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 Party.

Despite producing no evidence of work that lobbying company Beckington actually did for Catholic Schools NSW, McInerney insisted – in many words – that it was all above board.

Beckington was established in July 2019 by Jeremy Greenwood, a former staffer to federal National Party leader Matt Canavan, along with Greenwood’s mate Christian Ellis.

Ellis, who was the co-founder of the Reformers, had just been fired from the office of the right’s factional leader, NSW upper house MP Damien Tudehope, after the Herald revealed Ellis had been branch-stacking during office hours.

Ellis and Greenwood had no experience in either the lobbying or education sector and their business skills appeared limited. In one email exchange, McInerney suggested that an ABN or a mailbox would help them look the part.

Counsel assisting Juliet Curtin put to McInerney that he was trying to assist with their pitch.

McInerney denied this, claiming, “This was part of an iterative back-and-forth process in the beginning of the due diligence phase I was conducting on this potential supplier, letting them know at least some baseline requirements of what might be required for us to – for the, in the documentation, on the documentary basis, for the due diligence to continue.”

Despite the months of “iterative processes” and “due diligence”, McInerney failed to check with Ellis’ previous employer, did not realise that the ABN Ellis provided belonged to his sister and seemed unconcerned that, after several months of negotiations, Beckington had the wrong name for what was to be their very first client, referring to it as “NSW Catholic Education”.

“They’ve got the name wrong there, would you agree?” asked Curtin. “No, I think that’s a generic descriptor for the sector rather than misnaming the entity,” said McInerney.

“This is not about you ensuring that the services match the organisation’s needs. This is about creating the veneer of legitimacy to a contract that had no legitimate foundation,” Curtin suggested. McInerney disagreed.

When McInerney was asked how the figure of $100,000 was arrived at, McInerney’s barrister objected.

“No, I reject the objection. Can we just get on with this, please?” Commissioner Fabian Gleeson said. “We have a very intelligent witness in the box … Listen to the question, and no doubt we’ll get an answer in due course.”

Not long after requesting a “comfort break” towards the end of his first day in the box, McInerney caught the lift to his car. Seeing a television camera, he leapt into the back seat and tried to put an Oxford University puffer jacket across the window.

At this stage, the female driver, believed to be his wife, reversed into a pole.

Observing the melee, a car parking attendant offered drily: “If you live your life right, there’s no need to be backing into poles.”

McInerney will be back in pole position when the inquiry resumes on Wednesday.

Read more from our Operation Rosny coverage:

• How key ICAC witness Dallas McInerney turned from helpful to hot under the collar
• Jeremy Greenwood suffered amnesia to rival Alan Bond, writes Kate McClymont
• Jeremy Greenwood was asked not to discuss his preliminary ICAC examination. Then he met Jean-Claude Perrottet at a Double Bay pub
• How the NSW Reformers infiltrated the Liberal Party