Car park chaos and Dallas’ dictionary of lost words: Two days of ‘iterations’ at ICAC

August 14, 2026 — 6:09pm

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No doubt the stood-aside head of Catholic Schools NSW Dallas McInerney was keen to have his two days of scheduled evidence wrapped up as a corruption inquiry finished its third week.

But it was Dallas’s dictionary of lost words that may have contributed to his stay in the witness box not finishing on time on Friday.

For instance, why say “moved house” when you can choose “changed domicile”?

Or the use of “go-between” seems so banal compared with McInerney’s alternatives: “interposed as the conduit for these discussions” or “the point of contact for administrative interplay”.

On Friday, McInerney faced a second day of grilling by lawyers from the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The commission is investigating whether McInerney channelled thousands of dollars of Catholic Schools’ funds through a lobbying company to be used for recruitment and branch stacking by the Reformers, a group of young Christian ideologues associated with the hard right of the Liberal........

© The Sydney Morning Herald