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Eillis had moved to the NSW town of Deniliquin and was attempting to get preselection for the federal seat of Farrer, after stacking the branches of the federal MP Sussan Ley. McInerney decided to cut ties with Beckington.<\/p>\n
He moved to a new consultancy, JPG advisory, run by Greenwood.<\/p>\n
McInerney said this switch \u201cinvolved sensitivities\u201d and so he had agreed to use Jean-Claude as \u201ca conduit\u201d.<\/p>\n
McInerney insisted Jean-Claude had negotiated the fees and other aspects of the consultancy. But it soon emerged that there were no material changes between an August draft and the November signed contract, and that payments had begun to JPG as far back as July.<\/p>\n
For this \u201cservice\u201d, Jean-Claude was paid 50% of the estimated $135,000 fees paid by Catholic schools to JPG. Again, the written work output was unable to be produced apart from invoices.<\/p>\n
McInerney professed ignorance of WhatsApp chats between the Reformers (he was not on the chats). These appeared to confirm that the Catholic Schools money was in fact being split between the key Reformers to fund their factional work.<\/p>\n
Why would Rob Assaf and Jean-Claude Perrottet be at all interested in arrangements between Catholic Schools and Beckington, counsel assisting Juliet Curtin asked?<\/p>\n
She suggested they knew McInerney would pay Beckington pursuant to a \u201csham arrangement\u201d so money would find its way to Assaf and Jean-Claude to fund Reformers. McInerney disagreed.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Greenwood, centre, leaves the Icac hearing on Monday. Photograph: Damian Shaw\/AAP<\/p>\n
The role Dylan Whitelaw, the youngest of the Reformers but who is not accused of any wrongdoing, had played in securing the work for the consultants was also curious.<\/p>\n
Whitelaw, then 19, had met McInerney at the Mittagong branch of the Liberal party, where McInerney was president, and Whitelaw later became vice-president.<\/p>\n
After finishing school, Whitelaw had gone to work for Catholic Schools as a data entry clerk. He later moved to Beckington.<\/p>\n
According to Whitelaw\u2019s evidence, he mainly undertook organising Reformers events. McInerney and Greenwood described him as having an administrative role in Beckington.<\/p>\n
But curiously, Whitelaw also seems to have played a critical role in securing the funding for Beckington\u2019s contract and increasing the payments. McInerney was shown emails where Whitelaw relays messages from McInerney about financial support for the Reformers, including the now-notorious message that McInerney was going to \u201cshake down Angus for $10K\u201d during a breakfast meeting with ministers. Whitelaw became \u201cthe point of contact for administrative interplay\u201d, McInerney said.<\/p>\n
To round out the roll call of nepo babies at Catholic Schools, there was also James Tudehope. He was not a Reformer, but a son of Tudehope, one of the Reformers\u2019 supporters. He spent several years as the Catholic Schools\u2019 director of communications, though he had not worked in this role previously or for a media company.<\/p>\n
McInerney insisted James was extremely capable and competent.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately we have not yet heard from James, who is now a teacher in New Zealand and has declined to return to give evidence. But we know from Damien Tudehope\u2019s evidence that James was anxious about the contract with Beckington.<\/p>\n
Not to be forgotten is Assaf, another founding Reformer who denies any wrongdoing. He was also employed at Catholic Schools in 2019 in a role that involved him doing \u201cDallas work\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The right are fond of criticising elites: inner-city elites, Canberra elites, university elites, public service elites. Just ask…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":855631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-855630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=855630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/855631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=855630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=855630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=855630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}