From Schwartz Media. I'm Ashlin McGhee.
This is seven Am Belly. A week goes by when the Department of Home Affairs isn't under the blow torch of media or political scrutiny. In one way, the level of scrutiny is to be expected. When you've got a department so huge it takes in security, intelligence, immigration and policing functions, some fourteen thousand staff under the one secretary. Then flare ups are kind of inevitable. The question is, though, should one department have that much power?
Today?
The Saturday Paper's chief political correspondent Karen Barlow on the inner workings of the super Department. It's Monday, June seventeenth.
Karen.
You've been looking into the Home Affairs to and it's often called a superdepartment.
Tell me about why that is.
Well, it's super because there's a lot. There's a lot to it. It's a domestic security and social cohesion throw together. But the idea is that you can't have one without the other. Previously there was an Immigration and Multicultural Affairs department, but now this is so much more. Border Force really sort of was the starting point Operation Sovereign Borders, which was created with Scott Morrison.
You have been brought to this place here because you have sought to it illegally enter Australia by boat.
Australia had years of dealing with the post September eleven environment and this supercharged debate over borders and asylum seekers.
From July next year, the federal government wants to replace Customs with a new agency it calls the Australian Border Force. It's a model similar to the Department of Homeland Security in the United States.
What really made him as Immigration Minister was Border Force and that was something that brought in guns and uniforms to this big force that was dealing with the arrivals of asylum seekers by boat.
ABF officer would be positioned at various locations around the CBD, speaking with any individuals we cross paths with. You should be aware of the conditions of your visa. If you commit visa fraud, you should know it's only a matter of time before you get caught. And of course this has raised many questions about the legality of that and also how much right the ABF does have on those streets.
Of course, and then in twenty seventeen we had this push to pull together it all into this super Home Affairs Department.
In what he calls the biggest national security shakeup in forty years, Malcolm Turnbull has announced a new super Portfolio of Home Affairs, headed up by Peter Dunton.
This is Malcolm Turnbull's time as Prime Minister.
We can't take and if it ain't broke, don't fix it approach to security arrangements. We're taking the best elements of our intelligence and national security community and making them better.
This is something that was pushed by this charismatic, hawkish and very sort of precise bureaucrat called Mike Pazzulo, and we had the first Home Affairs Minister as Peter Dutton, and we all known now as the Opposition leader. But this is something that really sort of got pulled together by these two hard edged individuals into Home Affairs. So we've got ASIO, we've got the Australian Federal Police, we've got Border Force, the old Customs and now with the
Operations sovereign Borders pulled together with Immigration. A lot of different things all threaded together to create this super department. And this is something that was really interesting because for the first time since nineteen forty five. We don't have a standalone immigration department for this nation of migrants. So it's a really fascinating pool together and it's been troubled.
And so then Labour's elected to government. What was the situation like at Home Affairs?
What did they find?
What Labor found when it came to office was a hard edged portfolio that was riddled with problems. So there was visa scams. There were enormous amounts of litigation against the minister, which is fairly normal but increasing. There was offshore detention, and there was this eternal problem of indefinite detentionion and it's seen as a department that is not
something that people want to work for. There was also an issue of the wilderness of the department and they immediately did something about that and they sent the Australian Federal Police back to the Attorney General's Department and then later on established the Emergency Management Agency to deal with disasters. So they sort of cut something back, added something else on and there is still this eternal question about what to do with this, and that's something that has not
been answered yet. And so Mike Pezzullo, the Hawkish well connected, very determined bureaucrat in charge of Home Affairs. He ruled Home Affairs with an iron fist. There's a story that Abil Risby, a former Immigration Deputy secretary, tells about him. He said that when soon after taking over the portfolio, he said to staff, we're not care bears anymore. Now, Puzzullo denies he said that, but Risby says he knows people in the room. So anyway, that story still circulates.
Getting back to Puzzullo, he was there and they brought on Clara O'Neil as the Home Affairs Minister, and Andrew Giles, often seen as a lieutenant of Anthony Albanizi, he was brought in as Immigration Minister, and Immigration is still not a cabinet portfolio. He is the junior minister to Clara o'neion, So they are the senior figures in this troubled department. And it took a while for some of the controversies to emerge under Labor, but they were there, bubbling under the surface.
But of course he's no longer secretary.
What happened, no, well, it's quite a controversy. Look, there were a few things that happened while Mike Bazillo was secretary.
Do you accept that you made dreadful errors of judgment that brought your public service career to an end?
Yes, I made mistakes and I need to own those mistakes and I need to learn from them.
And there was one that finally took the cake, and that was the fact that some leaked inappropriate text messages, the whole stream of them were leaked to the media showing inappropriate relations with a liberal powerbroker and former state director of the Liberal Party, Scott Briggs.
Mike Bazillo has been asked to stand aside while this investigation takes place. This is one of the most powerful positions in the public service.
He was talking about suggesting political promotions, which is not seemly for a nonpartisan bureaucrat.
It's something that I regret. I made a mistake. I'm moving on. I want to focus on making a positive contribution to our national security, but in a very different way.
Now, Karen, it feels like Karli, a month goes by without some kind of flare up politically that involves home affairs, and again it's under a huge amount of scrutiny in this current immigration debate.
Can you tell me what's been going on there.
