Sarah Ferguson presents Australia's premier daily current affairs program, delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism and interviews that hold the powerful to account. Plus political analysis from Laura Tingle.
SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER: Do you accept that you made dreadful errors of judgement that brought your public service career to an end?I let people down, people that I cared about in terms of who I worked with and I regret to not be able to continue to work with them and I certainly accept the finding that no matter how rough and tumble, how much rough and tumble there is in a place like Canberra, that the gaining of influence and the personal advantage to be gained by way of certain channels of...
SARAH FERGUSON: She also said you failed to maintain confidentiality of sensitive government information. What sensitive government information was that? What I sought to rebut was that they were of such a grievous kind that they warranted a dismissal, that is something obviously that you don't want your career to end on that note.
SARAH FERGUSON: You did suggest in the rough and tumble of politics which suggests it is a little bit more widespread. Was your crime to get caught writing it down? MIKE PEZZULLO: I have no idea, but in my case, I've reflected on the circumstances of my departure. 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.
MIKE PEZZULLO: I wouldn't use the term ‘political’ in the sense that I think you're getting at, Sarah. It was more about people with an aptitude or an orientation towards particular outcomes whether they're in the Labor Party or Liberal Party that were of interest to me, and I should have kept those thoughts to myself.
Most people can't imagine what a war with China would look like. You have imagined it. What vulnerabilities would we be exposed to in Australia? We've got agency. We can get that number down, in fact. So I just want to make that point from the outset and you get that number down by way of good effective diplomacy in the first instance coupled with showing resolve and perhaps we can talk about measures by which we might show resolve.
Another area of vulnerability would be cognitive warfare, it is a very defence or strategist technical term, but cognitive warfare is basically warfare over attitude, warfare over will and warfare over perceptions, particularly using technology enabled AI-driven deep fakes, disinformation, propaganda and the like, essentially for two purposes: One is to undermine the war effort cognitively, in other words to demoralise the population, and get the population into a circumstance where they are...
SARAH FERGUSON: Let me ask you this: So Australia is building its missile and, as we know, submarine capacity as quickly as it can, but how exposed would we be were there to be a conflict that occurred before or around 2030? I think what we've seen in the last couple of years actually has complicated the Chinese calculus rather than simplified it.
It would have allowed us, having doubled the fleet, to have more submarines out there in particular choke points and in particular areas of operation and I've said publicly, and I will say it to your viewers that it is to be regretted that that plan from 2009 was modified and not proceeded with. The one regret I have out of all of that is leaving behind the people, my peers, senior leaders who I worked with and those young up-and-coming Australians in more junior positions of authority who one day will be the leaders who just do astonishing work that can hardly be spoken about, but I know what they do, and I very much value their work, as should your viewers.
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