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For a whereas, former Residence Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo has been engaged — primarily by strategy of Information Corp papers — in a campaign of Nixonian rehabilitation, posing as a magisterial geopolitical thinker, ready to utter the strategic truths others will now not.
To be aesthetic, this pose suits Pezzullo a long way better than his outdated profession. After his disastrous length on the helm of the immigration after which Residence Affairs departments, one has to manufacture he’s better suited to musing in regards to the specter of China than no doubt operating anything. There used to be the disastrous lack of withhold watch over of Australia’s borders that befell under the Coalition, which saw organised crime exploit Australia’s visa gadget; there’s the Paladin scandal, the stench of which smooth lingers over Canberra even now; there’s the spectacular failure of law of migration agents; there’s the hopeless bungling of maritime surveillance contracts costing taxpayers hundreds of hundreds and hundreds; there’s the extended checklist of disastrously mismanaged procurement workouts and contracts.
All on Pezzullo’s scrutinize, whereas he tranquil bizarre rants to his workers. It’s price recalling, though, that Pezzullo wasn’t sacked for any of this, but for a couple of breaches of the Public Carrier Code of Behavior. Within the words of the Australian Public Carrier Price, Pezzullo “breached the Australian Public Carrier Code of Behavior on now not now not up to 14 events in terms of 5 overarching allegations, these allegations being that he:
- frail his accountability, vitality, residing or authority to scrutinize to create a aid or aid for himself
- engaged in gossip and disrespectful critique of ministers and public servants
- did now not support confidentiality of sensitive govt information
- did now not act apolitically in his employment
- did now not present a battle of hobby”
Declaring the confidentiality of sensitive govt information used to be an especially curly one for Pezzullo given he as soon as referred to as for leakers to be jailed and journalists to be censored. Industrial-grade hypocrisy from the self-styled tough man of the protection institution.
But no-one, completely, will comprise anticipated that Pezzullo would elevate his cue on rehabilitation as a lot from Tom Gleeson as Richard Nixon. Within the Weekend Australian, Pezzullo channelled Gleeson with an unheard of interrogate for Australians to be patriotic — tough!
Onerous patriotism has a necessarily martial quality … Onerous patriotism challenges us to interrogate of ourselves: what’s to be defended, to the closing if fundamental, and are we ready to pay that mark? Onerous patriotism can now not be fully expected of our armed forces … Within the match of having to protect the nation, tough patriotism would be required of all. Sacrifice and commitment would be expected from all, arena most lively to age or incapacity. Onerous patriots would ought to be stumbled on now not most lively within the armed forces but furthermore at some level of a mobilised and resolute population.
Onerous. Mobilised. Resolute. But for what, Mike? “The Eurasian axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea”. Pezzullo sees a world whereby “China would rule the waves of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and its navy bases would be in our sea-air approaches … free to impose its will on Australia … Local quisling political and industry leaders would emerge who would flee their fellow Australians to ‘alter’ to the novel truth of Chinese supremacy.”
Is this Pezzullo’s pitch for a feature in a Dutton govt (preferably now not in a residing where he has to no doubt bustle anything, care for Dutton’s nationwide safety adviser)? In which case, he might presumably well ought to comprise a observe alongside with his former boss, who has now ditched the “Manchurian Candidate” stuff and talks of his fondness for China.
And what does being patriotic — tough! — entail? Pezzullo desires to:
Request all electorate, most seemingly outdated 18 to 65, to ascertain every year a pledge of service, where we would all be requested to register the kind of nationwide service that we will seemingly be inviting to render within the match of a navy emergency lively the defence of the nation. This is able to now not be limited to being inviting to elevate in arms. It might per chance presumably well presumably encompass diversified classes of service equivalent to clinical, building, logistics and loads of others. Setting up this kind of register, most seemingly as a prelude to establishing an Australian nationwide service plan…
He furthermore wants a “war e-book” (now not ready factual by Defence, clearly, but by Residence Affairs as effectively) and to treat “nationwide safety care for the nationwide funds (through an annual, top-time, nationwide safety assertion to the nation).”
“A more challenging patriotism would,” Pezzullo concludes (for some reason, one imagines within the narrate Jim Hacker frail to manufacture when feeling Churchillian) “have regularly as the americans began to fancy the stakes and the capacity sacrifices that can presumably well ought to be made to guard all that we esteem about Australia.”
Surely one of many things we esteem about Australia, clearly, is that disgraced public servants who leaked confidential information and knowing they comprise been a political heavy-hitter other than a bureaucrat might presumably well presumably effectively be given a platform for their fascist fantasies about conscription, forced labour and Chinese invasions. Prolonged might presumably well presumably it live so.
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