He attended public schools at Liverpool and Homebush, and was employed as a survey draftsmen with the New South Wales Soil Conservation Service upon his graduation in 1951.
[2] In 1971, the member for the local state seat of Liverpool, Jack Mannix, retired, and Paciullo was preselected as the replacement Labor candidate.
In 1986, when Wran resigned and Barrie Unsworth succeeded him in the Premiership, Paciullo became Police and Emergency Services Minister.
Shortly afterwards Paciullo resigned from parliament; the by-election held to replace him was acrimonious, as the former member for Penrith, Peter Anderson, was chosen as candidate after a protracted preselection dispute between the Left's Paul Lynch and the Right's Mark Latham.
[2] Paciullo died at Liverpool Hospital in Sydney on 9 October 2012, aged 78,[5] of complications related to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.