It was legendary journalist Alan Reid who coined the term “faceless men” to describe the 36 operatives who controlled the Australian Labor Party in 1963. Kevin Rudd then reintroduced the term to popular culture to label little-known powerbrokers plotting to dump him as prime minister.

If the NSW Liberal Party has its own faceless men, one is surely Damien Tudehope, the MP questioned by the Independent Commission Against Corruption on Tuesday over his close associations with six people at the heart of its latest inquiry. His appearance did not go well.

After a slow start earlier in the day, the dramatic closing hour of the hearing saw Tudehope confess to leaking a confidential parliamentary inquiry report into the links between Liberal Party figures and fugitive developer Jean Nassif. Tudehope sent the report to lobbyist Jeremy Greenwood, one of the key subjects of the 2023 parliamentary probe, well before the public got to see it.

“I thought he would have had an interest in that report,” Tudehope reluctantly explained. He had only moments earlier denied ever obtaining the draft document.

The hearing also revealed the hard-right factional heavyweight knew his close friend, who was a prohibited donor, was likely to give money to a branch-stacking operation co-ordinated by a group known as the Reformers, but argued his genuine view was the cash did not count as a donation.

While well known on Macquarie Street, Tudehope is hardly a household name. The Liberal elder was once the MP for Epping before standing aside to let future NSW premier Dominic Perrottet take the safe seat. In exchange, he was granted a spot in the NSW upper house, where he has sat since 2019.

A man of deep spiritual conviction and intellect, Tudehope wields serious influence from the chamber’s red benches. He was a key minister for the Berejiklian and Perrottet governments, and in opposition has been a thorn in the side of the Minns government, which views his close working relationship with Mark Latham with scorn and suspicion. He has been deeply involved in big decisions about the Liberal Party’s strategy, policy, and parliamentary tactics for close to a decade.

Tudehope introduced his long-time friend and former law firm partner Michael O’Hara to the Reformers at an event held at the MP’s Sydney home in the winter of 2018. The gathering, which featured a talk from conservative columnist Miranda Devine, was designed to drum up support for the Reformers’ ambition to sign up more conservative members in the party’s Sydney branches.

O’Hara, an 83-year-old person of interest in ICAC’s inquiry who is battling stage four cancer, ended up giving $165,000 to the Reformers via bank deposits and sham invoices.

Tudehope conceded he thought O’Hara was likely to give the Reformers money and accepted he knew the hotelier was a prohibited donor because of his ownership of several pubs.

But he refused to accept ICAC’s view that the $165,000 constituted a political donation which benefited the Liberal Party. He said he would never deliberately put his old friend O’ Hara through something as awful as an ICAC interrogation. “Not on your life,” he said.

Counsel assisting Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC, asked if it was true that nobody realised O’Hara’s funding constituted a donation, why had the Reformers sought to “cover up” some of the money movements via sham invoices.

“I can find nothing in any of that which, I think, is explainable in any manner at all,” Tudehope replied.

By this point, Commissioner Fabian Gleeson, SC, had grown tired of some of Tudehope’s answers, which he suggested were veering into “dissertations”.

“You say you can find nothing to explain why people would engage in that sort of behaviour,” Gleeson said to Tudehope incredulously. “Does one word come to mind? Concealment?”

Earlier, the veteran Liberal MP was asked whether he accepted the state’s electoral funding laws were important. He replied: “I think I voted for them.”

While Dwyer did not directly accuse Tudehope of wrongdoing, she pointedly asked him about his knowledge of NSW donation laws and whether he had gone through parliamentary training on fundraising and ethics. The line of questioning suggested that even if Tudehope genuinely believed O’Hara was not making a donation, she believes that as an MP he should have known.

Of nine people ICAC initially named as persons of interest in its inquiry, Tudehope has connections to six: O’Hara, Christian Ellis, Jean-Claude Perrottet, Charles Perrottet, Jeremy Greenwood and Catholic Schools NSW boss Dallas McInerney.

Government documents reveal that Ellis was sacked from Tudehope’s office in 2019 over concerns he was spending taxpayer-funded work time on Reformers matters, in breach of the ministerial code of conduct.

Tudehope said his then chief of staff “blew up” over a 2019 report by the Herald about branch stacking in north-west Sydney and agreed Ellis had to go because the coverage was attracting unwanted attention and criticism.

Tudehope also told ICAC that his son, James Tudehope, had raised concerns with him over Sunday lunch about an agreement in which Catholic Schools NSW paid money to a company run by Ellis and Greenwood. James was a staffer for the organisation before he left for New Zealand this year.

ICAC heard last week that up to $265,000 in Catholic Schools NSW funding may have been funnelled to support the Reformers via invoicing and other arrangements.

Tudehope said of his son’s concerns: “He thought that he was being put under pressure to process invoices ... and he didn’t think they were getting value for work. He was very agitated about it.”

Tudehope did not conduct his own inquiries into the possibility Catholic schools funding was being abused.

Tudehope’s son has refused to return from New Zealand to cooperate with the ICAC investigation. Tudehope senior said he had not spoken with James for at least a month due to the ICAC probe. “Which is tragic, quite frankly,” Tudehope said. “Tragic”.

With that, the hearing concluded. “I can go back to my proper job,” Tudehope said.

Perhaps – or perhaps not. Tudehope stood down from the opposition frontbench in July after ICAC announced its investigation, vowing to return once the hearings were over. ICAC has not named him as a person of interest and seems much more interested in pursuing others.

But Tuesday’s disastrous appearance means Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane surely won’t want one of the Liberal Party’s faceless men showing his face any time soon. A return to the frontbench before the next election seems unlikely.