Former NSW MPs air grievances at ICAC, alleging years of sabotage by Liberal rivals

David Elliott walked out of the Independent Commission Against Corruption offices on Friday with a broad smile. For nearly four years, he had carried the weight of his political destruction in silence. Now, finally, he had been given a platform to name the people he believed had orchestrated his downfall.

Elliott's career as a New South Wales MP had ended abruptly in 2023. Despite eight years as a senior minister under three successive Liberal premiers, his political future evaporated when his own seat was abolished and branch-stacking operations in his area left him with no viable path to preselection. He stepped away quietly. But the ICAC inquiry into illegal developer donations and branch-stacking gave him something he hadn't expected: a chance to speak.

Much of his testimony centered on developer Jean Nassif, now a fugitive in Lebanon with an arrest warrant hanging over him for alleged fraud. Elliott's opposition to rapid housing development in the Hills—he believed the area lacked infrastructure to support massive projects—had put him at odds with Nassif's company, Toplace, which was behind major developments at Castle Hill and seeking approval for another at Cherrybrook. Nassif, Elliott told the inquiry, had responded with a campaign of intimidation. There were unwanted meetings in public places, including one in a Parramatta bar where Nassif confronted him aggressively. Elliott's chief of staff, Tanya Raffoul, received threats through her church. Someone told her that Nassif had photographs of Elliott and suggested she "spill the beans" or face consequences. Elliott believed private investigators were following him and his wife—he even photographed one photographing him, later joking to the inquiry that the man was "the Maxwell Smart of the PI world," a bumbling television spy.

When Elliott began raising concerns about defective buildings, the campaign intensified. Negative stories leaked to the media. A document circulated by a group of young Liberal operatives called the Reformers alleged Elliott was having an affair—a claim Elliott insisted was baseless and which a former Liberal staffer later conceded under cross-examination had no foundation. The timing was particularly cruel: Elliott's wife was undergoing cancer treatment.

But Elliott's grievances extended beyond Nassif. He was scathing about the right faction of the Liberal Party, which he characterized variously as "the hard right," "the religious right," or simply "the cult." He described how Premier Dominic Perrottet had promised him he could keep the police portfolio, then moved him to transport instead. Elliott suspected this had something to do with Nassif's arrest for cocaine possession at the Star Casino—an arrest that, with Elliott as police minister, could be framed as a setup. He was equally bitter about Charles Perrottet, the premier's brother, whom he accused of lying to him about council matters. "I was so disgusted with Charles because he lied to me about the council, I pretty much wiped him," Elliott said.

Elliott was not alone in his reckonings. Eleni Petinos, the former fair trading minister, testified the day before with her own account of political betrayal. She had been sacked by Perrottet in late July 2022 on allegations of bullying staff. At the time, she denied the charges but apologized if she had unintentionally offended anyone. Now, appearing before ICAC, she suggested something darker had occurred. Building Commissioner David Chandler, who fell under her portfolio, had written an incendiary resignation letter that threatened to embarrass the government and draw ICAC's attention. Petinos believed Perrottet had sacked her swiftly and without warning to deflect attention from that letter. "I thought there was something very strange at play for Dominic to take the action that he did so swiftly, so coldly, and without the opportunity to even put me in front of a camera," she said. She was particularly stung by the contrast with Stuart Ayres, a male minister who had been given weeks of support before being required to stand down over a separate controversy. The experience had shattered her confidence. At ICAC, she named those she believed had used her: Charles Perrottet and Chris Spence, a political ally who had been chief of staff to former planning minister Anthony Roberts.

As the inquiry continues, with Charles Perrottet and others scheduled to give evidence in the coming week, the picture emerging is one of a party fractured by factional warfare, where political rivals deployed whatever tools they could find—developer money, private investigators, manufactured scandals, false allegations—to eliminate threats. For Elliott and Petinos, the ICAC hearing offered something rare: the chance to speak their version into the record, to name names, and to suggest that their political deaths were not the result of their own failings but of deliberate campaigns waged by people they had once called colleagues.