It may be that in his post-Public Service life Mr Mike Pezzullo has been watching lots of classic films.
When asked about the recent stripping of his Order of Australia, the former Home Affairs supremo said that the matter wasn’t “worth a hill of beans in this crazy world.” They’re precisely the sentiments Humphrey Bogart expresses to Ingrid Bergman in the 1942 romantic drama film “Casablanca”. Pezzullo has Bogart’s words word perfect.
Mind you, issuing from the lips of either gentleman, the sentiment is a trifle ambiguous as hills of coffee and vanilla beans, depending on their bigness, could be worth fortunes in our days of cost of living “crises”. Hills of mung or baked beans perhaps not so much unless they were of Everest proportions.
But if Mr Pezzullo thought his Order of Australia was, to grasp another metaphor, small beer, why did he accept it in the first place? Many don’t.
Yet whatever the bean-counting, in a manner of speaking, Mr Pezzullo is sort of right.
The Order of Australia is a rickety edifice based on the social hierarchies of British Imperial honours but with different titles.
Admission to the Order is based on criteria of spectacular opacity which nevertheless put awardees in their social places – judges and politicians at the top, nurses and carers of the aged and infirm on the bottom.
Apart from the social categorisation, entry to the Order’s society is relatively easy and for some professions – like professors who dominate its upper echelons – the process appears to be semi-automated. Still tens of thousands from many trades have been chosen and the nature of the criteria ensures a fair allotment to personages whose virtues are not always widely appreciated.
Nevertheless once in, 99.9999% stay put. It’s almost as hard to get out of the Order as it used to be to get out of the Australian cricket team.
Some have resigned their places on matters of principle. Dr H C Coombs did so apparently in objection to the admission of Knights and Dames in 1976. Patrick White may have handed in his badge for like reasons although it’s a little obscure in his case – rather like some of his Nobel prize winning novels.
Others have self-ejected because of what might be called “personal difficulties” – the legal eagle Dyson Heydon and businessman Richard Pratt, for example. They seem to have seen the writing on the wall.
A few have had their medallions torn from them – Alan Bond, Rodney Adler and Steve Vizard, among others.
Now Mr Pezzullo has joined the ranks of former members of the Order of Australia, a tiny and mixed contingent if ever there was one except for those who have died. Apparently awardees can’t take their gongs with them although that might not be much to regret as they would be unlikely to count for much in whatever ultimate destination persons are sent.
Pezzullo had the misfortune to be dismissed from the Public Service for reasons that were, at best, only partially explained by the Public Service Commissioner and other authorities.
Now he has had his AO removed in an exercise of Vice Regal power for which there has been no explanation what so ever. It’s often the way with Vice Regals. Hence the saying “We are not amused.”
Paddy Gourley is a superannuated Commonwealth public servant.