The revelations about which Richardson has been tasked to inquire throw light upon another powerful public servant,Mike Pezzullo,and the department over which he presides,Home Affairs. There is no suggestion that Pezzullo was himself involved in any irregularity. I know him well enough to say he is a man of unimpeachable integrity. Nevertheless,he is the person on whose watch these events happened. The man at the top must accept responsibility. And he must also take responsibility for the culture of the department which he has led since its inception.
The Department of Home Affairs is almost entirely Pezzullo’s creation. At the time it came into being,at the end of 2017,Pezzullo had been the secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection,under both prime ministers Abbott and Turnbull. From early in the life of the Abbott government,Pezzullo agitated for the creation of a national security super-department,which would combine immigration and border protection with domestic security,including the Australian Federal Police,other law-enforcement agencies and ASIO.
Tony Abbott – always a hawk on national security – was not persuaded of the wisdom of the idea. After the change of prime ministers in 2015,Pezzullo saw his chance to relitigate the issue. Malcolm Turnbull – eager to appease Peter Dutton,who shared Pezzullo’s ambition for a super-department – went along with it over the strong objections of both the Australian Federal Police and ASIO. The then director-general of ASIO,Duncan Lewis (now my colleague at the National Security College),was particularly vehement in his opposition.
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Lewis understood that public confidence in ASIO depends upon protecting its reputation – painstakingly rebuilt after the damaging revelations of the Hope Royal Commission of the 1970s – for being punctiliously law-abiding. Like every director-general before him,he thought that was best done by keeping ASIO within the attorney-general’s portfolio,under the watchful eye of the first law officer. It would not be served by ASIO being swallowed in a new super-department with an expansive view of its powers and a less front-of-mind consciousness of the rule of law.
While the changes to the machinery of government arrangements were under way,in October 2017 Pezzullo made a little-noticed speech to the Trans-Tasman Business Circle,in which he set out his vision – what he described as “the philosophical context ... on the creation of the Home Affairs Department”. He said:
“The state has to increasingly embed itself – not majestically,sitting at the apex of society,dispensing justice – but the state has to embed itself invisibly into global networks and supply chains,and the virtual realm,in a seamless and largely invisible fashion,intervening on the basis of intelligence and risk settings. Increasingly,at super scale and at very high volumes.”