‘Scott and Damien are afraid’: senior Liberal quizzed at Icac about former staffer’s message

NSW shadow attorney general, Damien Tudehope, tells inquiry Jean-Claude Perrottet had a talent for recruiting A senior New South Wales Liberal says the younger brother of former Liberal premier Dominic Perrottet had a “talent” for recruiting and renewing new members to the party, a corruption inquiry has heard. On Tuesday, Damien Tudehope, the NSW shadow attorney general and Liberal leader in the upper house, gave evidence as part of the Independent Commission Against Corruption ’s (Icac) Operation Rosny, where he was also asked about a 2018 message in which his former staffer Jean-Claude Perrottet wrote to other Reformers that “Scott and Damien are afraid”. The inquiry is investigating allegations the Reformers solicited or accepted illegal donations to recruit or renew members to the party, a practice known as branch stacking, which is not itself illegal. Tudehope, who has stood aside from his shadow cabinet roles during the inquiry, is not named in any allegations and is not accused of any wrongdoing.

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Scoop News DeskTudehope · Published Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 5:45 AM UTCUpdated Tuesday, August 4, 2026 at 6:12 AM UTC

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But like O’Hara, the inquiry’s first witness last week, Tudehope disputed whether payments to the Reformers, who were not a registered party, would count as political donations. “If you think that I would expose a friend of mine to that level of scrutiny that he was exposed to, 83 years of age with stage . four cancer, do you think that I would have done that in circumstances where I knew that he would be a prohibited donor for the purposes of the Electoral Funding Act?