At least two teams of private investigators are searching statewide for NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s brother and several other Liberals, trying to serve them with summonses to give evidence to a parliamentary inquiry.
Committee sources described the search, involving multiple agents travelling hundreds of kilometres, as “quite extraordinary”.
Private-eye progress reports obtained by Crikey indicate agents from two different firms have knocked at least 13 doors, including in the area near Deniliquin by the Victorian-NSW border.
One progress report noted agents had travelled “in excess of 1900 kilometres” during one failed mission.
The inquiry was sparked after a Liberal MP alleged in state Parliament that a developer had met with senior party members who were “paid significant funds in order to arrange to put new councillors” on the Hills Shire Council who would be supportive of development applications. The developer has denied those allegations.
The committee last week heard allegations that Perrottet’s brother Jean-Claude Perrottet, and a former Liberal state executive, had asked businessman Frits Mare for $50,000 in 2019 to fund a branch-stacking operation aimed at unseating Scott Morrison’s close ally Alex Hawke from his Hills district electorate of Mitchell.
Mare told the inquiry he rebuffed the alleged suggestion, “terminated the conversation”, and said about Hawke: “Whatever I might think of him, he was elected by the voters, and it’s up to them to unseat him, not me.”
The committee members have sought to compel evidence from Jean-Claude and his brother Charles; Hills Shire Councillor Virginia Ellis and her son, Liberal state executive member Christian Ellis; and a person named Jeremy Greenwood.
Greenwood wrote in a letter to the committee on February 20 that he would be unable to immediately attend a committee hearing because his wife was due to give birth.
The same day as that letter was penned, a progress report from an agent seeking to contact Greenwood was sent to the committee, saying attempts to contact him at two addresses had been unsuccessful.
Charles Perrottet also contacted the committee, writing in a terse email on February 20 that he declined the invitation to appear.
“I will not be participating in your Labor/Greens circus … I am a resident of Victoria,” he wrote.
“I reserve my position in relation to the partisan, ill-informed, speculative and defamatory commentary, including statements to the press, and ‘media releases’, by some committee members.”
Charles Perrottet also warned committee chair and Greens MP Sue Higginson, “as a lawyer”, to “reflect further on the preceding paragraph”.
Attempts by Crikey to contact Jean-Claude Perrottet and Councillor Virginia Ellis were unsuccessful.
The committee is using its powers under the Parliamentary Evidence Act to try to compel the evidence.
“There has been extraordinary resistance to a straightforward inquiry,” committee member and Labor MP John Graham told Crikey.
“We’re calling on these witnesses to cooperate, and on the public to report their whereabouts.”
The premier last week pleaded with Labor to stop playing “silly games” and for reporters to leave his family alone.
“Leave my family out of it,” he said. “I’m here elected to represent the people of NSW. The Labor Party are playing silly games with my family.”
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