NSW Liberal apparatchik and key Reformer Jean-Claude Perrottet has told a corruption inquiry he felt so pressured to stack branches in the Hills Shire he resorted to paying for party memberships.

The youngest brother of former premier Dominic Perrottet is a person of interest in an Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry investigating whether Jean-Claude Perrottet, and several others, played a role in soliciting unlawful donations from prohibited donors.

When asked on Wednesday whether he felt he was being pushed to boost recruitment numbers, Jean-Claude Perrottet told the commission: “I felt pressured to make people proud, to do a good job.”

Counsel assisting Juliet Curtin referred to earlier evidence given to the commission by another Reformer, Robert Assaf, who claimed Perrottet paid fees for new members to join Liberal Party branches.

“Maybe I was pressured to deliver, or someone had been a member of the party for 25 years, and they were saying, ‘I’m fed up’. And yeah, maybe Rob’s right … in the sense of pressure built up and, you know, I just needed to get it over the line,” Perrottet told the commission.

He also told the commission on Wednesday he was “let go” from his job at Catholic Schools NSW in June, just one month after being promoted.

Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney is also a person of interest to the ICAC.

Curtin said to Perrottet: “I want to suggest to you, Mr Perrottet, that the reason you were made redundant only a month after you’ve been promoted to this new role was because of your involvement in this inquiry. Is that right?”

“That wasn’t what was communicated to me from the office and the emails that I received. But I mean, obviously, I’ve thought about the timing of it,” Perrottet responded.

The inquiry also heard Reformer co-founder Christian Ellis prepared a “staff report” to plant allies of the right-wing Catholic group in ministerial offices to spread the load of factional work after the 2019 election win.

The inquiry was told the staff report was sent to Perrottet and another of his brothers, Charles, on March 25, 2019 – just two days after the election. Charles Perrottet is also a person of interest in the inquiry.

Jean-Claude Perrottet was asked about the staff report on Wednesday.

Curtin said Ellis was “conducting some kind of tally or assessment of each of these proposed staffers in terms of their attributes and qualities as a staffer”.

The staff report had letters next to proposed staffers’ names denoting each characteristic. “R” meant recruiter, Curtin said.

“Does that mean someone who is willing to engage in the factional work of recruiting new members of the Liberal Party?” she asked. Perrottet said he would not characterise it like that.

Meanwhile, John Ruddick, a Libertarian Party member of the NSW upper house, has called for the ICAC’s examination of illegal donations to be paused pending an inquiry into whether the watchdog has been leaking information to the media.

Ruddick claimed in parliament on Wednesday that Operation Rosny “appears to be tainted” because the Herald has revealed several details about the key players targeted by the ICAC over recent weeks.

The former Liberal Party member wants the inspector-general of the ICAC, Gail Furness, SC, to investigate whether ICAC staff had disclosed information in a potential breach of the law, and also demanded parliament order an independent inquiry into his claims.

He offered no evidence to support his allegations, other than that the Herald’s coverage has referenced sources who are unauthorised to speak publicly.

The ICAC began its investigation in mid-2022 into the links between NSW Liberal figures, fugitive Sydney developer Jean Nassif, Catholic Schools NSW and several other figures, including from the Labor Party. Operation Rosny is due to hold eight weeks of public hearings.

Ruddick is particularly focused on a story by the Herald late last month that revealed names on the witness list for the first week of hearings. Ruddick has repeatedly suggested on social media platform X that the ICAC staff leaked the document.

However, the witness list was widely circulated to parties involved in Operation Rosny before the Herald obtained and published the document.

Ruddick told parliament it should condemn “any attempt by a financially desperate, taxpayer-supported media organisation to weaponise confidential ICAC processes or interfere with the integrity of public hearings for its own commercial or political ends”.

On Tuesday the commission heard that senior NSW Liberal MP Damien Tudehope conceded he had leaked a confidential draft report from a parliamentary inquiry to a key witness who deliberately avoided providing evidence.

Tudehope, then the Coalition government’s most senior member of the upper house, sent the 2023 confidential report into illegal donations and the Hills Shire Council to lobbyist and Liberal Party operative Jeremy Greenwood, the ICAC heard on Tuesday.

Greenwood was one of four Liberal apparatchiks who hid or fled overseas to avoid being handed a summons to appear before the parliamentary inquiry, which was one of the catalysts for the broader ICAC probe.

Liberal leader Kellie Sloane on Wednesday said the Tudehope revelation was not acceptable. But she left open the possibility he could return to her frontbench after the inquiry, saying his evidence had “not changed my position about keeping Damien on the backbench for the short term”.

The Herald revealed last week that Liberal MP Chris Rath was captured by a wiretap helping party apparatchiks evade the statewide manhunt to force them before the parliamentary probe.