00:00:01
Speaker 1: For decades.
00:00:01
Speaker 2: It's shone a light on corruption of the highest order, even toppling premiers.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: I still can't.
00:00:07
Speaker 3: Recall the receipt of a gift of a bottle of nineteen fifty nine range.
00:00:12
Speaker 4: I can't explain what happened.
00:00:14
Speaker 5: My resignation as Premier could not occur at a worse time, but the timing is completely outside of my control, as the IKAK has chosen to take this action during the most challenging weeks of the most challenging time.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: Now New South Wales AYIKAK, the state's corruption watchdog, has set its sights on a secretive right wing Christian faction of the Liberal Party, the Reformers, and it's cashed up group of backers.
00:00:38
Speaker 6: We expect that the Commission may see the confluence of personal greed and political ambitions.
00:00:44
Speaker 2: Already, the public Inquiry code named Operation Rosney, has heard of shit sheets, sham payments, phone taps and dodgy deals with fugitive developers, with the Reformers connections reaching all the way to the top of the Liberal Party. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM today, Sydney Morning Herald's chief investigative reporter, Kate mcclemont unpacks the tangled web of players at the center of what she's calling aka's Game of Thrones.
00:01:18
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, August five.
00:01:25
Speaker 2: Kate, let's begin by talking through some of the major players in this case. Could we start with this group of conservatives, the right faction of a liberal party known as the quote unquote Reformers.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Who are they?
00:01:40
Speaker 4: Well, the two key people who started the Reformers are Rob Asif and Christian Ellis. And then we've got a lobbying outfit connected to them, which is Jeremy Greenward. Christian Ellis is connected with them, and also two brothers of former Premier Dominic Perroite. We've got John Claude Perrote and we've got Charles Perrote. And then as a sideline, we've got Disappeared, developed by John Lecief who is in Lebanon, but there's a warrant out for his arrest over serious forward matters. And we also have Dallas McInerney, who is the war was up until recently basically the boss of Catholic schools New South Wales. And another person of interest is a young employer a Dylan White Law although he hasn't been mentioned in the terms of.
00:02:39
Speaker 6: Reference Allegation one. This involves an investigation into potential breaches of the electoral funding laws between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty three by a number of persons who were interested to bolster the recruitment of Conservatives into branches of the State Liberal Party.
00:02:56
Speaker 2: And so by the sounds of it, this group of men, they had some pretty big ambitions. They were trying to recruit as many as five thousand people and completely changed the direction of the New South Wales Liberal parties. So how big of an operation were they building?
00:03:12
Speaker 4: Look, it was actually quite a small operation. But in order to achieve their goals, which was basically to have people elected to either state executive or to Parliament or to councils people of a like minded worldview and that is basically conservative Catholic values. But they needed money to branchstack.
00:03:36
Speaker 6: Including from prohibited donors in amounts that were not declared and exceeded applicable donation caps for purposes that included the recruitment and or renewal of members to the Liberal Party.
00:03:48
Speaker 2: Okay, so tell me a bit more about where the money was coming from.
00:03:53
Speaker 4: Well, the money was coming from John resif the developmer now John Asique was having trouble in Castle Hill.
00:04:00
Speaker 7: He had some very.
00:04:01
Speaker 4: Big developments, but the Building Commissioner David Chandler had issued rectification orders and also local MPs David Elliot and Ray Williams had expressed concerns from their constituents about these developments. So we've heard that some of the money from John Nacief was being channeled through these people to ruin the careers of Elliot and Chandler.
00:04:29
Speaker 7: We've also heard that some of the.
00:04:31
Speaker 4: Money was coming through just to bankroll the activities of the reformers.
00:04:37
Speaker 6: Mister mcief wanted the removal of the Old Hills Council linked to the center right faction and mister David Elliot MP, so as to replace them with members of the Liberal Party whom he thought would support his developments, and that may well have motivated him to make certain payments to Christian Ellis, Jeremy greenwo Good and Charles Perrete.
00:05:02
Speaker 4: We've also heard evidence from Michael O'Hara, who is a Conservative Catholic and he was also a hotelier and developer and being involved in the liquor business and development. He too was a band developer, so he was putting in, you know, quite considerable sums of money to a lobbying group associated with these people for work that was never done.
00:05:29
Speaker 2: So the allegation is essentially money wandering through this lobbying company.
00:05:33
Speaker 4: Yes, I guess it was. It was washing money to make it look like it was to be used for something else.
