Australia needs more public servants like Mike Pezzullo

He cuts a much more American than Australian figure. In the States no one would blink at the head of the FBI or NSA having an opinion on the geopolitics of the day. Or with them offering frank and fearless advice on how to balance the political decision-making with the policy agenda. We say we want more ambition in our APS, more frank and fearless advice, more brawlers, but the last week shows we don’t.

The government had him fighting for cyber reform and he was making progress, that will be harder now.

Our APS talks of American ambition but knows there is a Washington safety net they can rely on, and so defers decisions until it can’t anymore. This is evident across our national security policy space – Huawei, China policy, submarines, helping Ukraine – we go late, often unprepared and at big expense.

Enter the new government which was set on more or less the same border policies, but these do not sit well with part of the party. Pezzullo, the tall poppy of the service, is the natural target for those who want to critique that policy, without openly challenging it.

He was there when the coalition did things they didn’t like, so it must be his fault. So people leak everything they can about him. No evidence of any corruption, just enough gossip to keep him in the headlines and embarrassed. He has not been accused of anything against the rules of his role, but if you throw enough mud some will stick.

The Lilliputians have rallied for a good old Aussie tall poppy cut-down, a favourite and much loved sport in Canberra.

Ignore that he was an ALP staffer originally and has been a vociferous implementer of Australia’s first Labor cyber minister. To get profound cybersecurity change done, it will need reformers and do-ers, unafraid to scrap with vested interests. Our challenges need people like Pezzullo.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. People smugglers don’t have corporate lobbyists the way critical infrastructure companies and TikTok do. There’s a fight coming, and we want to retire the APS’s heavyweight champ. The idea is to push him out on behalf of those who personally do not like him. We will get a more timid, less effective team as a result.

It will have an impact on border protection and China policy. Usually, one waits until after the war to turn on Coriolanus. The government held out so long on standing him down because no one wants to be the minister who has a boat arrival when they fired the secretary who built the system – it’s a political disaster in the making.

So while Canberra hunts for its national security tall poppy to cut down, the net loss will be more than the gain of curbing a large ego who is hard to work with.

The government had him fighting for cyber reform and he was making progress. That will be harder now. He’s been Australia’s man who fixes government, makes it work and do things it otherwise could not. As one large enemy arms to our north, the Department of Defence will sit without a brawler to lead it out of its profound inefficiency.

We will be worse off everywhere if he is forced to retire, and much worse off in general if we don’t build more public servants like him.

Robert Potter is co-founder and co-chief executive officer of Internet 2.0.