The Catholic Schools NSW ICAC inquiry raises renewed questions about accountability and transparency within the Church, and whether a decade of promised governance reform has produced meaningful institutional change.
The self-inflicted public embarrassment of the Church continues unabated. After the Christian Brothers’ bankruptcy and the conviction of the former Bishop of Broome, now it is Catholic Schools NSW. The current lengthy public inquiry phase of the investigation known as Operation Rosny, by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), is concentrating on the misuse of public funds. One of the entities central to this case has been Catholic Schools NSW (CSNSW), the peak state Catholic education body sitting above the diocesan education agencies and 600 schools. CSNSW’s website explains that it replaced the former Catholic Education Commission New South Wales in 2017 in response to ‘the Bishops’ expressed desire for a more appropriate, efficient and transparent administration of Catholic schools in NSW’.
The key figure, prominent within the Liberal Party, is its foundation CEO, Dallas McInerney, who has held the position since 2017 and has now temporarily stood down. Its high-profile board includes so-called ‘C-suite’ directors, former senior Catholic educators, former federal Labor minister Michael Lee, and John Perrottet, now on leave, the father of former NSW Liberal Premier Dominic Perrottet.
It is alleged that CSNSW and its close associates effectively laundered government payments to assist an extremely conservative Catholic faction in inter-factional warfare within the NSW Liberal Party. This faction, known as the Reformers, was driven by conservative orthodox Catholic views opposed to so-called ‘woke’ policies and legislation on same-sex marriage, euthanasia and abortion. Despite the faction including several members of the prominent Catholic Perrottet family, it was disappointed in the leadership of Dominic Perrottet, who, as Premier (2021–2023), turned out not to be conservative enough for them. Dominic Perrottet is not accused of any wrongdoing.
The central allegation of illegal financial behaviour involving government funding has yet to be proven, but the public hearings have revealed the fantastical inner world of CSNSW, a world in which the scandalous reality is stranger than fiction. That world involves nepotistic hiring practices involving factional operatives, concentrated among graduates of the Opus Dei-linked Redfield College; allegedly shady dealings and branch stacking; and extensive, undocumented use of private Catholic lobbyists, also linked to Redfield College. It is a world in which CSNSW is ‘owned’ by the eleven diocesan bishops but directly governed by a board appointed by these bishops.
This scandal is of national interest not just because of the dominance of the state of NSW in Australian politics and economics, but because of its ramifications for Catholic education generally, including schools, teachers, parents and students, and the reputational damage it causes to the whole Church.
We may never know what the nine NSW bishops and two archbishops, including those of Sydney and Canberra-Goulburn, collectively thought of the well-known public party-political activism of their CEO, McInerney. He is a significant Liberal Party figure, close to federal Opposition Leader Angus Taylor. He attended the international conference in London of the conservative Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, along with the Archbishop of Sydney.
Ex-politicians are common in Catholic education leadership circles, but McInerney’s partisanship is active, not past. It is hard to escape the conclusion that many NSW bishops were comfortable with his conservatism because they shared his views and those of his faction. He was a fellow traveller. Almost certainly, this made him untouchable in a way that a centre-left activist would never have been.
We may also never know what the CSNSW board, headed until December 2023 by the late Steven Sedgwick, a most distinguished federal public servant and Australian Public Service Commissioner from 2009 to 2014, collectively thought of McInerney. They must have known, at least, that he was a party-political activist because it was common public knowledge.
The questions around CSNSW governance demonstrate that, despite claims to the contrary and high hopes in some quarters, the key indicators of good governance within the Church, such as accountability and transparency, have not improved much over the past decade. The calls made by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse for a change in Church governance culture were accepted by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. The ACBC, together with Catholic Religious Australia, mandated and financed the review process that led to the official report, initially published in May 2020, called The Light from the Southern Cross: Promoting Co-Responsible Governance in the Catholic Church in Australia. I was a member of the Governance Review Project Team that drafted that report.
Official Church responses to the ICAC hearings so far have been distinguished by a lack of commitment to the principles of accountability and transparency. No one has yet held CSNSW responsible for its stewardship, certainly not the bishops who ‘own’ the Catholic school system. The pattern is sadly familiar. Explanation to the Catholic community has been left to some diocesan education leaders, including those from the Diocese of Parramatta, and, in one case, to the newly elected Diocesan Administrator of the Diocese of Broken Bay, Dr David Ranson, formerly Secretary of the Plenary Council. Bishops have been conspicuous by their silence, as have the official Catholic media, apparently believing that they have no responsibility to explain the situation to a bewildered and often angry Catholic community, especially the Catholic school community, as the story plays out in the mainstream media. The fact that few have spoken up shows the immense pressure to be a ‘team player’ within the closed ranks of the Church. The bishops are not just silent but effectively silence others in the Church. One of those who did speak up told me they felt like ‘a shag on a rock’.
The public explanations have concentrated primarily on distancing diocesan schools from CSNSW, which, to most Catholic parents, is a shadowy body anyway. In fact, it is a peak body, like the National Catholic Education Commission, that does not run schools itself but makes policies, establishes networks, advocates for Catholic education interests, negotiates with government and disburses government funding.
Much remains unknown. We can only draw interim conclusions. But once again, the Church does not come out of this well. If accountability is to be more than empty words, our NSW Church leaders will need to be held responsible. Yet our top-down Church has no mechanisms to carry out such a task.
Influential conservative Catholics, including former prime minister Tony Abbott, have sought to dismiss the ICAC inquiry as factional politics. Abbott called it a ‘stitch up’ and accused one Liberal faction of ‘weaponising ICAC against another’. But the NSW bishops, including its archbishops, must be pressed to be open about this whole affair, as must the lay board of Catholic Schools NSW. Much more would be demanded of comparable institutions in business or government.
Republished from Eureka Street
John Warhurst AO is an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University, and was the Moderator for Massimo Faggioli’s talk. He is chair of Concerned Catholics Canberra Goulburn and a member of the Plenary Council, and a regular columnist with the Canberra Times and Eureka Street.