00:05:40
Speaker 2: And Ike also heard claims that Dallas McNerney, the former Catholic Schools New South Wales CEO, had wanted to shake down Angus Taylor for thousands of dollars.
00:05:51
Speaker 1: Tell me what exactly the inquiry heard about that.
00:05:54
Speaker 4: Well, it was interesting because they were always trying to get money from somewhere. So there was a text message shared.
00:06:02
Speaker 8: Bombshell text messages in a reformers group chat boasted that Angus Taylor committed personal funds, got the commitment from Angers for a fifteen K injection plus a three K monthly donation.
00:06:15
Speaker 4: But there has been no evidence that that money was actually forthcoming. It was just that they were all chatting with excitement about the possibility of receiving it.
00:06:27
Speaker 6: I'm not going to give a running commentary on all of this, so I'm not a party to the proceedings, but no payment was made, but.
00:06:33
Speaker 3: They produced text messages claiming that you were donators.
00:06:36
Speaker 5: Can you just think I said that no.
00:06:38
Speaker 1: Payment was made.
00:06:40
Speaker 2: Can you tell me a little bit more about the ideological bent here what they actually wanted to see happen within the Liberal party.
00:06:46
Speaker 4: Look, I think that they wanted to see Christian conservative values, anti abortion, anti trans, anti same sex marriage. And it's interesting that we've heard that quite a few of the people actually went to school at Redfield College, which is in the Hills area, and that is associated with Opus Day, which is a right wing group within the Catholic Church. A lot of the people shared those values and in fact that's where some of them met. And this includes the Perrote brothers. Dominic Perrote, the former premier, was school captain in the year two thousand. Now there's no suggestion that Dominic Perrote was involved in any of the activities of his brother, but they basically shared a right wing religious view of the world that they wanted to.
00:07:44
Speaker 7: Impose on others.
00:07:45
Speaker 4: Share with others, but that's what their goal was.
00:07:51
Speaker 2: Still to come sheets, wire taps and branch stacking. Kay The Reformers are also accused of branch stacking at the hills Shire Council, replacing the old members with people that they hoped would approve the developments of one of their main backers, the fugitive property developer Jean Nasieff. Can you tell me a bit more about Nasif?
00:08:19
Speaker 4: Well, yes, John mcief was at one stage one of the biggest private developers in the state, but things started to go awry for him when the Building Commissioner put rectification orders. It just basically meant you have got a lot of problems with your buildings. There are serious defects. We won't let you sell any more of these until they fixed. In June twenty twenty two, Ray Williams, who was a member from the Hills area, gone up and made an explosive speech to Parliament.
00:08:59
Speaker 9: Member for Kellyville, Ray Williams making astonishing claims about those in his own party.
00:09:04
Speaker 3: Who were paid significant funds in order to arrange to put new counselors on the Hillshire Council who would be supportive of future top Place development application.
00:09:15
Speaker 7: Now it was interesting.
00:09:16
Speaker 4: At the same time, John Nasieff was under investigation by Strikeforce Kohloul, which was a new South Wales organized crime Stripeforce and they were examining serious fraud allegations about Nasief and his daughter, and at the end of twenty twenty two, after Ray Williams's speech, it was decided that New South Wales Parliament would have its own inquiry into these allegations. Now I think the parliamentary inquiry, I think someone's were issued on the eighth of December, and John Nasiff departed this country to Lebanon on the ninth of December. A couple of months later there was a warrant issued for his arrest for serious fraud offenses. Basically, he was getting financial backing for his buildings by bodging up sales like pretending that he'd sold a lot more, but they were to friends and family. Since leaving the country in December twenty twenty two, there is no indication that Nasifi is going to come back for either of the four chargers or for the Aykak inquiry.
00:10:31
Speaker 2: Okay, So despite all of this and having left the country, it seems like he was still trying to influence politics here.
00:10:38
Speaker 4: Well. We heard that John Decieff was a person that seemed to have access to a lot of money and he was also funding private investigators. So we've heard that private investigators followed the then police Minister David Elliot trying to find something with which to blackmail him. We've also heard that through Genasif, the private investigators were also trying to stop summons being served by Parliament for people to appear at that parliamentary inquiry that we were talking about. So it seems that Nasif was still perhaps pulling the strings, perhaps still injecting money while overseas.
00:11:24
Speaker 2: Can you tell me any more about David Elliott and the so called chit sheet that was compiled.
