Off The Radar

AROUND a thousand private texts of one of Australia’s most powerful national security mandarins are leaked to The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes. The encrypted WhatsApp and Signal messages are “legally obtained,” says Nine Entertainment. The unserious-sounding stepdad of the formerly Fairfax runs and screens detailed exposés on the texts – sent and received by Mike Pezzullo, Secretary of the Home Affairs Department – on Sunday. By sheer coincidence, the Prime Minister had announced a designedly broad-based review of the National Intelligence Community on Friday. On Monday, Mr Pezzullo – who isn’t accused of doing anything unlawful – stands down pending an inquiry into the licitness of his sub rosa chats with so-called Liberal powerbroker Scott Briggs. ASIO’s official historian, Professor John Blaxland, calls the timing of this affair vis-a-vis the NIC audit an “opportunity.” As it happens, the Labor government is known to want Home Affairs to farewell its secretary and ASIO. Returning the latter to the Attorney-General’s oversight is easier with a formidable empire builder like Mr Pezzullo out of the way. The ‘leaked’ text accomplishes in the West what the ‘plane crash’ does everywhere else.

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16 Responses to Off The Radar

  1. NFA says:

    5-eyes is great for deniability!

  2. Entropy says:

    The lesson is also you don’t put stuff like that in texts.
    But yes, Pezzullo is one of the more effective public servants who has been a thorn in the side of the left. He was one of the architects of sovereign borders for example. And always got the best of Sarah Sea Patrol at Senate hearings.
    I did not realise he was that much in the lib camp. Ah, well. Albo gets to replace a liberal hack with an ALP hack. There are a lot more of the latter in the APS.

  3. Buccaneer says:

    No media outlet seems to have bothered to ask, what exactly has Pezzello done wrong? Aside from working closely with the alp opponents, and providing straight forward views on the situation at hand. Apparently, public servants are supposed to play ducks and drakes, but only it’s the coalition.

    Waiting for all the comms to be leaked from the Andrews regime during lockdown, I’m betting the public would be actually interested in that.

  4. Petros says:

    Some of these guys just aren’t cautious enough. Text messages can and will be used against you, even when you have done nothing illegal. Wisen up.

  5. Tel says:

    Love the way they have their own official history fixer … make sure everything gets noted down proper n at.

    Tru-duce needs to get one of those.

    The bad thing about the Liars Party is that they are always up to something … but on the brighter side, the good thing is they aren’t too clever about hiding their tracks so at least you know what they are up to. Besides that, if you work in the cloak and dagger industry, and you find yourself stabbed in the back … that’s pretty much what you signed up for, isn’t it?!?

    I feel bad about the way the Aus govt played their leaky-leak games against Peter Schiff, resulting in outrageous lies going to press and defaming both Schiff and the bank he was part owner of. Schiff complained a lot, but he paid all his taxes, followed the law and got shafted just because various government people didn’t like him.

    I don’t feel quite as bad about a guy who get a well paid high level job spying on Australians and then discovers his own privacy is out the window … could be the Buddhists were onto something with that karma concept.

  6. Buccaneer says:

    I get the schadenfreude, I just don’t get why this is a bigger story than Katy Gallagher getting caught out lying about the Higgins affair?

  7. Petros says:

    Wouldn’t the Canberra Mafia be aware of his political leanings prior to appointment?

  8. twostix says:

    The APS is the most dogmatic Labour stronghold in Australia, every level is dominated by out and proud Labor /Greens operators. This is a story because one guy managed to hang in there as a non-ALP / left-wing operator and is outed by his partisan colleagues because that’s how unusual he is.

  9. NFA says:

    Ideological Purity is always required for ‘The Long March’.

  10. C.L. says:

    The key words here are “legally obtained.”

    That isn’t the same thing as legally distributed. They were unlawfully distributed.

    All of a sudden – despite the narrative of ‘cyber security’ and ‘foreign interference’ being a 24/7 thing – nobody in the media is interested in how the overseer of ASIO got his encrypted comms stolen.

    Oh no. The story is a bad Liberal has to go.

    I am assuming that Briggs himself wasn’t the leaker.

    But how do we know China or Wussia weren’t involved?

  11. Cassie of Sydney says:

    “I just don’t get why this is a bigger story than Katy Gallagher getting caught out lying about the Higgins affair?”

    Well, you can blame Amanda Stoker for that. She rode to the rescue of Gallagher.

  12. twostix says:

    Re foreign inference, Remember foreign state owned Al Jazeera staking out One Nation in 2019, literally interfering in “Our Democracy”? Nobody cared then either as they ran that story between Russian Trump Spy stories.

  13. Tel says:

    The key words here are “legally obtained.”

    That isn’t the same thing as legally distributed. They were unlawfully distributed.

    I’ve heard that defence before … Assange is doing some long and hard time after using very much the same arguement … and he hasn’t even been convucted of anything.

    But we know that the real distinction has nothing to do with legal or illegal … it’s only about who your friends are, and right now Assange has none. Maybe that’s the point he was trying to prove? The official leaky-leaker who wasn’t authorize to talk to the media, but strangely always does talk exactly like he was told not to … that guy is fine. The genuine whistle-blower who was also told not to talk, but decided to get up the nose of the wrong people … that guy is screwed.

  14. Morsie says:

    So much for encrypted emails

  15. Entropy says:

    Can’t Pezzullo claim truth as a defence? Delivering frank and fearless advice?

  16. NFA says:

    From https://andrewquin.com.au/a-plan/f/labor-is-setting-up-chinese-invasion

    The other traitor to Australia, is Clare O’Neil. Minister for Home Affairs and Cybersecurity, and the responsible Minister for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), who appear to have no clue at all what the hell is going on just north of Australia.

    Clare O’Neil is a former WEF Young Global Leader. Her photo on the WEF’s Website has mysteriously disappeared recently.

    Perhaps Labor was concerned that having a WEF Globalist Totalitarian Fascist with responsibility for ASIO and Cyber security may have given the Party’s traitorous game away, to even the most clueless of Australians, that they are now the target of Hybrid warfare.

    Not to worry, here is Clare O’Neil’s earlier bio from the National Press Club of Australia, an organisation not noted for factual errors on its website, and who can no doubt expect a call from ASIO in the near future.

    Clare O’Neil was elected as the Member for Hotham in 2013. She is now the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Technology and the Future of Work. Before entering Parliament, Clare worked at McKinsey where she helped Australian companies across most major sectors of the economy solve some of their most difficult problems. Clare has Arts and Law degrees with Honours from Monash University, and a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar. Clare is a former Mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. “

    The enemy is inside the Australian castle, right now dropping ladders down to the evil. Positioned just outside the walls, ready to strike.

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