NSW Liberal questioned over branch stacking allegations as Icac inquiry intensifies

The Independent Commission Against Corruption's investigation into branch stacking within the NSW Liberal Party intensified this week as Damien Tudehope, the party's shadow attorney general and leader in the upper house, took the stand to answer questions about his connections to a factional operation that may have used illegal donations to recruit party members.

Tudehope, who has stepped back from his shadow cabinet duties while the inquiry proceeds, is not himself accused of wrongdoing. But his name has surfaced repeatedly during the first two weeks of hearings into Operation Rosny, which is examining whether the Reformers—a conservative faction within the Liberal Party—solicited or accepted prohibited donations to fund their membership recruitment efforts. Branch stacking itself is not illegal, but accepting donations to finance it is.

On Tuesday, Tudehope acknowledged that Jean-Claude Perrottet, the younger brother of former premier Dominic Perrottet, possessed a genuine "talent" for recruiting and renewing party members. Perrottet had worked in Tudehope's electorate office in 2018 and later in his parliamentary office when Tudehope served as finance minister. Tudehope described Perrottet as someone with "a fairly wide connection of friends, which he was able to marshal together and exploit"—then caught himself, softening the language. He said this ability to mobilize people was essential for any Liberal member hoping to survive preselection challenges.

When pressed about a 2018 message in which Perrottet wrote to fellow Reformers that "Scott and Damien are afraid," Tudehope said he did not recall being aware that Perrottet might have been using his hours as an electorate officer to recruit Liberal members. He acknowledged the message "may have potentially arisen" as a concern, but claimed no clear recollection. Later, his chief of staff had become upset enough about a newspaper article detailing staffers spending ministerial time on recruitment to trigger the dismissal of Christian Ellis, another Reformers operative, after just three months in Tudehope's ministerial office in July 2019.

The inquiry also heard testimony from Frits Maré, a retired businessman and Liberal Party member, who described a 2020 meeting in which Perrottet and Ellis approached him seeking fifty thousand dollars to fund a call centre operation. The goal, Maré said, was to sign up enough new Liberal members to challenge and unseat the sitting member for Mitchell, Alex Hawke. Maré found the request unusual and declined.

Tudehope admitted under questioning that he may have made payments to the Reformers, including what appeared to be contributions toward a venue and a five-thousand-dollar table at a factional event. He also acknowledged introducing Ellis and another Reformers operative, Robert Assaf, to Michael O'Hara, a hotelier and Tudehope's former business partner. Tudehope knew O'Hara was "generous" and likely to support their factional work financially. O'Hara, however, is a prohibited donor under electoral law because of his involvement in the liquor and gambling industries.

When counsel assisting the inquiry, Peggy Dwyer SC, pressed Tudehope on whether he would have knowingly exposed an eighty-three-year-old friend with stage four cancer to the scrutiny O'Hara had faced, Tudehope responded firmly: "Not on your life." Like O'Hara before him, Tudehope disputed whether payments to the Reformers—an unregistered party—would legally constitute political donations under the Electoral Funding Act. The inquiry continues, with the central question remaining whether senior Liberals facilitated prohibited donations to finance membership recruitment operations.