source : the age
In the bitchy and vindictive domain of NSW politics, the Independent Commission Against Corruption is the ultimate gossip generator.
Sorting fact from fiction in the shadow world in which the anti-corruption watchdog operates can be tough going. Political operators often swear that a certain opponent is under investigation, only for their theories to fall flat. Others have intel that proves accurate. The ICAC receives about 3500 mandatory and voluntary referrals a year, each stoking a degree of suspicion and speculation. ICAC can’t forensically examine them all.
But on June 24, 2022, the ICAC was given a red-hot referral: NSW Liberal Party apparatchiks and perhaps even serving MPs were allegedly involved in branch stacking and donation schemes that may have helped a dodgy developer win council approvals for major apartment projects through the Hills Shire Council. Operation Rosny was born. The tip has kept the ICAC – and the rumour mill – busy ever since.
“Everyone has known ICAC has been looking at us,” one senior Liberal who is not authorised to speak publicly told the Herald this week. “And everyone has known this is not some stock-standard dig around. ICAC has the dirt, and they have it by the truckload.”
As its work ramped up in 2024 and 2025, the ICAC processed 46.1 terabytes of investigation data in 12 months – a largely meaningless measurement until you realise just one terabyte holds 6.5 million pages of documents and 500 hours of video. Whatever the commission was working on, it was something big. The annual volume of data was expected to hit 80 terabytes last month as investigators juggled Rosny and several smaller probes.
The agency also handed out 152 summonses in the 2024-25 financial year compared with just 37 the one prior. The use of search warrants more than doubled, and applications to access telecommunications data of suspects went up 62 per cent. The ICAC has also been examining several other corruption claims involving Parramatta City Council, NSW Schools Infrastructure and Transport for NSW, but Rosny has soaked up the bulk of its attention. There has been relentless talk in Parliament House of compulsory interrogations occurring just down the road at the ICAC’s Elizabeth Street offices.
There have been plenty of other signs along the way: raids on potential suspects; an aborted parliamentary probe into the saga; three dirt dossiers on a hard-right Christian faction dubbed The Reformers; illegal recordings and the ICAC’s fight to change the law to make them permissible; and the dodgy property developer Jean Nassif hiding out overseas and not facing the music back home.
On Wednesday, the commission revealed it would hold public hearings into the whole sordid affair, promising to transform years of rumour and innuendo into findings that could land some senior figures in jail cells, and blow up the state Liberal Party months out from the March 2027 NSW election.
“If I looked in my crystal ball, I would say there are at least three shadow ministers that won’t make it to the election, potentially five if I was to be naughty and speculate,” former Liberal cabinet minister David Elliott told 2GB on Thursday. “And there’ll be a couple of endorsed candidates that won’t make it through the next couple of months.”
By August and September, the ICAC will be applying a blowtorch to some little-known but highly influential figures in the NSW Liberal Party. Its eight weeks of hearings promise to be a viewing event to rival the watchdog’s public flaming of Gladys Berejiklian throughout 2021.
The commission will investigate whether Liberal operatives Christian Ellis, Jeremy Greenwood, Robert Assaf and Jean-Claude Perrottet “solicited or accepted political donations, including from prohibited donors” in amounts that were not declared and that exceeded donation caps.
Two Strathfield Labor councillors, Sharangan Maheswaran and Karen Pensabene, have also been caught up in the inquiry due to potential links to Nassif.
The ICAC will further examine whether donations were made by or on behalf of Jean Nassif and his company Toplace, which are prohibited donors, and whether they were “solicited or accepted” by Ellis, Greenwood and another member of the Perrottet family, Charles.
Jean-Claude and Charles are the brothers of former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
The donations scheme may have been used in an attempt to damage the political career of Elliott, a former Liberal state transport minister, and trigger the firing of the then-building commissioner, David Chandler – or at the very least stop him from scrutinising substandard Toplace projects. Chandler quit as building commissioner in late 2024 and many believe he holds dynamite information that will be revealed at ICAC in the coming months.
The commission will also investigate whether Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney used money from his organisation to help prop up alleged branch-stacking schemes. McInerney stood aside on Thursday amid the fallout.
In a sign of how close many of the key players are, Jean-Claude Perrottet was on the payroll of Catholic Schools NSW for more than two years as its head of communications. John Perrottet, father of Jean-Claude and Charles, is on its board. Greenwood, one of the other persons of interest for the commission, is a registered lobbyist for the church and its schools arm. Another ICAC target, Robert Assaf, also once worked at Catholic Schools NSW.