00:11:30
Speaker 4: Yes, well, the shit sheet was supposedly compiled by young Dylan Whitelaw, who I think was sort of like about twenty one at the time, although even though he was shown it, he had very little recollection, like a lot of the witnesses seem to have a lot of trouble recalling until they're shown a text message or.
00:11:51
Speaker 7: You know, an intercepted call.
00:11:53
Speaker 4: So this shit sheet was basically making accusations. You can see that the attachment is David Elliot sheet doc X.
00:12:03
Speaker 9: The Watchdog has dug up a twenty twenty dirt file allegedly written by the so called Reformers in it a list of negative media stories and allegations mister Elliott was having an extramarital affair, but they.
00:12:17
Speaker 4: Were shocking this around media hoping that somebody would pick it up.
00:12:23
Speaker 2: And Kate, we know that John Neceiphe's phone calls were being tapped. Some of those conversations have been played out at AIKAK.
00:12:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, some of them have been played out, and interestingly, some of those were from twenty twenty one, so this is before either IKAK was looking or Ray Williams made his famous speech to Parliament in twenty twenty two. So some of the phone taps that we've heard, and these came from John mcif. They were rather explicit about how much he hated David and the Building Commissioner David Chandler.
00:13:03
Speaker 3: I've got my hand on the state government and you're going to see changes.
00:13:08
Speaker 4: And exactly what he was going to do to get them out of the way.
00:13:12
Speaker 2: I'm going to step on his neck and strip them from his job.
00:13:16
Speaker 4: Just give me two months, Kay.
00:13:20
Speaker 2: The reformers in this case, they began by saying that they wanted to change the Liberal Party from within, and there is nothing illegal or inherently corrupt about recruiting members to a political party. But stepping back, what does ikak allege this operation had become by the time we had Jean mcief calling himself it's godfather.
00:13:42
Speaker 4: Well, I think there's a breach of possible electoral laws which means that donations have to be accounted for. We've got allegations that Dallas McInerney from Catholic Schools, New South Wales, whatever his donations were for, there were invoices given for government services which apparently didn't happen. They were classified as donations and therefore exceeding the donation cap.
00:14:10
Speaker 7: With regard to Hotelia.
00:14:12
Speaker 4: Michael O'Hara and develop up John Nac they are prostributed donors. So by trying to disguise them as proper work, say for government relations or things like that, which are true, it's a way of circumventing electoral laws donation laws. So that's the kind of thing that Akaki is looking at.
00:14:36
Speaker 2: And in the past Aikak hearings have ended some very high profile careers, famously to New Southwal's premiers Barri O'Farrell and Gladysmorre Juclian lost their jobs after hearings that weren't really originally supposed to be about them. So how worried would you be if you were Angus Taylor or any senior lib right now?
00:14:59
Speaker 4: Look, it does have a way of capturing people unintentionally, so you don't know what surprises lay in store. That there was no way that IKAK was targeting Barrio Farrell, but if there are traps waiting, and look, you know we have to say about Angus Taylor. Although that he has been mentioned, both he and a Dominic Perrote whose brothers are involved, there have been no allegations about them at all. They've been mentioned in passing but nothing so far.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: Well, looking forward to hearing whatever else is to come in the.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: Next few weeks.
00:15:40
Speaker 4: Oh me too, me too, Okay, thank you so much for your time, my pleasure.
00:15:56
Speaker 2: Also in the news, the gambling industry has denied claims offered drugs and escorts as inducements to people experiencing gambling harm. Former NROL player Luke Bateman and anti gambling advocate Tim Costello made the allegations at a Senate inquiry into gambling reforms, claiming high spending customers were supplied drugs, alcohol and sex workers to keep them betting. Sports bet and Tab Corps say they have zero tolerance for the alleged conduct and are calling for any evidence to.
00:16:24
Speaker 1: Be referred to authorities.
00:16:26
Speaker 2: And a pro Palestinian protest held outside the Sydney Opera House two days after the October seven Hamas attacks and a Neo Nazi rally outside New southwalest Parliament are under scrutiny of the Antisemitism Royal Commission. The inquiry is examining police responses to the events, including allegations of anti Jewish chants and threatening behavior at the Opera House rally, and how the twenty twenty five Neo Nazi gathering was allowed to proceed.
00:16:51
Speaker 1: Commissioner A.
00:16:51
Speaker 2: Virginia Bell says peaceful protest is fundamental democracy, but the Commission will consider whether police responses to anti Semitic conduct can be improved.
00:17:01
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: For decades.
