[Theme Music Starts]

ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

One of Australia’s top-paid public servants has been accused of trying to pull the strings of senior federal politicians.

Text messages from Mike Pezzullo, the secretary of Home Affairs, appear to show a bureaucrat who wasn’t adhering to his duty of impartiality - instead, he bad mouthed ministers, attacked political decisions, and attempted to wield influence in Canberra.

Today, columnist for The Saturday Paper, Paul Bongiorno, on how secret texts reveal a bigger problem in the public service that could undermine our democracy.

It’s Friday, September 29th.

[Theme Music Ends]

ANGE:

Paul, this week there's been a number of stories about the text messages of Mike Pezzullo - there's a lot of them...what's been revealed?

PAUL:

Well Ange you're certainly right about how much material we're talking about.

Audio excerpt -- Nick McKenzie (60 Minutes):

“Tonight in a joint investigation with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, we expose the highly inappropriate actions of one of our most senior public servants.”

PAUL:

The Nine newspapers journalists Nick McKenzie and Michael Bachelard, well, they've gotten hold of a cache of what looks like thousands of messages from Mike Pezzullo, the secretary. In other words, the big boss of the Home Affairs Department.

Audio excerpt -- Nick McKenzie (60 Minutes):

“Pezzullo has been wielding extraordinary power from the shadows, interfering in government and doing all he can to build a massive empire.”

PAUL:

They show he was using a political back channel to prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison to influence policies and even the appointment of ministers.

Audio excerpt -- Nick McKenzie (60 Minutes):

“Now remember, this senior public servant is meant to be above party politics. But as it became likely that Scott Morrison would become Prime minister, Pezzullo began agitating with Morrison's close friend Scott Briggs, hoping the Liberal Party powerbroker would in turn influence Morrison about who he’d appoint to key Cabinet roles.”

PAUL:

The political back channel is WhatsApp messages sent to a Liberal powerbroker, Scott Briggs. Now Scott Briggs is a lobbyist, a former vice president of the New South Wales Liberal Party and a close confidante of both Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. He was a fundraiser for both of them. He worked with Morrison at a Liberal Party headquarters in Sydney. He's very influential on that side of politics in Canberra. So Pezzullo writes very candidly about his feelings towards certain cabinet ministers on the night of the leadership spill between Turnbull and Morrison, for example, in 2018, he told Scott Briggs who he wanted to become Minister of Home Affairs in a cabinet reshuffle. He said, and I'm quoting the texts as published, he “wanted a right winger in the role”, saying he was a fan of Peter Dutton taking on the job and quote,”I'd like to see Dutton come back to home affairs. No reason for him to stay on the backbench that I can see”, end quote. And he undermined or bad mouthed a number of senior politicians in the messages which spanned five years up to 2021. He even called for the sacking of Christopher Pyne, for example, and let it be known he thought very little of Attorney-General Brandis.

Audio excerpt -- George Brandis:

“It reflects, I suppose, Mr. Pezzullo's impatience with the fact that I as the Attorney-General was advising Cabinet about the legal risk involved in some of the things that Pezzullo wanted to do.”

PAUL:

And in the text he was certainly keen to stifle press freedom. He was pushing the then Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, to introduce a system that would hinder journalists publishing certain material or certain stories if he considered them damaging to national security.

ANGE:

And Paul, it's quite shocking to hear about a public servant trying to wield this kind of influence. But what rules could Pezzullo have broken here? Just how big of a breach could this be?

PAUL:

Well, I think to understand this and why it is such a big deal, you have to appreciate who Pezzullo is. Public servants aren't politicians, they're bureaucrats. And by their nature, they're not meant to be politically partisan, let alone be players in internal party power plays. They're supposed to leave all of that to the elected politicians and then help them serve the Australian public. And on the face of it, we have what looks to be a pretty massive breach of the Public Service Act. The Public Service Act says secretaries must uphold and promote the APS values and employment principles. And one of those principles is impartiality. It specifically says, quote, “The APS is apolitical and provides the government with advice that is frank, honest, timely and based on the best available evidence.” The other factor here is the scale of the behaviour. And this is important because the texts reveal a pattern of operating by Mike Pezzullo, spending years trying to influence the politics and the personnel of government operations. Now, in all of this, I'm not alleging any illegality. It could be that there is impropriety, a breaking of the rules here, and that of course, is still to be tested. In fact, it is being tested as we talk.

ANGE:

So Paul, what happens to Mike Pezzullo now?

Audio excerpt -- Claire O'Neill:

“Thank you. I became aware that there is an allegation of extensive communications between the secretary of my department and Mr. Scott Briggs.”

PAUL:

Well, his Minister, Claire O'Neil, the Minister for Home Affairs, stood him aside on Monday.

Audio excerpt -- Claire O'Neill:

“This morning 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.”

PAUL:

He’s still on full pay. He has an annual salary of $900,000 a year. And an inquiry has been set up. The inquiry will be looking into whether the texts are genuine and whether Pezzullo did share inside information with his contact, Scott Briggs, who was also involved in business with the Department of Home Affairs. And of course, if Pezzullo did seek to undermine Cabinet ministers in a party political way.

Audio excerpt -- Anthony Albanese:

“Minister O'Neill has spoken with Mike Pezzullo, the secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, this morning, and has asked that he stand aside.”

PAUL:

Albanese says he sees the inquiry into the Pazuello text revelations as urgent.

Audio excerpt -- Anthony Albanese:

“That action is appropriate. We’ll await the findings of the investigation, which we will expedite, we have a cabinet meeting…”

PAUL:

And if it finds the texts are genuine and these allegations are proven, well the view broadly in Canberra is that Pezzullo's career will be over.

