Meddling mandarins: How Pezzullo’s powerbroking undermines the Westminster system

It has been revealed that Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo, through Liberal powerbroker and lobbyist Scott Briggs, spent years seeking to shore up power, undermining political and public service enemies, and promoting the careers of conservative allies. On Monday afternoon, Pezzullo agreed to step down amid an investigation.

The kind of factional power play Pezzullo is accused of is what we may reluctantly expect from elected politicians mired in the dirty world of politics, but is antithetical to the notion of an apolitical and impartial public service.

As one of the top mandarins in the country, Pezzullo is obliged to comply with public service values mandated in the Public Service Act 1999, which states that public servants are to be apolitical, impartial, and act with integrity and in a professional manner. The APS code of conduct reiterates these requirements. Engaging in back-channel dealings to advance partisan causes clearly subverts these requirements.

Pezzullo has been referred to the Australian public service commissioner for the hundreds of texts to Briggs seeking to advance political issues.

Why does this challenge the Westminster system?

The modern Westminster ministerial advisory system is built on the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report in Britain. In the 18th and early 19th century, it was difficult to be appointed to a UK government office unless you were an aristocrat with the right connections to a very small elite.

The Northcote-Trevelyan report rejected appointment based on patronage. It concluded that a permanent and apolitical body of public servants who were subordinate to ministers was necessary for effective government administration.

This report forms the basis of the Westminster public service today. Public servants are expected to be neutral and apolitical, and recruited and promoted on the basis of merit.

Over time, several changes have occurred that have significantly weakened the Australian bureaucracy.

The heyday of the mandarin is over. Departmental secretaries in the 1950s and 1960s had permanent tenure. By contrast, recent governments have been in the habit of sacking departmental secretaries and installing their allies in the positions.

In 1996, the newly elected Howard government terminated the contracts of six departmental secretaries, one-third of the total, as soon as the government was sworn in — an event known as the “night of the long knives”. This exercise was repeated, less dramatically, by other incoming governments. Senior bureaucrats on fixed-term contracts fearful of losing their jobs are less likely to provide frank and fearless advice to ministers.

In addition, in the past 40 years, ministerial advisers have become a powerful force in executive government. They are partisan advisers to ministers, who have significant influence in media and political advice, and are their “eyes and ears”. As ministers increasingly relied on their trusted partisan advisers, the influence of the public service has correspondingly waned.

In this context, Pezzullo’s political machinations undermine the tripartite system where ministers and ministerial advisers have explicitly political roles, while public servants are to be impartial and act in the public interest.

Politicians and their partisan advisers are subject to the incentive structures of winning the next election, and the short-termism and tunnel vision that comes with it. On the other hand, bureaucrats should be impartial and act in the public interest, and also insulated from short-term political manoeuvring. This is more likely to result in better long-term outcomes for the nation.

The High Court in Banerji has previously come down hard on a public servant who lost her job posting critical comments about her department on an anonymous Twitter (now X) account. The High Court emphasised that the impartiality of the public service is fundamental to the proper functioning of the system of representative and responsible government.

While the judgment has been rightly criticised, as it has the potential to silence public servants from expressing their personal political views even anonymously, it is true that a lack of impartiality by the public service will undermine the trust of ministers, who expect neutral, professional and apolitical advice, untainted by party political machinations. It will also undermine public trust in the bureaucracy.

The need for reform

The weaknesses of our system of public administration were recently extensively ventilated in the robodebt royal commission, where it was revealed that senior public servants sought to hide the likely illegality of the robodebt scheme for four years, in order to please their political masters. The commissioner was scathing of the public service and lambasted their handling of the scheme as an “extraordinary saga” of “venality, incompetence and cowardice”.

We have thus come to a point where there needs to be reform in our system of public administration. We need to enhance the professionalism, impartiality and integrity of the public service, to be a bulwark against the partisanship and short-termism of politicians and ministerial advisers. Without that, we face the potential of more dismal failures of public policy and large-scale public disasters. 

What does the Pezzullo affair say about the state of the public service? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.