A corruption hearing in NSW produced a striking moment this week. With former Liberal minister Damien Tudehope's evidence nearly finished, the lawyer questioning him — Peggy Dwyer SC — pulled out an email he had sent in February 2023. It had a leaked copy of a draft parliamentary report attached, about a practice called branch stacking in the Hills area. Branch stacking is when people sign up large numbers of party members to control internal votes, sometimes using fake or stacked memberships. The report was about a group within the Liberal Party called the Reformers. Dwyer asked Tudehope whether he had sent the draft to a man named Jeremy Greenwood. His reply: "It appears that I did." (The Guardian)

The answer matters because of who Greenwood is. He helped set up the Reformers, a group of conservative Catholics who joined the Liberal Party to take control of local branches from other factions. He was also a key witness who refused to give evidence to the 2023 parliamentary inquiry that wrote the draft report Tudehope leaked. (SMH)

That 2023 inquiry looked into allegations of dodgy donations and branch stacking in the Hills area. Tudehope thought the inquiry was politically motivated. The draft report he received and then passed on to Greenwood came from that process. (Yahoo News)

The timing matters too. During the 2023 inquiry, several key people connected to the Reformers — Christian Ellis, Jean-Claude Perrottet, Charles Perrottet and Greenwood himself — had left NSW to avoid being called to give evidence. Tudehope told the corruption commission he had spoken with then-premier Dom Perrottet, who said he knew his brother had gone to Fiji. So Tudehope knew a key witness was hiding out overseas. (The Age)

The investigation, called Operation Rosny, became a full inquiry by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on 25 October 2022. The public hearings opened on 27 July 2026. A week of witness appearances began on Monday 3 August 2026, with Tudehope and Sydney businessman Frits Maré scheduled to appear. (ICAC; ICAC witness list)

Maré's name comes up in a separate claim: that Tudehope asked him for $50,000 to fund a branch-stacking effort in the Hills area, aimed at removing federal MP Alex Hawke. (The Saturday Paper)

Then there is the money. Tudehope's close friend and former law partner Michael O'Hara gave $165,000 to several Reformers entities after being introduced at a function held at Tudehope's home. News Corp columnist Miranda Devines was the speaker at that function. (The Guardian)

Tudehope has not been named as a person of interest in Operation Rosny. He has, however, stood down as shadow attorney-general. ICAC hearings often blur the line between someone who is not formally under investigation and someone whose conduct is being tested in public, and that is happening again here.

The broader context is that this hearing is tying together loose ends from the 2023 parliamentary inquiry, which could never fully resolve its work because key witnesses fled the state. Greenwood refused to give evidence. The Perrottet brothers and Ellis left NSW. The inquiry produced a draft report, and that draft then went from a senior Liberal who thought the process was unfair to a man at the centre of the faction being investigated. ICAC is now examining whether that flow of information and money amounts to corrupt conduct.

What makes the email moment so effective is how little warning Dwyer gave. She did not signal the question was coming. It arrived at the end of Tudehope's time in the witness box, when he might have thought the hardest part was over. The reply, "It appears that I did," is the sort of phrasing a lawyer suggests when the document speaks for itself and there is no point denying it. He conceded the act but said nothing about why he did it or what he expected Greenwood to do with a report into his own faction's activities.

For the Coalition, the problem is clear. Tudehope stepped down from the shadow attorney-general role, but he is still a Liberal MP. The party that spent 2023 watching its internal fights spill into a parliamentary inquiry is now watching them spill into a corruption hearing, with a former premier's brother named as someone who fled to avoid the inquiry, and the then-premier apparently aware of it. None of this is new to anyone who follows NSW Liberal factional politics. What is new is that it is being tested under oath, with documents, in a place where refusing to answer is not an option.