Look, it's not surprising that public servants, you know, would have well-formed opinions on all sorts of things, including party politics and probably in casual conversation, and would mention it to the political leaders and to others. What we've got here, however, is communication using a political lobbyist with very deep political connections to achieve policies and actions that the public servant wants and in fact is driving.

But you know, this isn't a story just about one public servant. It also speaks to much bigger issues in the public service and how the home affairs as a department operates.

ANGE:

So, do top public servants have too much power? That’s coming up after the break.

[Advertisement]

ANGE:

So Paul, I want to talk a bit about why it's so significant that Mike Pezzullo in particular has been caught up in this. Can you tell me a bit about his rise to leading the Home Affairs Department and just how powerful he was?

PAUL:

Yeah, well, Mike Pezzullo started off in the Department of Defence as a graduate way back in 1987, and then during the period of the Hawke Labor government, he was seconded, as many public servants are, to the office of the Foreign Minister of the Time, Gareth Evans. And then when Labor lost government, he went off to work again as a public servant on secondment in the office of the Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley. Now you might remember, or you might not, I think you were born at the time, Ange, but Kim Beazley, when he was Opposition Leader, he had a policy that we needed a Coast Guard. Now that Coast Guard policy idea and why we needed it came directly from Mike Pezzullo. Well, anyway, Beazley lost an election and Pezzullo went back to the public service. He then moved into the area of customs and its here, Customs and Immigration, where he started to push his dream of having a Coast Guard, which morphed into the idea of a border force. Interestingly enough, when Peter Dutton became Immigration Minister, well that suited Pezzullo no end. And he pushed the idea of a mega department pulling together intelligence operations of ASIO, AUSTRAC, as well as border protection, as well as customs. And you might remember there was a bit of a power struggle going on within the Turnbull Government and Malcolm Turnbull thought this would probably be a good idea. And this of course the back channel of Scott Briggs was at work here. That one way to keep Peter Dutton onside was to give him this new mega portfolio and make Peter Dutton feel very important. And of course it also made Mike Pezzullo not only very important but even more powerful. So Ange, and this role as the head of the Department of Home Affairs, Pezzullo oversaw everything from visas to Operation Sovereign Borders to national security, ASIO and intelligence gathering.

ANGE:

And so, Paul, it is an extraordinary amount of power in the hands of one person. Does this whole saga raise questions about whether anyone in the public service should ever hold as much influence as Mike Pezzullo had?

PAUL:

Well, I suppose it goes to more than just influence. I mean, senior public servants are there to influence government with their advice. I think it also goes to how that influence is parlayed, you know, whether the line is crossed between advice and playing, you know, internal party politics. But there are other issues which I think you're touching on there Ange is, do we really need this mega department? Now, one of the battles that Pezzullo was having with George Brandis when he was Attorney-General, the Attorney-General of the time thought that it was simply wrong and dangerous to have a department that enforces things like border protection and visas and security to also be intelligence gathering. This is the beginning of a police state, and Brandis fought tooth and nail and now when Labor won government, the new Attorney-General Dreyfus, he agreed with Brandis and they've broken that away from the Department of Home Affairs. So now the Australian Federal Police and AUSTRAC have gone back to Attorney General, leaving the intelligence gathering over at Home Affairs. This in itself is a safeguard.

ANGE:

And Paul, I think there's a worry that this is just the way power works in Canberra. You know, behind the scenes by unelected officials who aren't accountable at the ballot box. Should we be concerned that there's a deeper cultural problem here?

PAUL:

Well Ange, there certainly does seem to be a problem here. We only have to look at the findings of the robo debt royal commission with the way in which the government treated the public service and the way in which the public service, well, toted to its demands. Abandoned neutrality, abandoned frank and fearless advice and turned a blind eye. This doesn't serve our democracy well and we need to restore the real role of the public service. The Albanese Government says it's setting about to do that. It will hire more public servants and it will restore the role that traditionally they have. But it does seem we have seen a decline in standards over many years and not just the last ten years. I mean the politicisation of the public service where senior leaders, where secretaries of departments can be hired and fired on the whim of the Prime Minister. Well, that goes back to the Hawke years really. But in the intervening times, this has been sending messages that, well have seen an erosion of the quality of the public service that I think needs to be, as the current government says it is doing, needs to be addressed.

ANGE:

Paul, thanks so much for your time today.

PAUL:

Thanks, Ange. Bye.

[Advertisement]

[Theme Music Starts]

ANGE:

Also in the news today,

Woodside’s controversial Scarborough gas project, which included plans for seismic blasting offshore, has been blocked.

The Federal Court found an environmental plan for part of the project wasn’t legally approved, making the proposal invalid.

And

A Supreme Court judge ending his 40-year long career has used a farewell speech to endorse the Voice to Parliament.

Victorian Supreme Court Judge John Dixon said it was ‘shameful’ that there was division in the community over the referendum.

7am is a daily show from The Monthly and The Saturday Paper.

It’s produced by Kara Jensen-Mackinnon, Zoltan Fecso, Cheyne Anderson, Yeo Choong, and Sam Loy.

Our senior producer is Chris Dengate. Our technical producer is Atticus Bastow.

Our editor is Scott Mitchell. Sarah McVeigh is our head of audio.

Erik Jensen is our editor-in-chief.

Mixing by Andy Elston, Travis Evans, and Atticus Bastow.

Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Audio.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back next week.

[Theme Music Ends]