Jean-Claude Perrottet, the 29-year-old brother of former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, appeared before ICAC on 5 August 2026 and admitted he did political party work during office hours while employed as a staffer for Liberal MP Damien Tudehope in 2018 and 2019. His admission came on day eight of Operation Rosny, the corruption watchdog's investigation into whether a group within the Liberal Party called the Reformers took illegal political donations to pay for signing up new party members.

ICAC opened Operation Rosny on 27 July 2026, looking at two main things. The first is whether the Reformers, including Jean-Claude Perrottet, asked for or accepted donations from people who were not allowed to give them, or in amounts that were not reported. The second is whether property developer Jean Nassif and his company Toplace made political donations between roughly 2020 and 2023. The commission has published transcripts for the opening day and the 4 August hearing on its website.

To understand this story, it helps to know how political parties pick their candidates. In the Liberal Party, local members in each branch vote to choose who will run as the party's candidate at an election — that process is called preselection. If you can sign up lots of people who agree with your views and get them into a branch, you can influence who wins that vote. That practice is called branch stacking, and it is legal in New South Wales.

The Reformers, founded by Christian Ellis and Robert Assaf, recruited Jean-Claude Perrottet in 2018, three years after he joined the Liberal Party. The group pushed more conservative positions on same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia. Perrottet told the inquiry the Reformers signed up "like-minded people" partly to influence preselections. He admitted the group placed recruits in branches controlled by rival factions, what he called "dodgy" branches.

The alleged offence is not the branch stacking itself but the money behind it. ICAC heard on 4 August that a donation made to help the Liberal Party recruit members would have to be officially reported as a political donation under electoral funding law. So the question is whether the money used to pay for all this recruiting was properly declared.

On the opening day's afternoon session, a witness acknowledged giving $25,000 to assist the work of Ellis and Assaf. During the 4 August hearing, a witness confirmed that Christian Ellis was contacting Liberal Party members, including Jean-Claude Perrottet, on their behalf. The afternoon transcript of that same day records questioning about whether a witness knew of a method for attracting wealthy donors to the Liberal Party.

Damien Tudehope, the NSW shadow attorney general and the Liberals' leader in the upper house, has stepped aside from his shadow cabinet roles during the inquiry. Tudehope appeared before ICAC on 4 August, where he told counsel assisting Juliet Curtin he did not know that donations made by a friend could have broken electoral funding laws. He also gave evidence that Jean-Claude Perrottet had a "talent" for recruiting new Liberal Party members, which Tudehope said was essential for any Liberal member seeking to keep their seat at preselection.

The connection between Tudehope and Jean-Claude Perrottet is now central to the political fallout. Tudehope employed Perrottet as a staffer in both his electoral and ministerial offices. Under questioning from Curtin, Perrottet admitted doing factional work during those office hours, meaning internal party political activity while being paid by taxpayers. Tudehope also admitted to leaking a confidential draft report from the 2023 parliamentary inquiry that preceded Operation Rosny to fellow Reformer Jeremy Greenwood in February 2023. That parliamentary inquiry sought to examine the same branch-stacking and recruitment conduct now under ICAC investigation. Perrottet was among the Reformers who avoided a summons to appear before it.

Tudehope told ICAC on 4 August that he had discussed with Dominic Perrottet the fact that Jean-Claude was in Fiji during the 2023 parliamentary inquiry, which explained why the younger Perrottet did not appear. NSW Liberal leader Kellie Sloane said on 5 August that she would wait until ICAC finishes its inquiry before deciding what to do about Tudehope.

The broader context here is that Sloane's caution is politically understandable but leaves the Liberals exposed. The party is in opposition federally and in NSW, and the man leading its upper house team has admitted to leaking a confidential parliamentary report while his staffer was running factional recruitment operations on taxpayer-funded time. The Reformers' activities touch multiple members of parliament and party figures, and Operation Rosny's scope is broad enough to cover both the donation chain and the recruitment machinery it funded.

What ICAC is testing is not whether branch stacking occurred, since that is legal in NSW. The question is whether the money used to pay for it was properly declared under the Electoral Funding Act. That is a narrower question but one with sharper teeth. If the commission finds that donations were solicited from prohibited donors or in undeclared amounts, the conduct moves from factional grubbiness into potential criminal territory. The $25,000 payment acknowledged on the opening day, and the alleged involvement of Nassif and Toplace, give the inquiry a financial trail to follow well beyond internal party politics.

For the NSW Liberal Party, the immediate problem is Tudehope. He remains in the parliament, stood aside from shadow cabinet but still holding the title of shadow attorney general. Sloane's decision to wait for ICAC's findings before acting is defensible on fairness grounds, but every day the inquiry runs is another day of headlines connecting the opposition to leaked reports, taxpayer-funded factioneering and prohibited donors. The factional map is also in play: the Reformers sought to stack branches controlled by rivals, meaning the inquiry's fallout will not be confined to one group's interests.

The transcripts speak for themselves, and they are being published in real time. Jean-Claude Perrottet's admissions on 5 August, that he did factional work on the public payroll and that the Reformers deliberately placed members in hostile branches to shift preselection outcomes, are not in dispute. What remains to be tested is whether the money behind that effort was lawful.