NSW's anti-corruption watchdog has been shown text messages suggesting federal opposition leader Angus Taylor either paid money to a hard-right group inside the Liberal Party called the Reformers, or was refusing to.

The claim came from Juliet Curtin, the lawyer helping run the inquiry. She put it to a witness, 29-year-old Jean-Claude Perrottet, that text messages suggested Taylor "had paid some money to the Reformers ... or was refusing to." Perrottet replied: "It sounds like that's the suggestion" (The Guardian, 6 August 2026).

Taylor is not named in the inquiry's allegations and has previously denied making payments to the Reformers. The investigation, called Operation Rosny, is looking into whether the Reformers took illegal donations to pay for signing up or renewing Liberal Party members. That practice is called branch stacking — basically, flooding a party branch with members so your faction can vote its people into positions of power. Public hearings started in the week of 27 July 2026 (SBS, 30 July 2026; ICAC website).

The text messages at the centre of Thursday's evidence were sent by Reformer cofounder Christian Ellis in September 2021. Ellis told the group it had "zero dollars at the moment" because "Michael O'Hara hates the vax campaign, and Angus Taylor hates Rob." The Rob is Robert Assaf, the Reformers cofounder who gave evidence to the inquiry. Assaf testified that hotelier Michael O'Hara, who is banned from donating under NSW law, threatened to stop paying a lobbying company called Beckington for Reformers factional work after the group took an anti-vaccination stance (The Guardian, 6 August 2026).

Beckington was set up by Ellis and fellow Reformer Jeremy Greenwood in 2019. It received payments from O'Hara for factional work after issuing fake invoices for consulting advice that was never provided. The inquiry heard that Jean-Claude Perrottet sent fake invoices when setting up different arrangements with O'Hara to keep the money flowing (ICAC transcript, 31 July 2026).

Perrottet was questioned about invoices for four monthly payments of $5,000 and one payment of $5,500 from Beckington between April and August 2021. At the time, he was working at a company called Medallion Finance on a base salary of $55,000. He told the inquiry he did not know why he received the payments (The Guardian, 6 August 2026).

Earlier in the week, the inquiry heard that a person referred to as Mr McInerney wanted to ask Taylor for money to fund the Reformers' work. A witness agreed when asked whether Taylor would give an initial $15,000 and then $3,000 a month (ICAC transcript, 29 July 2026). Text messages also showed the Reformers planned to "shake down" Taylor for money (ABC News, 28 July 2026). Taylor had agreed to speak at an event in Goulburn, but when asked whether conversations involved asking McInerney for money for the Reformers, the witness said no (ICAC transcript, 28 July 2026).

The inquiry also heard that Jean-Claude Perrottet and Christian Ellis asked a person referred to as "Mare" for $50,000 to fund a branch operation for the Reformers (SMH, 2 August 2026). ICAC further heard that the late former federal Liberal vice-president Teena McQueen may have paid money to support Reformers work.

Dominic Perrottet, the former NSW premier and Jean-Claude's brother, is not named in ICAC's allegations and is not accused of wrongdoing. Jean-Claude Perrottet was described as an important member of the Reformers, and the inquiry heard that Taylor was "around the group" (ICAC transcript, 30 July 2026).

The evidence piling up places Taylor closer to the Reformers' money arrangements than his denials have acknowledged, though none of it is a formal allegation against him. What ICAC has shown, through testimony and text messages from the time, is that several people in the Reformers' orbit believed Taylor was either a source of funding or a target for it. Those are two different things, and the inquiry has not yet sorted out which one is true.

The broader context here is that the timing is uncomfortable for the federal Coalition. Taylor leads the opposition at a moment when the NSW Liberal Party is already dealing with the embarrassment of a public branch-stacking inquiry. ICAC publishes transcripts on its website within 24 hours of each hearing day, so every damaging detail lands in the public domain almost immediately. The commissioner's formal findings, when they arrive, will carry their own weight. Until then, the evidence is doing what ICAC evidence does: building up in the public record, one transcript at a time, whether the people involved like it or not.

Transcripts from the first two weeks of Operation Rosny, covering testimony from 28 July through 5 August 2026, are available on the ICAC website.