Pezzullo, politics and the public service
Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. Public servants are there to serve the public, hence the name. And they’re bound by a public service code of conduct, meaning they can’t insert themselves into politics. But that’s what one of the most powerful public servants in Australia, Mike Pezzullo, is alleged to have done. Today, Radio National Breakfast and the Party Room podcast host Patricia Karvelas on the trove of secret messages allegedly sent by Mr. Pezzullo and what they mean for our political system and democracy. PK, this story involves two key characters. There’s Michael Pezzullo and Scott Briggs, two names many of us may never have heard of. But this story is really important for all of us, isn’t it? Because it goes to the strength of our democracy.
Patricia Karvelas: Yeah, because it’s the role of the public service and the separation from government. So to be clear, the public service exists to give frank and fearless, objective and researched advice to the government. It is meant to be apolitical. It is such a key word, the word apolitical, so that they can serve any master, so to speak. It’s vitally important, in fact, to the health of our democracy that public servants don’t act as political players. And so when you say these two people are key figures, well, Mike Pezzullo is a very, very powerful public servant.
Sam Hawley: Yeah, okay. Yeah, he’s right up the top of the public service. He’s really senior.
Patricia Karvelas: Well, his job is as head of Home Affairs and he’s there to keep the nation safe. So basically he’s in charge of all the guns, which is, I think, an easy way to think about it with all those different elements of what’s in home affairs. Now, he earns a salary of more than $900,000 a year. That’s a lot of money. I don’t think anyone needs that explained to them. And it’s actually a lot more than the Prime Minister earns. So yeah, that gives you a sense of the power. He’s been described as one of the hardest nuts in government. He’s worked in the public service for decades. He was previously the Secretary of Immigration and Border Protection after being appointed by the former Prime minister Tony Abbott, in 2014 and as essentially the CEO of Australia’s Border Protection Agency. He was and people may know him from this. He oversaw Operation Sovereign Borders and that targeted people smugglers. Obviously the turning back the boats strategy, all of that, which was very much a Tony Abbott government strategy but had to be implemented by public servants.
Sam Hawley: And important to note, I think that he’s made many a speech about the appropriate behaviour of public servants. In a speech in 2018 to the Institute of Public Administration Australia ACT branch, he really did demonstrate he was very aware of the requirements of public servants to act. As you said before, apolitically.
Michael Pezzullo, speaking in 2018: …The public servant cannot be unaware of political happenings. They are all around us. What is important for the public servant is, is that one must absent oneself from any partisan discussions and avoid exposure to raw politics, especially as it might relate to electoral considerations or criticisms of the opposition.
Sam Hawley: And PK that tough nut image that he seems to have comes partly from his appearances during Senate Estimates hearings, which are always a bit of fun, I suppose, depending on which side you’re sitting on.
Patricia Karvelas: Look, it seems if we’re to be clear, like as one of the key people, architects, if you like, or really senior figureheads of some of these harsh border protection policies, including Operation Sovereign Borders, he certainly is not liked by the left. I think it’s fair to say, if you listen to some of the commentary from particularly the Greens in the last couple of days, they’re calling for his head.
Nick McKim, Greens Senator: He has overseen a litany of governance failures and now interfering improperly in in the political space. Ultimately, taken together, all of those things mean that his position is untenable and he needs to go.
Patricia Karvelas: And that’s because, as you point out, that tough nut image, the way that he’s behaved in Senate estimates recently, he was up before senators discussing social media and an internal review. I’ll give you another example. In 2014, he confirmed that the then Abbott government had spent $2.5 million on disposable lifeboats to send asylum seekers back to Indonesia.
News report: The Government won’t say how many of these it’s bought or how much each of them cost.
Senate Estimates hearing: Is it your intention to purchase more?
Michael Pezzullo, speaking in 2014: Possibly we’ll purchase as many as are required to to successfully execute the mission that’s been given to us by the government.
Patricia Karvelas: Which, of course, you know, was a pretty startling story at the time and even now and then in 2017, he was criticised for joking when he was asked about the alleged torture of detainees, Manus Island, where of course we, you know, had offshore processing.
Nick McKim, Greens Senator: Spare us the fake sympathy. You’ve been torturing them for four and a half…
Senate Committee: We’ve put up with your editorialising we can allow the secretary to complete the answer.
Michael Pezzullo, speaking in 2017: I reject any assertion that that this department’s been torturing anyone. The only torture I’m aware of is sometimes when we have to appear here…
Nick McKim, Greens Senator: I just don’t think… I don’t think torture is a laughing matter. Mr. Pezzullo.
Patricia Karvelas: So hard nut. Hard head, hard liner on these issues.
Sam Hawley: All right, So that’s Michael Pezzullo. And now we know he had a friend in Scott Briggs. This is the other player in this story. Who is he?
Patricia Karvelas: So Scott Briggs, you know, kind of a bit of a mover and shaker in the political world. He ran Malcolm Turnbull’s election campaign for the seat of Wentworth in 2003. He’s a close friend and confidant of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, one time director of the Liberal Party and a director of the Cronulla Sharks. Just by the by. Morrison, of course, is a number one ticket holder there. We heard a lot about the Sharkies during his prime ministership. Look, he knows people in high places. He’s what’s known as a Liberal Party powerbroker. And that’s not unusual. Scott Briggs is, you know, a Liberal Party operative. Being a Liberal Party operative and obviously I don’t know and we don’t know what the history is, but he’s developed some time a relationship with Mike Pezzullo.
