Scott Briggs, the long-time “consultant”, lobbyist and Liberal Party powerbroker behind the explosive years-long text-message exchange with Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo, describes himself as an “experienced business and government specialist” on his LinkedIn page.
It’s an apt self-descriptor for a man who has had the ear of prime ministers, especially Scott Morrison. He was the NSW Liberal Party deputy director from August 2005 to September 2007.
He remains close to NSW Liberal Party President Jason Falinski, the former federal member for Mackellar, and people who know him describe him as a “a real backroom operator”.
“He is a very shrewd operator. He is very friendly, personable and likeable. He is the sort of person that doesn’t really fall out with people,” one person who knows Briggs told Crikey.
Briggs owns a multimillion-dollar waterside mansion in the Sutherland Shire’s Yowie Bay and is married to former Young Liberal Meredith Briggs. He has also worked for Rupert Murdoch at Foxtel, and for James Packer, whose company Ellerston Capital was an investor in Briggs’ greatest gambit (so far): the Australian Visa Processing Consortium that tried — and eventually failed — to provide a $1 billion outsourced operation for the Australian government’s visa processing operations while Pezzullo was running Home Affairs. None of the messages obtained by Nine Entertainment between Briggs and Pezzullo related to that contract.
For the $1 billion visa processing contract, Briggs’ AVP was up against a rival consortium of Australia Post, consultancy firm Accenture and IBM.
“As founder, and a lead investor (through his role as CEO of Pacific Blue Capital), Scott brought the consortium partners together, led the initial capital raises and spearheaded the AVP bid through to down selection and end of competitive co-design in July 2018, when permanent CEO Peter Tonagh joined to lead the response to the formal tender. At its peak, Scott led a team of more than 100 full time staff. Scott remained a board member of AVP until 2020,” Briggs’ CV states.
In reality, AVP was financially backed by Ellerston and the little-known Tripodina family who made their money as fruit and vegetable sellers at Sydney’s Flemington Markets.
Briggs has been working on the nexus between government and outsourced contracts since the beginning of his career, studying law at the University of NSW and then snagging a summer clerkship at top-tier law firm Freehills in 1998, where he worked for almost five years. Prior to and during his law degree, he worked in various government departments from 1990-1999, according to his CV.
He went from Freehills to Turnbull & Partners before stints as an entertainment industry lawyer at Nine and then Foxtel before launching the Australian Visa Processing (AVP) project.
He once worked for former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull — specifically for Turnbull & Partners for two years from July 2003 — and spasmodically worked on various of his political campaigns, including Turnbull’s successful bid to beat sitting member Peter King for pre-selection for the seat of Wentworth in 2003 to launch his 15-year political career.
He was also a director at the Cronulla Sharks Rugby League from 2006 to 2020. The club was famously Morrison’s club of choice once he moved from Bronte to the electorate of Cook, where he remains the federal member (prior to this, Morrison had been a long-time rugby union supporter). Briggs was also the president of the electoral conference of the seat of Cook.
In 2015 Briggs founded Southern Strategy, “a professional consulting firm specializing in government and general corporate and commercial advisory. Services include strategy, commercial advisory, government affairs.” The company got into hot water over a 2019 $165,000 donation to the Liberal Party that was later retracted.
In 2020 he joined Gazard, former ALP staffer Chris Fry, and former Greens adviser Ben Oquist at DPG Advisory, “a full-service, bipartisan government relations agency with an unparalleled network of contacts across federal and state governments.”
In 2021 he founded Ewey Creek Ventures which is described as a “private fund that provides angel, seed and expansion capital to a range of different opportunities. Current investments include CU Health, Brick Fit and UNSW Defence 10X.”
His current interests are in a bewildering number of companies that span across services like international risk and crisis management, assistance navigating the Foreign Investment Review Board, start-up and seed funding as well as corporate advisory. His fellow directors include a swathe of former Liberal-era government advisors and former senior public servants including former lobbyist and long-time Liberal apparatchik David Gazard, former Australian Border Force commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg and former ACCC chief Allan Fels.
He’s also something of an international man of mystery, having made many trips to Iran and Yemen prior to co-founding PACE First, a company that is ”an international assistance, security, risk and crisis management firm with experience in over 130 countries. We help ensure you have the best preparation, assistance, communication and emergency support available globally.”
Colleagues at Foxtel, where Briggs was a government lobbyist focused on anti-siphoning, say he was secretive and did not socialise much with workmates while having significant sway in major divisions such as budgets and group strategy.
As one former colleague noted, “he has made a lot of money from government contacts in a relatively short amount of time.” Companies where Briggs was a principal that have been awarded government contracts include, but are not limited to, Quarantine Services Australia and DPG Advisory.
In a searing exposition of Pezzullo — some of whose text messages targeted him — former attorney-general George Brandis said: “Political parties attract parasites like Briggs like iron filings to a magnet.”
