The union for independent school teachers in New South Wales has demanded greater scrutiny of Catholic schools as the chief executive of their governing body told a corruption inquiry payments to a lobbying firm were not a “sham arrangement” to fund Liberal party factional work. Dallas McInerney insisted to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (Icac) on Friday that Catholic Schools NSW funding wasn’t misused. Icac is investigating whether McInerney arranged and approved illegal donations from the governing body for 600 Catholic schools to support alleged branch stacking efforts of the Christian factional group the Reformers.
The group wanted more conservative policies on issues such as abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage. The inquiry has heard that Catholic Schools NSW paid Beckington, a lobbying company run by Reformers Christian Ellis and Jeremy Greenwood, $130,900 through invoices for consulting services between August 2019 and August 2021. Greenwood’s company, JPG Advisory, was paid $135,000 between December 2021 and December 2023.
The commission has heard that Reformers Robert Assaf and Dylan Whitelaw spent work hours on factional efforts while employed at Catholic Schools NSW. On Friday, the Independent Education Union’s NSW branch, which had previously declined to comment while the inquiry was under way, said it was “deeply concerned by … [allegations] that public funding for Catholic schools may have been wrongfully spent on Liberal party matters”. The IEU NSW/ACT branch secretary, Carol Matthews, said close scrutiny of public funding “was not applied to organisations such as Catholic Schools NSW that receive funding on behalf of Catholic diocesan schools”.
About 80% of the funding distributed by Catholic Schools NSW comes from the state and federal governments. Government funding totalled about $3.8bn in 2024. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, has ruled out an independent audit of the schools governing body while Icac’s inquiry is under way.
McInerney stood aside from his role as CEO before the Icac hearings began “to allow the work of Catholic Schools NSW to continue its important mission”, he said in a statement previously. Catholic Schools NSW has previously said it “does not intend … to provide responses to questions that supersede the eight-week inquiry and legal process that is under way”. McInerney on Friday was asked about messages in February 2021 between Assaf and fellow Reformer Jean-Claude Perrottet, the younger brother of former NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, who is not accused of wrongdoing.
Assaf and Jean-Claude were not directly employed by Beckington. Jean-Claude Perrottet wrote to Assaf: “Ellis and I caught up with Dallas in Bowral to discuss money, had a long convo.” The counsel assisting Juliet Curtin asked if the reason for Assaf and Jean-Claude’s interest was “because they knew that the arrangement in place was that you would pay Beckington money pursuant to a sham arrangement” – under which the money would come to them. He said he could not recall the Bowral meeting.
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