A NSW parliamentary inquiry has found that allegations of Liberal Party branch-stacking and “collusion with developers” at a Sydney council could amount to “serious corruption”.
The inquiry into the Hills Shire Council delivered its final report last night, hours before the current Parliament expired ahead of the March 25 state election.
The findings will be referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC).
The committee expressed frustration it hadn’t been able to speak to several people it considered key witnesses — including two of NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s brothers — and recommended further probes of the allegations.
Among the allegations heard by the committee was a claim Jean-Claude Perrottet and a Liberal Party member named Christian Ellis had “asked a businessman to contribute $50,000 to an operation to unseat” a federal Liberal MP, Alex Hawke.
Because both Jean-Claude and Ellis refused to give evidence and respond to summonses from the committee, the committee found that “based on evidence to the committee [the] meeting took place”.
Jean-Claude denied the allegation in a letter to the committee.
“The allegations made against me are completely false,” he wrote, adding he was overseas and would not be taking part in the inquiry.
Ellis did not respond to the committee at all, the report said.
Ellis, Jean-Claude, and Ellis’ mother Virginia, who is a Hills Shire councillor, were all found to have “engaged in serious and deliberate attempts to evade service”.
The inquiry was sparked after a Liberal MP alleged in state Parliament that a developer had met with senior party members who were “paid significant funds in order to arrange to put new councillors” on the Hills Shire Council who would be supportive of development applications. The developer, Jean Nassif, who also didn’t appear before the committee, has denied those allegations.
The report found that the alleged $50,000 request, “combined with the behaviour of witnesses called to this inquiry, add weight to the allegations” against Nassif.
Another brother of the premier, Charles Perrottet, was called to give evidence but refused and pointed to the fact he lived in Victoria.
The inquiry found he and Nassif both “engaged in serious and deliberate attempts to avoid giving evidence”.
Three other people were also blamed for not giving evidence, including ex-Liberal Party NSW executive member and CEO of Nassif’s development company Toplace, Jeff Egan.
The report said Egan “declined to give evidence to the committee (and) denied having ever spoken with any of the current or former Liberal Party councillors on the Hills Shire Council since being employed by Toplace about any matters relating to the Hills Shire Council, or ever being a member of any of the Liberal Party branches in the Hills local government area”.
The report said a NSW parliamentary committee had “never been faced with such serious, deliberate and coordinated attempts by witnesses to evade service of a summons”.
“This has been an extraordinary inquiry — not so much for the information that has come to light — but for the gaping hole in evidence left by key witnesses who have gone to great lengths to avoid scrutiny,” Greens MP and committee chair Sue Higginson said in her foreword.
Crikey has previously reported on the many odd features of the inquiry — including a decision to order private investigators to fan out across the state, and the tabling of salacious chapters from a book written by an anonymous person.
The inquiry recommended the next parliament should continue to probe the matter and seek evidence from the people it said had avoided summonses.
It also recommended the minister for local government should investigate the council and consider whether it should be put into administration.
The decisions to publish anonymous evidence and to use process servers to chase witnesses should be scrutinised by the Parliament’s privilege committee, the report said.
