Catholic Schools chief denies wiping evidence after factory reset, Icac hears

Dallas McInerney stood before the New South Wales corruption inquiry on Wednesday and offered an explanation for why his work phone and iPad no longer contained any data. Over the weekend, after giving evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption the week prior, he had performed a factory reset on both devices. The reason, he said, was straightforward: his bank had alerted him to suspicious activity on his account.

McInerney is the chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW. The inquiry, led by counsel Dr Peggy Dwyer SC, had asked him on Friday to produce messages between himself and Jean-Claude Perrottet, a member of the Reformers faction within the Liberal party. He complied. But when pressed on Wednesday about whether his phone contained other messages—specifically with other members of the Reformers—McInerney revealed the device had been wiped. The bank compromise, he explained, had prompted him to reset the iPad as well, which he still had in his possession but no longer expected to return to the company.

Dwyer put the timing to him bluntly: this looked like a deliberate attempt to destroy evidence that would have been crucial to the commission's work. McInerney pushed back. The inquiry had been running for seven or eight weeks, he said. If he had wanted to conceal something, he would have had ample opportunity long before now. What triggered the reset was the banking alert. He had a case file number from the National Australia Bank to prove it, and he offered to share it.

The exchange sat at the centre of a broader investigation into the Reformers, a conservative faction within the New South Wales Liberals that has been accused of soliciting illegal donations between 2019 and 2023. The group wanted to shift party policy on issues like same-sex marriage, abortion, and euthanasia. McInerney's role in those efforts—and his relationship with prominent Liberal figures—became the focus of Wednesday's hearing.

Messages revealed that McInerney had helped facilitate a meeting between Christian Ellis, who ran the lobbying firm Beckington, and Angus Taylor, then the federal energy minister and a key figure in the party's conservative faction. Ellis had pestered McInerney for the introduction in early 2020. "I know I'm being a pest," Ellis wrote, "but any luck with Angus by any chance?" McInerney replied: "Don't worry about pestering. That's how things happen. I'm pestering him big time." The meeting apparently succeeded. Ellis later wrote to McInerney: "You're a legend." A subsequent message suggested the discussion had touched on factional matters. "Supposedly Nas is not guaranteed of running for Eden-Monaro," Ellis wrote. "Angus went in. Thanks."

Dwyer suggested the exchange showed Ellis had achieved his goal in the meeting—to discuss his own factional position. McInerney claimed the gathering was anchored in a presentation about the hydrogen industry, though he was uncertain whether it related to one of Ellis's other clients. He said he did not know who "Nas" was and could not recall if the meeting involved fundraising for the Reformers.

The inquiry also heard that Ellis and Jeremy Greenwood, who ran Beckington alongside Ellis, were involved in fundraising for an organization called the Hume Foundation or Hume Forum—a body that raised money for Taylor and the Liberal Party in his federal seat of Hume. A 2019 email from the organization's chair to Ellis stated: "Dallas will sort your dollar arrangements out with AT." McInerney acknowledged that AT meant Angus Taylor but said he had no recollection of discussing anything with Ellis on that subject. He rejected the suggestion that support for fundraising had been channeled through the Beckington retainer that Catholic Schools NSW paid to the firm.

Between August 2019 and December 2023, Catholic Schools NSW paid Beckington and another firm controlled by Greenwood, JPG Advisory, a combined $265,900. McInerney accepted that his messages with Reformers members contained what Dwyer called "political machinations," but he resisted the implication that years of back-and-forth about factional dealings meant most of Beckington's work for the school organization was actually Liberal party factional work. "No, consulting services were rendered to the company," he said. The inquiry continues, with Taylor—who has not been named in the allegations and has repeatedly denied making payments to the Reformers—declining to provide comment.