The purpose of any alleged illegal donations and branch stacking scheme was probably twofold: to stack local government with councillors more inclined to support Toplace building projects, and for the Liberal Party’s hard-right faction to seize control of the organisation’s governing body, the state executive and the branches in Sydney’s north-west where the party has been locked in bitter factional warfare.
Exactly how the alleged donation schemes worked, how they were allegedly covered up, how much money was involved and what decisions the cash may have influenced at the Hills Shire Council and other organisations will become clear only once the ICAC begins its public hearings.
Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane was touring a dog food factory in western Sydney on Wednesday when the commission released a bombshell statement at 9.55am confirming Operation Rosny’s public hearings. The timing of the inquiry – just six months out from the state election – is a disaster for Sloane, who took over as leader in November and is facing a battle against a popular premier in Chris Minns and the surging One Nation party.
“This behaviour, if it’s proven is absolutely reprehensible,” says Sloane of the allegations. “It has no place in the party that I lead. I believe that members of parliament and members of our party are there to serve the interests of the community, not to serve their own interests, not for political gains, not for point scoring, not for any of the behaviour that is being alleged by ICAC.”
The Liberal Party is now in the crouch position waiting for the hearings and the inevitable fallout. The scandal claimed its first political scalp on Friday afternoon when the opposition’s leader in the Legislative Council, Damien Tudehope, resigned from the frontbench for the duration of the inquiry because he had been called as a witness.
Tudehope is not accused of any wrongdoing but is connected to at least five of the key players involved. Tudehope resigned six hours after the Herald sent him a series of questions asking about these links.
He was in business for years with Michael O’Hara, a hotelier accused of potential wrongdoing by the ICAC as part of Operation Rosny. Christian Ellis once worked in Tudehope’s office. Tudehope is also close to McInerney, and he is a key factional ally of Jean-Claude and Charles Perrottet.
“After careful consideration, I spoke to Kellie Sloane earlier today and offered to step aside until the conclusion of the scheduled public hearings,” Tudehope said, saying being a witness at the ICAC would be a distraction for Sloane and the Liberals. “There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by myself, nor am I under investigation.”
The party was first told about the Hills Shire Council allegations years ago, when Liberal MP Ray Williams delivered a late-night speech on the floor of parliament lifting the lid on what he said was rampant corruption within sections of his own party.
Williams said the former popularly elected Hills Shire Council mayor Michelle Byrne and six sitting Liberal councillors had been dumped by the party’s state executive “without the usual preselection processes”, and replaced by other Liberal candidates, including some who lived outside the area. One of the newly installed Liberal councillors was Virginia Ellis, the mother of ICAC suspect Christian Ellis.
In his speech to parliament, Williams said: “Apparently prior to the council elections, Jean Nassif of Toplace met with Christian Ellis and other senior members of the Liberal Party, who were paid significant funds in order to arrange to put new councillors on The Hills Shire Council who would be supportive of future Toplace development applications.”
One project being pushed by Toplace around that time was a $250 million apartment tower known as Skyview. The scheme was encountering all sorts of difficulties, including through the scrutiny of Chandler as building commissioner.
Williams also said he had been told a sitting MP actively supported the Toplace proposal, arranged meetings between Hills Shire staff and the company’s consultants, and caucused with Liberal councillors to obtain support for Toplace. He did not name the MP but it is widely known to be referring to Robyn Preston, the member for Hawkesbury. Preston is not part of the inquiry announced on Wednesday.
“Needless to say, these are very serious allegations,” Williams said.
The then-premier Perrottet referred Williams’ late-night parliamentary claims to the ICAC the following day – June 24, 2022. It had only three months earlier declined to investigate after being sent an anonymous dirt dossier titled The Men who Stole the Hills. Justifying its earlier decision not to investigate, the ICAC said the allegation that new councillors might be more supportive of development did not constitute sufficient evidence for it to pursue the matter.
But the referral from Perrottet, combined with the gravity of Williams’ claims in parliament, meant the ICAC had no choice but to reconsider.
Asked about Williams’ speech, Byrne, the Hills Shire Council mayor dumped to make way for new candidates, told a parliamentary inquiry she did not have any evidence of money changing hands. “My gut feeling says that’s exactly what happened to me; I just can’t prove it,” she said. “I think the only body that really can is ICAC.”
Operation Rosny’s public hearings will begin on July 27.
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