00:00:01
Speaker 2: It's shone a light on corruption of the highest order, even toppling premiers.
00:00:06
Speaker 1: I still can't.
00:00:07
Speaker 3: Recall the receipt of a gift of a bottle of nineteen fifty nine range.
00:00:12
Speaker 4: I can't explain what happened.
00:00:14
Speaker 5: My resignation as Premier could not occur at a worse time, but the timing is completely outside of my control, as the IKAK has chosen to take this action during the most challenging weeks of the most challenging time.
00:00:26
Speaker 2: Now New South Wales AYIKAK, the state's corruption watchdog, has set its sights on a secretive right wing Christian faction of the Liberal Party, the Reformers, and it's cashed up group of backers.
00:00:38
Speaker 6: We expect that the Commission may see the confluence of personal greed and political ambitions.
00:00:44
Speaker 2: Already, the public Inquiry code named Operation Rosney, has heard of shit sheets, sham payments, phone taps and dodgy deals with fugitive developers, with the Reformers connections reaching all the way to the top of the Liberal Party. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM today, Sydney Morning Herald's chief investigative reporter, Kate mcclemont unpacks the tangled web of players at the center of what she's calling aka's Game of Thrones.
00:01:18
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, August five.
00:01:25
Speaker 2: Kate, let's begin by talking through some of the major players in this case. Could we start with this group of conservatives, the right faction of a liberal party known as the quote unquote Reformers.
00:01:40
Speaker 1: Who are they?
00:01:40
Speaker 4: Well, the two key people who started the Reformers are Rob Asif and Christian Ellis. And then we've got a lobbying outfit connected to them, which is Jeremy Greenward. Christian Ellis is connected with them, and also two brothers of former Premier Dominic Perroite. We've got John Claude Perrote and we've got Charles Perrote. And then as a sideline, we've got Disappeared, developed by John Lecief who is in Lebanon, but there's a warrant out for his arrest over serious forward matters. And we also have Dallas McInerney, who is the war was up until recently basically the boss of Catholic schools New South Wales. And another person of interest is a young employer a Dylan White Law although he hasn't been mentioned in the terms of.
00:02:39
Speaker 6: Reference Allegation one. This involves an investigation into potential breaches of the electoral funding laws between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty three by a number of persons who were interested to bolster the recruitment of Conservatives into branches of the State Liberal Party.
00:02:56
Speaker 2: And so by the sounds of it, this group of men, they had some pretty big ambitions. They were trying to recruit as many as five thousand people and completely changed the direction of the New South Wales Liberal parties. So how big of an operation were they building?
00:03:12
Speaker 4: Look, it was actually quite a small operation. But in order to achieve their goals, which was basically to have people elected to either state executive or to Parliament or to councils people of a like minded worldview and that is basically conservative Catholic values. But they needed money to branchstack.
00:03:36
Speaker 6: Including from prohibited donors in amounts that were not declared and exceeded applicable donation caps for purposes that included the recruitment and or renewal of members to the Liberal Party.
00:03:48
Speaker 2: Okay, so tell me a bit more about where the money was coming from.
00:03:53
Speaker 4: Well, the money was coming from John resif the developmer now John Asique was having trouble in Castle Hill.
00:04:00
Speaker 7: He had some very.
00:04:01
Speaker 4: Big developments, but the Building Commissioner David Chandler had issued rectification orders and also local MPs David Elliot and Ray Williams had expressed concerns from their constituents about these developments. So we've heard that some of the money from John Nacief was being channeled through these people to ruin the careers of Elliot and Chandler.
00:04:29
Speaker 7: We've also heard that some of the.
00:04:31
Speaker 4: Money was coming through just to bankroll the activities of the reformers.
00:04:37
Speaker 6: Mister mcief wanted the removal of the Old Hills Council linked to the center right faction and mister David Elliot MP, so as to replace them with members of the Liberal Party whom he thought would support his developments, and that may well have motivated him to make certain payments to Christian Ellis, Jeremy greenwo Good and Charles Perrete.
00:05:02
Speaker 4: We've also heard evidence from Michael O'Hara, who is a Conservative Catholic and he was also a hotelier and developer and being involved in the liquor business and development. He too was a band developer, so he was putting in, you know, quite considerable sums of money to a lobbying group associated with these people for work that was never done.
00:05:29
Speaker 2: So the allegation is essentially money wandering through this lobbying company.
00:05:33
Speaker 4: Yes, I guess it was. It was washing money to make it look like it was to be used for something else.
