Pezzullo’s fate an ‘urgent matter’: PM

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an investigation into benched Home Affairs Department secretary Michael Pezzullo and a trove of text messages he exchanged with a Liberal Party powerbroker was an “urgent matter”.

Mr Pezzullo agreed to stand aside as department secretary on Monday after The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age obtained the cache of hundreds of messages between Mr Pezzullo and Scott Briggs, a confidant of former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.

An inquiry is being held into whether Michael Pezzullo breached the Public Service Code of Conduct. Alex Ellinghausen

The publicised exchanges include Mr Pezzullo using Mr Briggs as an intermediary to the two prime ministers to criticise fellow public servants, to promote hard line national security policies, to attack press freedom and disparage senior government ministers.

Mr Albanese would not be drawn on Mr Pezzullo’s fate, saying he was waiting for former Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs – no relation to Scott Briggs – to complete her probe into whether he had breached the Public Service Code of Conduct that requires bureaucrats to act apolitically.

“But I see it as an urgent matter,” Mr Albanese said.

“You have an independent inquiry so that you hear from the inquiry, not so that you pre-empt it. My government is an orderly government that sets up structures that are appropriate and then responds to it.”

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who worked closely with Mr Pezzullo when he was Home Affairs minister, said he would wait for the outcome of the inquiry when he was asked whether he was holding back criticism.