussed among the key group of Reformers.
Jean-Claude Perrottet: “We need this 1000% This makes us $60k back in the bank annually. All events funded, no cloud over tax from Ellis.”
Assaf: “You just want the money.”
Perrottet: “Ha ha ha get out, I just want to fund Reformers work.”
Assaf: “Alright guys, double my retainer or I’m walking.”
Assaf said he was joking in that message.
Greenwood and Jean-Claude Perrottet are on the witness list for ICAC hearings next week, along with Tudehope.
Catholic Schools NSW paid Beckington $130,000 over two years between 2019 and 2021 “in circumstances where there appears to be little or no evidence of substantive work being done to justify that amount”, Dwyer told the commission in her opening address.
But as more money came in, the relationship between the two co-founders of the Reformers began to break down, Assaf said under cross-examination at the inquiry on Friday.
He said he warned McInerney that he believed Ellis was lazy while Ellis’ company Beckington held a contract with Catholic Schools NSW.
“My recollection at this time was that there was a view that Christian didn’t do much work,” Assaf said. “I actually even discussed it with Dallas myself, my concerns about Christian, and I encouraged him to consider distancing himself from Christian,” he said, in reference to Ellis’ work for Beckington.
Catholic Schools NSW payments were shifted to JPG Advisory, of which Greenwood was the sole director. It received $135,000 from the schools body for alleged consulting work.
The amount of cash flowing through the two companies was increasingly significant, the inquiry has heard, with Nassif’s portion quickly becoming dominant.
The commission was told Nassif met party operatives Greenwood, Ellis and another Perrottet brother, Charles, on April 25, 2020.
Dwyer said evidence would emerge showing that, following that meeting, it was agreed that Nassif would pay Greenwood, Ellis and Charles Perrottet “large sums of money to support their recruitment of members and/or renewal of memberships in the Hills, so as to secure control over Liberal Party preselections”.
“This would, in turn, enable Mr Nassif to influence The Hills Shire Council and achieve other political objectives,” she said.
While Nassif was seeking to replace existing councillors in the Hills district, there was no evidence that the new councillors that the Reformers allegedly helped to install were any more sympathetic to his interests, Dwyer said.
Nevertheless, Dwyer said evidence would show that Ellis, Greenwood and Charles Perrottet anticipated receiving $2 million from Nassif to split between them, and seven large payments from companies owned by the property developer were traced to Reformer-linked companies.
Charles Perrottet’s share was allegedly to be sent to Macquarie Consulting Pty Ltd, a company in the name of his wife, Anita.
Phone taps played during the opening address on Monday, including with Jean-Claude Perrottet, caught Nassif bragging about his influence over the former state government and boasting that the party’s hard right faction had announced “Jean Nassif is our Godfather”.
The final results of the Reformers own attempts to play God within the Liberal Party remain to be seen.
Further reading
Here are some of the highlights from the first week of our coverage.
Read the full article here
