Stop! Stop! She’s already dead! How the ICAC nailed Anita Perrottet’s absurd excuses

August 30, 2026 — 5:00am

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There’s a well-known meme from The Simpsons taken from a scene where Homer violently bashes the “Krusty Burglar” during a prank gone wrong. The camera pans to a group of children watching on in horror. One cries and points, pleading: “Stop! Stop! He’s already dead!” The clip has become code for moments when a person is subjected to excruciating degrees of punishment or humiliation.

I was reminded of that meme this week while watching Anita Perrottet in the witness box at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Her evidence was so thoroughly unconvincing, and the corruption watchdog’s case against her so comprehensive, that it was tempting for a brief moment to feel sorry for the mother of two.

However, the sheer volume of implausible claims uttered while twisting and contorting her way through a two-day appearance ultimately made it difficult to have much sympathy.

Perrottet found herself in the witness box as part of the ICAC’s latest inquiry, codenamed Operation Rosny. Investigators believe Macquarie Consulting, a company she was the sole director of, was used as a vehicle to wash dirty money given to her husband, Charles Perrottet, by the fugitive Sydney developer Jean Nassif. 

She was paid $660,999 between July 2020 and December 2022 – a figure almost exactly one-third of the $2 million bribe that Nassif is alleged to have agreed to pay her husband and two other Liberal Party operatives.

There is no written record of any work Anita did to warrant the payments. She repeatedly insisted that she was paid such a huge amount to be a “sounding board”.

It would be an understatement to say that much of her evidence did not pass the pub test. Indeed, it may not pass a legal test. Even Dr Peggy Dwyer, SC,........

© The Sydney Morning Herald