Experts call for Home Affairs to be split after Mike Pezzullo scandal

The calls come after the Albanese government announced an independent inquiry into department secretary Michael Pezzullo over Nine newspaper reports of text messages he sent to a Liberal party powerbroker over five years, seemingly trying to influence political matters.

In 2017, the former Coalition government announced a new Home Affairs department that brought immigration, border protection and domestic security under one mega-agency - a move that, according to the reported messages, then-immigration boss Mr Pezzullo was pushing for through his government contact.

Former Department of Prime Minister secretary John Menadue said there was now an opportunity for the Albanese government to overhaul the department, labelling the Coalition's decision "a calamity" that has "badly served Australia".

Mr Menadue said the creation of the Home Affairs department was not just Mr Pezzullo's doing, though, arguing the top bureaucrat had been able to take advantage of the Coalition's preoccupation with border controls and security.

"It played into their political agenda to pull those things together and just heighten public concern about people on our borders, threats from China and elsewhere."

Mr Menadue said one of the consequences of bringing immigration and border protection under one roof was that it saw immigration "emasculated in favour of border protection".

"... And of course, that was tied together with having in the department ASIO, the intelligence agencies, the AFP. And I think it became a department that was badly out of control..." he told The Canberra Times.

He said the decision to bring these portfolios under one agency, and under Mr Pezzullo's leadership, had also caused many staff from immigration to quit the department.

"Some of the best senior people just left and they're lost to Australia and the department," he said.

Former Finance Department deputy secretary Stephen Bartos agreed that the focus in the new Home Affairs agency had shifted from letting people into the country to keeping them out.

"It's led to a situation where we've got a department that used to be about positives, Immigration - that is, the desirability for a multicultural society, immigration as part of helping build a nation ... - being subsumed within a body that sees its main mission as keeping people out, rather than encouraging them in," he said.

Mr Bartos argued that the department had also become militarised under Mr Pezzullo's leadership, pointing to the way that border force officials had gone from wearing civilian clothes to donning black uniforms and "acting as an armed force".

"You create a new body, you arm them to the teeth, you dress them in uniform, you give them a lot of powers - this is a recipe for an undemocratic exercise of authority by the public service," he said.

"... Pezzullo, it's no secret, would have loved to have been secretary of Defence. He harboured ambitions to be a military mandarin. And what happened is that he landed up with Home Affairs, so there's been created sort of a quasi military inside it".

Experts also warned that consolidating security and intelligence agencies into one mega department enabled abuses of power, and called on the government to reverse the decision.

Clive Williams, a former director of security intelligence within Defence, said he was never a fan of the Coalition's move, saying it "compromised the checks and balances important for effective oversight".

"Separation meant independent scrutiny, parenting potential abuses of power," he said.

"Additionally, having separated agencies meant we developed more varied expertise and perspectives, enriching national security strategies."

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Mr Bartos said that concentrating power into one department, and the hands of fewer unelected officials, had not only enabled, but attracted the kinds of individuals who want to abuse it.

"Clearly a department that is too large and powerful will encourage or enable overreach by someone like Mike Pezzullo, and that's exactly what happened," Mr Bartos said.

"... One of the problems is that some departments are fairly strictly hierarchical, with someone at the top who wants them to run effectively as mini little feudal systems with a king in charge. And if you've got someone at the top of a department with too much power, that leads to unaccountable exercise of that power.

"It allows somebody with those inclinations to do that. But also, it's not really a coincidence because it is the kind of department that would attract someone who wants to do that."