Documents obtained by ABC show departmental secretary asked for his thanks to be passed on to AFP team involved

The head of the Department of Home Affairs, Mike Pezzullo, congratulated the Australian federal police for conducting raids on journalists, new documents reveal.

Correspondence obtained under freedom of information laws by the South Australian senator Rex Patrick reveal that the AFP’s deputy commissioner emailed staff on the evening of the raid on News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst to pass on Pezzullo’s praise.

“Good work by all involved,” the email sent on 4 June 2019 said.

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“I also received a call this evening from the Sec DHA [Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs, Mr Pezzullo] who is fully supportive of the actions of the AFP and ask [sic] me to pass on my [sic] thanks to the team involved.

“Well done — tomorrow is another day.”

The email is signed off with a smiling face emoji.

Patrick told the ABC that the released documents confirmed “a lack of judgment at the highest levels of home affairs where national strategy and security policy is set.”

“After the raid on Ms Smethurst, alarm bells immediately started ringing for the media, the public and indeed across government.

“Yet the secretary of home affairs appears to have been blind to public concerns, expressing satisfaction with the raids.”

Patrick has been engaged in a long-running stoush with Pezzullo, after the powerful home affairs chief called the senator in relation to critical comments he made about the department’s handling of the raids.

Patrick accused Pezzullo of trying to intimidate him, and the exchange led to Pezzullo being rebuked by the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton.

Pezzullo told the ABC that his support of the agency, which sits within his department, did not reflect his view on media freedom.

“DC Gaughan is a colleague. In the discussion in question, I expressed my compliments to him and his officers on their professionalism and their diligent focus on independently enforcing the laws of the land, as the parliament has passed them,” Pezzullo said.

“To conflate the expression of professional compliments to colleagues with a supposed attitude to press freedom is not an accurate comparison.

“As per my evidence to the PJCIS [Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security], I was surprised that Ms Smethurst was under investigation and had put the matter out of my mind until DC Gaughan advised me the AFP was in the process of executing the warrant.”