Sam Hawley: Okay. And we know of this relationship now because the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age and 60 Minutes got their hands on hundreds of these encrypted messages allegedly sent between the pair. They’d been sent over several years and they make for pretty interesting reading.
Patricia Karvelas: Oh, goodness. It really is, isn’t it? Because, look, let’s be clear about why it’s interesting. There’s a public servant who’s far too cosy with a political operative saying things that you don’t expect public servants to say.
News report: The leaked messages obtained by Nine media detail years of conversations between the Home Affairs secretary and a businessman with close links to Liberal prime ministers.
Patricia Karvelas: We’re reading these text messages that this man has sent in an encrypted way that he never thinks anyone will read and they’ve been published. So, you know, hold on to your hats right? They appear to show that Mike Pezzullo is using Scott Briggs to influence government ministers, prime ministers and their decision making. Pretty out there stuff.
Sam Hawley: So let’s have a look a bit further at what they were saying to each other in these messages. There’s so many, as you say, around a thousand. So let’s concentrate on the best of, if you could.
Patricia Karvelas: The best of. You’re cracking me up. Okay. Yes. First, it’s important to note that there are no suggestions of any exchanges that are corrupt. In one of these alleged messages, he writes, this public servant, Mike Pezzullo, writes to Scott Briggs, In the event of Scomo getting up, I’d like to see Dutton come back to Home Affairs. No reason for him to stay on the backbench, he says. That was sent at 9:40 p.m. on the night before the spill against Malcolm Turnbull in August 2018. In the same week, Pezzullo texted Briggs again about who would serve as Home Affairs minister and then says, which I’ve alluded to, you need a right winger in there. People smugglers will be watching. Please feed that in. Again. Why is this for him to determine? This is a political decision, right?
Sam Hawley: There’s many others, of course. The Defence Minister, Marise Payne, she got a bit of a mention too.
Patricia Karvelas: I was a bit shocked by this as well in one of these alleged text messages, Marise Payne, who is who’s actually just recently retired as a senator after a very long career as sort of leading female Liberal New South Wales moderate in the Liberal Party, pretty well known figure, but he describes her as being completely ineffectual, describing her as a problem. Again, he’s a senior public servant providing commentary on a senior minister. It’s pretty odd. Marise Payne hasn’t responded to this report. When another message he says he almost had a heart attack thinking about Julie Bishop becoming Liberal leader again. I don’t think I have to explain it to your your podcast listeners. It’s it’s a little unusual for a senior public servant to be giving his view about a future prime minister, potentially that is rather inappropriate.
Sam Hawley: There’s now an investigation into this by the Australian Public Service Commissioner, the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. He says the Government’s going to be expediting that process. So it was the Home Affairs Minister, Clare O’Neil, who asked Mike Pezzullo to stand aside.
Clare O’Neil, Home Affairs Minister: I spoke to the Secretary of my department. I asked him to stand aside while that inquiry occurs. I believe that is appropriate and in the public interest.
Sam Hawley: And the Labor MP Peter Khalil is concerned about the separation between politics and the public service.
Peter Khalil, Labor MP: Impartiality, non-partisan advice, apolitical advice. These are fundamental principles of a good public service and so anything that threatens that needs to be acted on very, very swiftly. And that’s what they’ve done.
Sam Hawley: Has Mike Pezzullo and Scott Briggs had anything to say about all of this?
Patricia Karvelas: Pezzullo hasn’t commented. He was asked to step aside and has while this investigation unfolds. Scott Briggs has confirmed that he had communications with Mike Pezzullo over a long period of time that continued to the present day. But that’s it.
Sam Hawley: Worth noting though, Mike Pezzullo does still have support of the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
Peter Dutton, Opposition Leader: I’ll say in relation to Mr. Pezzullo, he was my secretary when I was in home Affairs. I found him to always be professional.
Sam Hawley: So as we noted, that investigation is still underway. But I guess whatever the outcome of that, it’s got us talking, hasn’t it, about the importance of distance between politicians and public servants and protecting our democracy?
Patricia Karvelas: Yeah, I mean, I think this is quite an important moment for us to kind of look at this beyond just Mike Pezzullo and have a bit of a stocktake, I think about the way all of these institutions work. They do matter. I know they for some people getting on with their lives, they probably don’t think about how the Home Affairs Department operates every day, but that transparency and proper process ensures that checks and balances are there. So that’s why the story matters. So at this point now where this will be dealt with pretty quickly, because I don’t think the government can have this loom over them at the same time, because this man has been so controversial in the past, because he’s been the hard man in areas that are really contested and contentious. There are people who were outraged that Pezzullo was retained by the Labor Party when they won government over a year ago. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese really didn’t want to be kind of the sort of prime minister that came in and got rid of public servants. He didn’t like it, didn’t, it’s not the sort of way he wanted to progress and yet this has now blown up and I cannot see how this is a sustainable position for this man to have this really powerful position when so many politicians are now questioning his independence.
Sam Hawley: Patricia Karvelas is the host of Radio National Breakfast and the Party Room podcast. This episode was produced by Laura Corrigan, Bridget Fitzgerald, Anna John and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I’m Sam Hawley. You can find all our episodes of the podcast on the ABC Listen app. Thanks for listening.