A former deputy mayor of a suburban Sydney council has told an inquiry examining alleged links between Liberal councillors and property developers that he felt like a “stunned mullet” after seeing plans to build “colossal structures” in the area.
Alan Haselden told the New South Wales parliamentary inquiry on Thursday that he experienced a “wow moment” during his meeting with developer Jean Nassif, the owner of developer Toplace, sometime between 2018 and 2019.
Describing Nassif’s planned developments as “colossal structures”, Haselden told the inquiry he was shocked by the scope of the work proposed within the Hills shire council area.
“He was pretty bullish about the whole thing … I sat there like the proverbial stunned mullet,” Haselden said.
“Loosely I was aware that there were some large things proposed [but] it was when I saw these drawings that the magnitude of what was proposed [became clear].”
The inquiry is examining explosive allegations aired by the Liberal MP Ray Williams in parliament last year in which he claimed senior members of the party had been “paid significant funds” to install new councillors in order to support development applications by Toplace and Nassif.
Nassif has denied the allegations in correspondence to the inquiry. While Haselden told the inquiry that nothing untoward occurred during the meeting, he was shocked by what was being proposed.
“It was a wow moment. Wow, this is serious stuff here,” he said of the meeting.
The inquiry has proved an unwanted distraction for the Perrottet government as it seeks a fourth term in power at next month’s state election.
On Thursday night the office of the premier, Dominic Perrottet, was forced to issue a statement to say the inquiry would be able to continue its work after the proroguing – or interrupting – of parliament, which will now take place on Monday.
“The government is not in caretaker until 3 March 2023 and Labor should correct the record,” a spokesperson said.
Perrottet has previously dismissed the inquiry as a Labor “mud-slinging exercise”.
It has previously heard allegations from party member and businessman Frits Maré that one of the premier’s brothers, Jean-Claude Perrottet, and a Liberal party powerbroker, Christian Ellis, had approached him to ask for a $50,000 contribution from him in 2019 to “get rid of Alex Hawke, stack his seat”.
On Thursday one of the committee members, Labor MP John Graham, tabled part of an anonymous dossier regarding a group called the NSW Reformers and alleging a state-wide plot to undertake a sophisticated branch stacking operation in the Hills district.
Both Jean-Claude Perrottet and Ellis are named as key members of the Reformers in the document, which cites a series of meetings and events held by the group attended by a bevvy of senior Liberal party MPs.
The document, which the Guardian has not been able to independently verify but contains references to previous media reporting and public information about the group, alleges that members of the NSW Reformers used a database from the same-sex marriage no campaign to recruit new members across Sydney’s north-west and received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from loyal MPs, powerbrokers and benefactors.
“People were contacted by phone or email and asked about their beliefs and views. If they were the right type, the person would invite them to attend a reformer event, or offer to meet with them,” the document claims.
“The NSW Reformers is an unincorporated group formed with the sole and express purpose of recruiting or stacking branches to the NSW Liberal Party with the goal of installing their own people into council and parliament, and forcing incumbent councillors and MPs to work with them or face the threat of being replaced with a Reformer.”
