Finally, we are hearing from one of the central characters, Charles Perrottet, in a saga that has occupied the Independent Commission against Corruption (Icac) for nearly four years. It began with the dismissal of the Hills Shire council and a late night 2022 speech in NSW parliament alleging secret payments from a developer. It pirouetted to a pressure campaign allegedly to remove the then NSW building commissioner, and ended with real world impacts: defective high-rise buildings and thousands of unhappy homebuyers, with the developer nowhere to be seen.
Charles Perrottet, brother of the former NSW premier, Dominic Perrottet, finally began giving evidence late Friday. He told the commission that he had met the Toplace developer, Jean Nassif, now a fugitive in Lebanon, in December 2019 and had, over several years, provided him with advice on how to progress his developments. Charles and Nassif bonded over their “frustrations” with David Elliott, the former member for Baulkham Hills, and a key figure in the rival centre-right faction of the Liberals, Charles told Icac.
I would listen to him, I would appease him, because I wanted information from him,” Charles said. Elliott had opposed some of Nassif’s developments in the Hills Shire area, earning the developer’s ire. Charles, for his part, was angry about Elliott’s attempts to unseat his brother Dominic and was looking for information on him.
Despite having a full-time job at BP as head of strategy, Charles was remunerated for his advice, though not directly. I didn’t want to be paid. I said, you can continue to pay Anita [Perrottet’s wife] and look after her.” Icac is investigating whether Nassif paid $2m in an undeclared political donation to a group of Liberal-aligned conservative men known as the Reformers, including Greenwood and Christian Ellis, in the pursuit of certain political outcomes.
In the first weeks of its investigation it focused on how these allegedly illegal donations were allegedly used to fund this group and stack branches with highly conservative members, and ultimately shift the Liberal party to the right. s focused on a potentially far more serious issue from a public policy perspective: what, if anything, was done, primarily by Charles Perrottet, for the $2m from Nassif? People like Charles Perrottet are not registered lobbyists. They do not appear in ministerial diaries because meetings on “political matters” with ministers do not have to be disclosed.
They can engage casually with key ministerial staff because meetings with staff don’t need to be disclosed anywhere. Many of those working for ministers have their own ambitions within the party and would be flattered by the attention. The inquiry might have taken four years to get off the ground but now we are seeing why.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
