Border Force could soon be looking for a new commissioner if incumbent and former ACT top cop Roman Quaedvlieg wins his bid to be commander of Australia's largest police force.
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Mr Quaedvlieg, who led ACT Policing between 2010 and 2013 was interviewed on Friday, along with five other hopefuls for the job as NSW Police Commissioner
His success in landing the role would leave his current boss, Immigration Department Michael Pezzullo with a tricky problem , finding a safe pair of hands to take over one of the most politically volatile jobs in the Australian Public Service.
Mr Quaedvlieg, who has declined to discuss his candidacy for the NSW job, has largely avoided the many pitfalls of the highly politically charged Border Force Commissioner's job since he took over in 2015.
His one brush with controversy came in August of that year when he was forced to step in and deny that ABF officers were planning to take to the streets of Melbourne, hunting for people who might be in Australia without the proper visas.
High level defections have plagued the Immigration Department since soon after the takeover by Customs with the department hit with the public service's greatest executive brain drain since the 1980s.
A quarter of its upper ranks were either shown the door or turned their backs on the department soon after the controversial merger of the two public service outfits.
Mr Quaedvlieg too faces big challenges in his pitch for the NSW top job, up against an array of insiders from the force's troubled upper ranks including Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn and assistant commissioners Michael Fuller, Frank Mennilli, Jeff Loy and Geoff McKechnie.
If the man from Canberra is successful, it would be the first time since Peter Ryan's controversial appointment in 1996 that the NSW force has looked outside its own ranks.
Mr Quaedvlieg's appointment would also most likely be met with opposition from the powerful NSW Police Association, which wants Mr Scipione's replacement to come from within the force.
But the ACT's former Chief Police Officer is reported to be up for the fight, reportedly making no secret of his ambition to be a reforming force in NSW and seeking political backing for the difficult work of sweeping away the divisions and dysfunction left behind by the damaging feud at the top of the state's police force.
Mr Quaedvlieg served for 15 years as a Queensland police officer before joining the federal force in 2005.
After leaving ACT Policing, he became deputy chief executive of what was then the Customs and Border protection service in 2013, before being appointed head of the Border Force in mid 2015.
An announcement on the successful candidate for the NSW job is expected within two weeks.