00:05:40
Speaker 2: And Ike also heard claims that Dallas McNerney, the former Catholic Schools New South Wales CEO, had wanted to shake down Angus Taylor for thousands of dollars.
00:05:51
Speaker 1: Tell me what exactly the inquiry heard about that.
00:05:54
Speaker 4: Well, it was interesting because they were always trying to get money from somewhere. So there was a text message shared.
00:06:02
Speaker 8: Bombshell text messages in a reformers group chat boasted that Angus Taylor committed personal funds, got the commitment from Angers for a fifteen K injection plus a three K monthly donation.
00:06:15
Speaker 4: But there has been no evidence that that money was actually forthcoming. It was just that they were all chatting with excitement about the possibility of receiving it.
00:06:27
Speaker 6: I'm not going to give a running commentary on all of this, so I'm not a party to the proceedings, but no payment was made, but.
00:06:33
Speaker 3: They produced text messages claiming that you were donators.
00:06:36
Speaker 5: Can you just think I said that no.
00:06:38
Speaker 1: Payment was made.
00:06:40
Speaker 2: Can you tell me a little bit more about the ideological bent here what they actually wanted to see happen within the Liberal party.
00:06:46
Speaker 4: Look, I think that they wanted to see Christian conservative values, anti abortion, anti trans, anti same sex marriage. And it's interesting that we've heard that quite a few of the people actually went to school at Redfield College, which is in the Hills area, and that is associated with Opus Day, which is a right wing group within the Catholic Church. A lot of the people shared those values and in fact that's where some of them met. And this includes the Perrote brothers. Dominic Perrote, the former premier, was school captain in the year two thousand. Now there's no suggestion that Dominic Perrote was involved in any of the activities of his brother, but they basically shared a right wing religious view of the world that they wanted to.
00:07:44
Speaker 7: Impose on others.
00:07:45
Speaker 4: Share with others, but that's what their goal was.
00:07:51
Speaker 2: Still to come sheets, wire taps and branch stacking. Kay The Reformers are also accused of branch stacking at the hills Shire Council, replacing the old members with people that they hoped would approve the developments of one of their main backers, the fugitive property developer Jean Nasieff. Can you tell me a bit more about Nasif?
00:08:19
Speaker 4: Well, yes, John mcief was at one stage one of the biggest private developers in the state, but things started to go awry for him when the Building Commissioner put rectification orders. It just basically meant you have got a lot of problems with your buildings. There are serious defects. We won't let you sell any more of these until they fixed. In June twenty twenty two, Ray Williams, who was a member from the Hills area, gone up and made an explosive speech to Parliament.
00:08:59
Speaker 9: Member for Kellyville, Ray Williams making astonishing claims about those in his own party.
00:09:04
Speaker 3: Who were paid significant funds in order to arrange to put new counselors on the Hillshire Council who would be supportive of future top Place development application.
00:09:15
Speaker 7: Now it was interesting.
00:09:16
Speaker 4: At the same time, John Nasieff was under investigation by Strikeforce Kohloul, which was a new South Wales organized crime Stripeforce and they were examining serious fraud allegations about Nasief and his daughter, and at the end of twenty twenty two, after Ray Williams's speech, it was decided that New South Wales Parliament would have its own inquiry into these allegations. Now I think the parliamentary inquiry, I think someone's were issued on the eighth of December, and John Nasiff departed this country to Lebanon on the ninth of December. A couple of months later there was a warrant issued for his arrest for serious fraud offenses. Basically, he was getting financial backing for his buildings by bodging up sales like pretending that he'd sold a lot more, but they were to friends and family. Since leaving the country in December twenty twenty two, there is no indication that Nasifi is going to come back for either of the four chargers or for the Aykak inquiry.
00:10:31
Speaker 2: Okay, So despite all of this and having left the country, it seems like he was still trying to influence politics here.
00:10:38
Speaker 4: Well. We heard that John Decieff was a person that seemed to have access to a lot of money and he was also funding private investigators. So we've heard that private investigators followed the then police Minister David Elliot trying to find something with which to blackmail him. We've also heard that through Genasif, the private investigators were also trying to stop summons being served by Parliament for people to appear at that parliamentary inquiry that we were talking about. So it seems that Nasif was still perhaps pulling the strings, perhaps still injecting money while overseas.
00:11:24
Speaker 2: Can you tell me any more about David Elliott and the so called chit sheet that was compiled.
