Roundtable with Michael Pezzullo AO

The Perth USAsia Centre hosted Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzullo AO, for a roundtable discussion on Friday 30 September 2022.

Mr Pezzullo was joined by an audience of senior representatives of state and federal government, business and academia. Conversation outlined some of the considerations for shoring up Australia’s security, in the context of unprecedented strategic uncertainty and focused on four key pillars:

immigration as a central element of economic growth
the need for national resilience (to pandemics, climate change, natural disasters)
the global trend of declining trust in governments, and a proliferation of both misinformation and disinformation on a scale never seen before
and the critical need for robust cyber security settings.

Internal security was now inextricable from international events. A cyber attack in one country on critical infrastructure like ports would impact global shipping and supply chains in ways that could never have occurred in the past. 

In an environment of such uncertainty, collaboration between the private sector and government, and between the states and territories and federal government assumed greater importance than it ever had before.