“Bottom feeders”, Mike Pezzullo once described journalists as, after an embarrassing story was cited in Senate estimates — itself another process he loathed. The only journalists Pezzullo liked were those he could “turn”, “steer, assist, work with” to produce “a great story for the government”, to use his own words.
Now the “bottom feeders” — two of the very best, Nick McKenzie and Michael Bachelard — have sent Pezzullo packing, after the government today announced that his appointment as Home Affairs secretary was “terminated”, based on “a recommendation to [Prime Minister Albanese] by the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Australian Public Service commissioner, following an independent inquiry by Lynelle Briggs”.
Briggs determined that Pezzullo “breached the Australian Public Service code of conduct on at least 14 occasions in relation to five overarching allegations”, that he: used his duty, power, status or authority to seek to gain a benefit or advantage for himself, engaged in gossip and disrespectful critique of ministers and public servants, failed to maintain confidentiality of sensitive government information, failed to act apolitically in his employment, and failed to disclose a conflict of interest”.
It was McKenzie and Bachelard who uncovered a trove of text messages between Pezzullo and Liberal powerbroker Scott Briggs (no relation, as everyone keeps noting), texts that showed Pezzullo engaged in partisan games, unflattering character assessments of ministers and colleagues, lobbying for his own agenda, sharing a confidential document and pushing to censor journalists. Text by text they emerged, drip drip drip, over a series of days in September, slowly and forensically demonstrating exactly how Pezzullo attempted to cultivate Briggs over several years. Pezzullo, who stood aside pending an investigation, was a goner from the moment they were published.
Pezzullo is an object lesson for anyone tempted to trust national security bureaucrats. The Immigration and then Home Affairs secretary liked to portray himself as a bureaucratic hard man dedicated to serving whichever government was in power with attack dog-like efficiency. Not only did he want to censor journalists, he wanted leakers to be locked up. He railed at leaks “designed to play into a Canberra game about which agency is asking other agencies to expand its powers and remits”.
Yet behind the scenes, he himself was engaged in exactly that game, including by sharing a confidential document with Briggs. “Just for you. Sent to PM and MHA a few minutes ago. Do not pass on.” The hypocrisy is extraordinary.
Pezzullo’s demand that leakers be jailed and his anger about “Canberra games” came in the wake of his deep embarrassment when Annika Smethurst revealed his plan to sic Australia’s signal intelligence arm onto ordinary citizens — something that led to Smethurst being raided by AFP goons.
It was a perfect demonstration of the truism that national security figures are happy to leak when they think it’s in their own interests, but want the full force of the law applied to anyone whose leaks embarrass them or their government.
If Pezzullo was a top-flight executive who led his complex department — complex even before it became Home Affairs — with skill and authority, his departure might at least be regarded as an administrative loss to the public service. But Immigration, and then Home Affairs, an expansion to which Pezzullo dedicated himself to making happen, has been a basket case for years. As Crikey showed back in September, it has been the scene of at least 10 major scandals and stuff-ups in recent years, and the current government is still cleaning up the mess from the loss of control of Australia’s borders that happened under Peter Dutton and Pezzullo, when visa schemes were rorted by criminals and unscrupulous employers.
Pezzullo, who had been Immigration secretary for more than three years when Home Affairs was created, should have known perfectly well that the creation of the mega-department created a huge risk of multiplying the systemic issues that produced so many scandals and bungles, but they carried on anyway, while Pezzullo indulged a passion for eccentric speechifying.
No doubt Pezzullo will be lionised by the right and by national security hawks. But his department was a mess and he was a hypocrite. He won’t be missed. And Home Affairs itself should be further split up with his ouster — it’s a failed experiment in one of the most sensitive portfolios of all.
