With his tidy beard and hair parted neatly on the side, softly spoken witness Robert Assaf, who nimbly sidestepped questions for much of the day, did not give the impression of a zealous crusader.
Giving evidence at the high-profile corruption inquiry into dodgy donors and branch stacking, Assaf agreed he was a co-founder of the Reformers, an ultra-right wing conservative Catholic branch of the NSW Liberal Party, along with Christian Ellis, a fellow person of interest to ICAC.
Assaf likened the factional battles within the Right faction of the Liberals to those featured in Braveheart, the 1995 Oscar-winning film in which Mel Gibson plays heroic Scottish knight William Wallace valiantly battling against the English.
“The Right faction was like – not sure if you’ve seen Braveheart – but like these warring kingdoms, and they would slaughter each other, and then every now and then they’d come together for a big fight, and that was how the Right was,” he said.
However, Assaf’s major victory was a spectacularly bloodless coup. “Great news. God granted us victory. We’ve officially taken the Coffs Harbour branch away from the Left wing,” Assaf said in one text message sent in July 2018.
He also alerted banned donor, hotelier Michael O’Hara, to The Reformers’ success at Coffs Harbour. O’Hara had donated $25,000 to the Reformers’ cause only a month earlier.
The inquiry heard this week that O’Hara paid a further $125,000 to the Reformers via sham invoices quoting “strategic wealth strategy investment advice”.
“I’m trying my best,” Assaf said while answering one line of questioning.
As the day wore on, his evasive answers were proving to be frustrating for counsel assisting, Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC.
“Can I suggest that is not something you would forget?” she put to him at one point.
His memory was refreshed when taken to a crass text message sent to their group chat by lobbyist Jeremy Greenwood, which read: “How’s your mouth taste?”
The message was a reference to the pair undermining their once-close colleague Christian Ellis to take over the handling of donations from O’Hara.
In his evidence earlier this week, O’Hara, a deeply conservative Catholic, grew disillusioned with the party, especially under the premiership of Dominic Perrottet.
In a conversation with Perrottet’s brother Jean-Claude in July 2022, O’Hara complained about “the woke crap that [then NSW treasurer] Matt Kean was going on with” and said the premier “was too weak to bring him into line”.
“Either way,” O’Hara complained, Dominic Perrottet has “lost his spine”.
One branch of Operation Rosny’s inquiry is the role of Dallas McInerney, the long-term head of Catholic Schools NSW, who is alleged to have channelled money from the organisation to help the activities of the Reformers.
The inquiry has also heard that a number of the Reformers were on the payroll of Catholic Schools NSW while doing factional work, including branch stacking.
Another key link between many of those involved with the Reformers was their attendance at Redfield College, in Dural, in the Hills District of NSW.
Redfield is linked to Opus Dei, a highly conservative Catholic organisation with a reputation for secrecy.
The school’s motto is “the truth will set you free”.
Four targets in Operation Rosny – Assaf, Greenwood, Jean-Claude and Charles Perrottet – attended Redfield. Former premier Dominic Perrottet was school captain in 2000. He is not accused of any wrongdoing.
Another former Redfield student is James Tudehope, the son of right-wing MP Damien Tudehope. While his father has stepped down from the opposition frontbench due to the ICAC investigation, James Tudehope left Australia this year to work in New Zealand.
“He is aware that the commission would like to speak with him and has declined to assist by giving oral evidence in the public inquiry,” Dwyer said in her opening address.
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