From Pezzullo to PwC, people really like failing their own very public standards

Senator Bridget McKenzie told Kitchen Cabinet this week of her loneliness after having resigned from her ministry back in 2020 following the “sport rorts” scandal, after it was revealed her department had allocated $100 million in funds for explicitly political reasons. As McKenzie eventually left the role because of a relatively minor and tangential matter — undeclared membership of a gun club — rather than the substance of the scandal, host Annabel Crabb noted it was a resignation “on a point of principle”. McKenzie replied that, beyond principle, she would have most likely been sacked regardless.

Still, fearless adherence to principles is a rare and precious quality in public life, and we thought it only fitting to end the week celebrating the various powerful figures who this week so admirably followed through on the standards they have spent years loudly demanding of others.

Bridget McKenzie

September 2023: Starting with McKenzie herself, the senator, speaking on Today, criticises Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson for her performance at Senate estimates, which continued to display a “level of arrogance that our once-beloved national carrier shouldn’t be displaying”:

When you come to a senate inquiry, we ask the questions, you’re supposed to come with the answers.

A bit like failing to hand in a submission, not having details … [it] just shows the level of disrespect.

As part of the interrogation she administered during estimates, McKenzie also expressed fury that Hudson was unable to state the exact date Qantas had agreed to support the Yes campaign for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament: “This is quite incredible, this is the whole quid-pro-quo and no-one came prepared to answer questions — what a surprise.”

December 2020: With a moment’s reflection, perhaps McKenzie would appreciate the effort that Hudson and co had shown in actually turning up. Back at the end of 2020, a Senate committee investigating sports rorts complained that a “systematic lack of disclosure” had prevented it from doing its job. McKenzie was at the heart of the scandal, having been the minister responsible for the funding decisions, and had been the one to, briefly and tangentially, pay any price.

Did she appear without prepared answers? Not a bit of it: McKenzie simply refused to show up.

Nyunggai Warren Mundine

September 2023: When former boxer, opponent of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and Nyunggai Warren Mundine’s second cousin Anthony Mundine posted that he wanted to “beat up” Yes advocate Thomas Mayo “real good”, Warren posts on X: “I want to see that!!!”.

August 2023: Mundine tells the ABC’s Virginia Trioli that he has been “driven mad” by the level of abuse he’s received for his views, and blames Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for “opening the door” to it by “attacking” anyone who opposes the Voice.

PwC

September 2023: Former Telstra chief executive Ziggy Switkowski produced a scathing report into PwC Australia, following the scandal that the behemoth consultant leaked confidential tax information acquired in the course of its work with government to its clients in the private sector. Switkowski blamed a “growth at all costs” culture wherein “revenue is king”. As a result certain “untouchables” emerged, to whom “the rules [didn’t] always apply”.

March 2019: As The Australian Financial Review noted, none of this prevented PwC from dishing out some moral guidance of its own back in the day. In a document responding to the banking royal commission’s final report, PwC said directors should always “consider ‘should we?’ and not just ‘can we?’ when proposing a course of action”.

“These observations highlight that boards need to bring a moral and ethical compass to the work they do in the boardroom and ensure this approach is cascaded through the organisation,” they wrote, presumably right before lighting a cigar with a burning $100 note.

Mike Pezzullo

September 2023: A jaw-dropping tranche of correspondence dropped this week, comprising years of messages between Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo and Liberal Party powerbroker Scott Briggs. It showed Pezzullo explicitly and brazenly attempting to influence the governments led by Malcolm Turnbull and then Scott Morrison, in terms of policy direction, ministerial appointments and dealings with the press.

October 2018: Pezzulo gave a stirring address to the ACT branch of the Institute of Public Administration Australia, exhorting public servants to know their place in the administering of policy, arguing it would be “mortally dangerous to our system of government for the public service to come to possess an aggrandised conception of its role in the proper processes of government”.

There is no legitimate basis for contending that unelected officials have any purportedly supra-national responsibility as custodians of the public interest, somehow separately identified from the domain that is determined all too often to be that of politics.

Further, he said that if a public servant finds they cannot reconcile their values with that of the government they are employed to advise and serve, they should not seek to change that government:

Taken together, the law and our own professional outlook mean this: our vocational calling is
to assist governments to be better than they would otherwise be, but not to seek to make them
different governments, which perhaps might conform to our preferences and outlooks. If we
have a different interpretation of the ‘public interest’, and feel strongly enough about it, we
should resign our positions as public servants and run for elected office ourselves.

Bonus Mike Pezzullo for the win

September 2023: The Age reports that Pezzullo went outside the confidentiality of discussions of a “supposedly apolitical and independent panel of departmental secretaries” by leaking to Briggs its deliberations regarding the decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, in the process “pushing himself forward as its sole member committed to advancing Morrison’s policy”. Briggs also received a confidential assessment from Pezzullo prepared by Home Affairs after the Christchurch massacre.

August 2019: Via The Australian: “Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo has declared the person who leaked a top-secret document to a News Corp journalist should ‘go to jail’, as federal police reveal they have identified a suspect and are concerned about their position in the public service.”