Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an investigation into benched Home Affairs Department secretary Michael Pezzullo and a trove of text messages he exchanged with a Liberal Party powerbroker was an “urgent matter”.

Mr Pezzullo agreed to stand aside as department secretary on Monday after The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age obtained the cache of hundreds of messages between Mr Pezzullo and Scott Briggs, a confidant of former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.