A man is stood down, stood aside for an investigation, resigns or ends his term early, just as the entity he runs is in chaos or crisis.
And as we have seen over and over again in 2023, a woman is appointed to replace him and take on the first task of cleaning up his mess.
This week’s example comes with the very well qualified and experienced Stephanie Foster, who has been appointed Home Affairs Secretary, replacing Mike Pezzullo, who was stood aside for an investigation into misconduct in September and officially sacked this week.
Just like a number of other women appointed to high-profile positions this year, Foster is now set to endure the public scrutiny of dealing with a predecessor’s mess.
Foster has been serving as acting secretary since Pezzullo was placed on leave without pay while Australian Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs, undertook her investigation. On Monday, he was officially sacked, with Briggs finding Pezzullo had breached the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct 14 times during his communications attempting to influence political processes, sent via a series of text messages to a Liberal party insider and published in a Sydney Morning Investigation in September.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the Governor-General had accepted his recommendation to appoint Foster as Secretary. She was appointed associate secretary at Immigration last year and previously ran the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s executive government. She has been lauded as a fixer and an “agency cleaner”. Notably, she led an investigation and review into parliamentary workplace scandals and incidents, including a 2021 review into parliamentary workplace culture and practices following Brittney Higgins’ allegations that she was raped in parliament. She established the Parliament Workplace Support Service and implemented recommendations of the ‘Set the Standard’ report from the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces.
Foster starts a five-year appointment immediately. But first comes the cleanup. Not only will she be contending with the fallout of a former boss found to have used his influence and power for personal gain, but she will also be contending with the associated cultural mess, rebuilding relationships and taking on the added bonus of a major political football by way of the High Court decision on immigration detention.
Foster is the first woman to be named Secretary of Home Affairs, but she is also only the second person, with Pezzullo taking the helm when a reshaping of departments in December 2017 saw him appointed to the mega department.
And she joins good and other well-qualified company when it comes to appointments made in the wake of public scandals or scrutiny of a male predecessor and his team.
There is Michele Bullock, who started as the first female Director of the RBA in September, with her predecessor Philip Lowe, facing public and political backlash following a series of rate rises in line with the cost of living crisis.
There is Vanessa Hudson appointed to lead Qantas, the first woman in the position, replacing Alan Joyce as he moved his retirement months forward just as the airline was facing significant public criticism. Joyce was, therefore, unavailable to front the senate grilling regarding flight cancellations – that job was left for Hudson.
As Senator Bridget McKenzie said shortly after Hudson was appointed, she hoped she had a “big mop” to take care of the “mess”.
“Incredible, the number of times very good women are asked to come in and clean up a very large mess left by, shall we say, a guy,” McKenzie said.
There was also Kristin Stubbins, appointed acting CEO of PwC, the first female Australian CEO of the firm. Despite having nothing to do with the male-led and dominated tax team that included her CEO predecessors, it was Stubbins who had to front up to apologise to the community. She also had to apologise to the Australian Government, to clients and to the (then) 10,000 or so employees of PwC. What a first week in the role. Stubbins is now leaving the firm in January, following a three decade career. She will depart as PwC’s most senior auditor.
At Optus, it was a different situation. Kelly Bayer Rosmarin announced her resignation following the telco’s handling of the massive October network failure, as well as a major security breach. But we couldn’t help but notice that she announced her resignation after fronting up to the Senate hearing to answer questions about what went wrong. Also, rather than dig in and try and save her position, she actually resigned “in the best interest of Optus.”
Like Hudson and Stubbins and Bullock and so many others, Stephanie Foster too will require a big mop, and she too appears to have the experience to get in and start cleaning things up. Makes you wonder why it took so long for women to get appointed to these roles in the first place, and why still only 22 per cent of CEOs across Australia are female.