Yeah, we're talking about the overturning of visa cancelations made by the tribunal under directions from the minister. These are a tribunal cases that can be to do with awful cases such as sex offenders. There are other criminal matters. These are what I'm told by Abil risby the former Immigration Deputy Sectory. Often line will cases that we don't know the full details too, but they get blown up in the media. So there's huge pressure on the department.
I mean, I'd say there's always pressure on the Home Affairs Department and Immigration in particular, which also places pressure on Stephanie Foster, who is the replacement for Mike Pizzulo. She came up as an Associate Secretary in charge of Immigration. She also came from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and she has a defense background. She's very capable.
She's had quite a large and interesting rise to be in charge of the Home Affairs Department, but there are pressures that she say had to do with resourcing that she hasn't been able to overcome. After the break new leader new vision House Home Affairs fearing under its new Boss, Karen, we've been talking about the Home Affairs Department and what's going on there.
After Mike Pizzulo was ousted. What's his replacement. Stephanie Foster had to say about how the department's faring.
I now call officers from the Department of Home Affairs, including Australian Border Force in relation to cross portfolio, corporate and general matters.
Miss Foster welcome.
Would you like to make it.
Stephanie Foster has made the large admission that her department has broke protocol by not informing the Minister of concerning cases.
In relation to the Direction ninety nine issue. That Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles has essentially thrown the Department under the bus in question time today and said it's your fault that he wasn't advised of a number of these cases being overturned by the AAT.
Is that right?
It's correct that he wasn't informed, Senator.
So here we have the Minister blaming the department for not informing him of of concerning cases.
We did not adequately resource that function and it was not being done in a timely way, and we had not advised Minister Giles of that particular case, that.
Particular case, or there are a number of cases that he was asked about today and that are.
In the media, a number of cases, Senator.
But this is an issue for resourcing for Stephanie Foster, and she's trying to get to the bottom of it.
When did this become apparent.
I became aware of its Senator, just in the last couple of days.
As a result of the media coverage about these cases.
Protect a correct Senator.
Now, I've spoken to insiders who say that it's quite odd that this has taken place and that there should be enough resourcing in this area because we're talking about a particular area within immigration, which is to do with
visa compliance, which is always an area of controversy. It's also to do with the legal area, which is also always where resourced, so I'm told, but resourcing something has not happened in an appropriate way for the Minister to be fully across what has happened in his portfolio, particularly to do with these concerning cases. The other interesting thing about Stephanie Foster, she also popped up in estimates not
so long ago. She was seen as breaking protocol. I guess for a nonpartisan bureaucrat she was seen winking during an appearance in Estimates and that cause controversy at the time. She is a very interesting character. She's also been widely reported as driving around Canberra in a red Porsche.
Talk to me a little bit more about the relationship between the Senior Minister Clara O'Neil and her secretary, Stephanie Foster.
It is an interesting one. You'd hear from Clara O'Neil and Andrew Garles say that they have a very warm and constructive relationship with Stephanie Foster. There is a bit of a pubblick interest in the relationship because we have had earlier this year the reporting that Stephanie Foster was seen leaving the Ministerial wing of Parliament House in tears. This wasn't denied by clar O'Neil at the time, but again she stressed that there is a warm and constructive
relationship they do, she says, work well together. But we have this admission here about resourcing that just keeps going on. We keep hearing this issue about home affairs. It's so large. The Labor Government has put more money into it, but it's still not enough to deal with the large and many pronged areas that Home Affairs has to deal with.
So we've got a cumbersome, somewhat dysfunctional mega department that's responsible for some pretty life altering decisions there.
We ask how it's.
Impacting the people who actually have to interact with Home Affairs.
Well, look, it is every day still grind away on the many areas that it has responsibility for. In the immigration area, there is a visa backlog that is slowly being whittled away. There are I'm told about eighteen thousand litigation cases against the minister. That's a huge case load for the legal area of Home Affairs. We recently had a bit of a slice into an area of Home Affairs and audit that the Audit Office did into migration agents and the regulation of them by Home Affairs, and
that put that back in the spotlight. It pretty much found there was no regulation of migration agents by Home Affairs. This is a troubled area with dodgy operators and some quite vulnerable people like transitional workers are most at risk here and that was an area of concern and Home Affairs says it's going to be responding to all of
those recommendations. But this is not just about immigration. This is about law enforcement, this is about but domestic spye with Asio, this is about citizenship, and it's about borders, and it's about so much more. And there's big questions about the future of Home affairs. I think there are always questions about whether it should be broken up a little bit more. But I think it will always be an area of controversy, mainly because it is just so
politically charged. It is something that is always a hot topic for the major parties and even some of the minor parties like the Greens. It's something that we'll be talking about for many years to come.
Thanks so much for your time, Karen.
Thank you.
Also in the news today, Bruce Lamman is scheduled to appear for a committal hearing in a Toowomba Magistrate's court
today facing two counts of rape. Lahman has not been required to enter a plea in the case, but it is expected he will plead not guilty if the magistrate rules that a trial will proceed, and Indian authorities are likely to prosecute one of India's most famous living authors, Aaron Dardi Roy, with anti terrorism and sedition charges because she allegedly commented back in twenty ten that the disputed
territory of Kashmir should be independent from India. The charges have been given the go ahead by a member of Indian Prime Minister Narendromodi's ruling party, which has expanded terrorism laws to silence critics. I'm Scott Mitchell. This is seven a m. Thanks for listening. Ashlan McGee will be back with you tomorrow one