00:11:30
Speaker 4: Yes, well, the shit sheet was supposedly compiled by young Dylan Whitelaw, who I think was sort of like about twenty one at the time, although even though he was shown it, he had very little recollection, like a lot of the witnesses seem to have a lot of trouble recalling until they're shown a text message or.
00:11:51
Speaker 7: You know, an intercepted call.
00:11:53
Speaker 4: So this shit sheet was basically making accusations. You can see that the attachment is David Elliot sheet doc X.
00:12:03
Speaker 9: The Watchdog has dug up a twenty twenty dirt file allegedly written by the so called Reformers in it a list of negative media stories and allegations mister Elliott was having an extramarital affair, but they.
00:12:17
Speaker 4: Were shocking this around media hoping that somebody would pick it up.
00:12:23
Speaker 2: And Kate, we know that John Neceiphe's phone calls were being tapped. Some of those conversations have been played out at AIKAK.
00:12:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, some of them have been played out, and interestingly, some of those were from twenty twenty one, so this is before either IKAK was looking or Ray Williams made his famous speech to Parliament in twenty twenty two. So some of the phone taps that we've heard, and these came from John mcif. They were rather explicit about how much he hated David and the Building Commissioner David Chandler.
00:13:03
Speaker 3: I've got my hand on the state government and you're going to see changes.
00:13:08
Speaker 4: And exactly what he was going to do to get them out of the way.
00:13:12
Speaker 2: I'm going to step on his neck and strip them from his job.
00:13:16
Speaker 4: Just give me two months, Kay.
00:13:20
Speaker 2: The reformers in this case, they began by saying that they wanted to change the Liberal Party from within, and there is nothing illegal or inherently corrupt about recruiting members to a political party. But stepping back, what does ikak allege this operation had become by the time we had Jean mcief calling himself it's godfather.
00:13:42
Speaker 4: Well, I think there's a breach of possible electoral laws which means that donations have to be accounted for. We've got allegations that Dallas McInerney from Catholic Schools, New South Wales, whatever his donations were for, there were invoices given for government services which apparently didn't happen. They were classified as donations and therefore exceeding the donation cap.
00:14:10
Speaker 7: With regard to Hotelia.
00:14:12
Speaker 4: Michael O'Hara and develop up John Nac they are prostributed donors. So by trying to disguise them as proper work, say for government relations or things like that, which are true, it's a way of circumventing electoral laws donation laws. So that's the kind of thing that Akaki is looking at.
00:14:36
Speaker 2: And in the past Aikak hearings have ended some very high profile careers, famously to New Southwal's premiers Barri O'Farrell and Gladysmorre Juclian lost their jobs after hearings that weren't really originally supposed to be about them. So how worried would you be if you were Angus Taylor or any senior lib right now?
00:14:59
Speaker 4: Look, it does have a way of capturing people unintentionally, so you don't know what surprises lay in store. That there was no way that IKAK was targeting Barrio Farrell, but if there are traps waiting, and look, you know we have to say about Angus Taylor. Although that he has been mentioned, both he and a Dominic Perrote whose brothers are involved, there have been no allegations about them at all. They've been mentioned in passing but nothing so far.
00:15:36
Speaker 2: Well, looking forward to hearing whatever else is to come in the.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: Next few weeks.
00:15:40
Speaker 4: Oh me too, me too, Okay, thank you so much for your time, my pleasure.
00:15:56
Speaker 2: Also in the news, the gambling industry has denied claims offered drugs and escorts as inducements to people experiencing gambling harm. Former NROL player Luke Bateman and anti gambling advocate Tim Costello made the allegations at a Senate inquiry into gambling reforms, claiming high spending customers were supplied drugs, alcohol and sex workers to keep them betting. Sports bet and Tab Corps say they have zero tolerance for the alleged conduct and are calling for any evidence to.
00:16:24
Speaker 1: Be referred to authorities.
00:16:26
Speaker 2: And a pro Palestinian protest held outside the Sydney Opera House two days after the October seven Hamas attacks and a Neo Nazi rally outside New southwalest Parliament are under scrutiny of the Antisemitism Royal Commission. The inquiry is examining police responses to the events, including allegations of anti Jewish chants and threatening behavior at the Opera House rally, and how the twenty twenty five Neo Nazi gathering was allowed to proceed.
00:16:51
Speaker 1: Commissioner A.
00:16:51
Speaker 2: Virginia Bell says peaceful protest is fundamental democracy, but the Commission will consider whether police responses to anti Semitic conduct can be improved.
00:17:01
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.
