Catholic Schools NSW paid $135k salary for Liberal factional work, ICAC told

A key member of the right-wing religious group the Reformers moaned that Robert Assaf was paid a $135,000 salary at Catholic Schools NSW to do factional Liberal Party work, text messages shown to a corruption hearing have revealed.

Robert Assaf continued giving evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Monday, where he was asked about a message exchange between fellow Reformers Jean-Claude Perrottet and Christian Ellis.

Counsel assisting Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC, read out a text to Ellis, where Perrottet bemoaned that he was doing political work for the right-wing faction without being compensated while claiming Assaf received “$135k for Rob to work for faction”.

The commission heard $135,000 was Assaf’s salary at Catholic Schools NSW.

“Can I suggest to you that you were employed in part on the understanding that your work for Reformers would be supported through a salary from Catholic Schools,” Dwyer asked Assaf.

“I don’t accept that,” Assaf said.

Dwyer also read out some text messages to the commission that show the relationship between Assaf and Ellis becoming frosty over money issues.

Assaf said he was entitled to 10 per cent of the total value of contracts with clients he introduced to Ellis’s company Beckington. That included Catholic Schools NSW.

In a text message to Ellis, Assaf said he was “actually quite pissed off” about not getting his cut of the money.

“Quite frankly, I don’t care how you guys run your business, but the agreement was that any contract you guys take on that I introduced, I get 10 per cent,” the text read to the commission said.

The pair exchanged a few more tense messages before Ellis says: “I think you need to calm down and discussion later. We’ve literally sent some WhatsApp messages back and forth this morning, and you’ve blown up.”

Dwyer resumed her questioning of Assaf on Monday asking why he decided to resign from the Reformers, the religious right-wing Liberal factional group that he co-founded.

Assaf told the commission part of his motivation to “phase out” from the Reformers was that he felt the group’s co-founder Ellis was not giving him a straight answer on some of his concerns.

One of those concerns, Assaf said, was Ellis’s connection to fugitive Sydney property developer Jean Nassif.

Ellis told him he was assisting Nassif with lobbying around a water issue he had for one of his development projects.

Assaf said there were widespread concerns, as well as “jokes and insinuations”, in the right faction around Ellis’s connection to Nassif’s Toplace.

“I personally viewed it as a perception issue, like as in you just don’t want to be associated with developers because it really taints the value stuff we were doing,” Assaf said.

Assaf also told the commission he became worried the Reformers were spending too much time pursuing a vendetta between the Perrottets and Alex Hawke, of the centre-right faction.

Jean-Claude Perrottet was doing a lot of work as part of the Reformers to stack branches in the Hills, where the dispute between Liberal factions was particularly tense.

Dwyer asked Assaf about the “vendetta” between the Perrottet brothers and the Hawke faction. Assaf said negative stories about Hawke were part of the “standard brainwashing” members of the right-wing faction got when they joined to explain the factional feud.

“The narrative of the right was Hawke equals bad. He backstabbed Dom (Perrottet) at his wedding or something … took branches, split the right, and now Hawke is this kingmaker,” Assaf said.

Further reading

Here are some of the highlights from the first week of our coverage.