March 26, 2024
LAURA JAYES: Welcome back you are watching AM Agenda. Let's go straight to Canberra now. The shadow Cybersecurity and Home Affairs Minister James Paterson joins us. James great to see you. We know the government wants to pass legislation when it comes to migrants and those caught up in the High Court. I understand you've just come from a briefing. What's your understanding of what's required here?
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning Laura. It feels like Groundhog Day again. Yet again we've been called to an early morning briefing by the government who are in a panicked, rushed, patch up job to fix problems in the immigration law and they are again worried about a High Court decision and the implications for that for Australia. This legislation, which we've just been given about an hour ago, is really for the government to justify and explain. What I'm gravely concerned about is that they expect, having given it to us on a Tuesday morning for us in the Parliament to pass it within 36 hours without so much as a Senate inquiry, let alone releasing this legislation publicly for comment from stakeholders and experts and others. If this was the first time and only time has happened, maybe that would be reasonable. But this is now the fourth time this has happened, and some of those previous iterations of legislation are right now facing challenge in the courts over their constitutionality. So, we are concerned about, again, this rushed process and shabby process from the government that doesn't seem to know what it's doing when it comes to border protection and national security.
JAYES: Okay. But from your briefing on this and your read of it, what is required and is it going to work and what is it trying to fix?
PATERSON: Well, Laura, this legislation purports to deal with the AF17 case, which is a case of an Iranian man who has refused to cooperate with authorities to be returned to Iran after being not found to be owed protection here in Australia and he has a case upcoming in the High Court in the coming weeks. And the implications of his case being successful would be that potentially hundreds more people currently in immigration detention would be released into the community on the basis that their detention is indefinite because they refuse to cooperate with Australia efforts to deport them. Now, that would be a very significant and grave decision if the High Court made it, it would have very significant flow on consequences for Australia, and this legislation aims to deal with it. But as to the individual provisions, it's really for the government to front up and explain that. And we have to ask the question, where is the Minister for Home Affairs? Where is the Minister for Immigration? Why have they not stood up publicly and made this announcement and shared with the Australian people what they are asking the Parliament to do in as little as 36 hours without so much as a Senate inquiry?
JAYES: Okay, so that said, you haven't had a Senate inquiry, you've not been given a lot. But when it comes to it, is this something you would support in the house, do you think.
PATERSON: It's really hard to say Laura, the house will be expected to vote on this within a matter of hours. The Senate perhaps tomorrow. We've got our processes that we need to go through, and we need to seek advice about the potential unintended consequences of this legislation. Because the worrying thing is that every decision that Labor has made since they came to office have actually given people an incentive to get back on boats and to restart that shocking people smuggling trade. And we are now starting to see the human cost of that and the national security cost of that. There have been 12 or 13 boats since the last election. They've been at least two that have made it to the Australian mainland and dropped people off and left without being detected. And we had horrific reports last week of a boat containing Rohingya refugees that capsized at sea, with dozens of people potentially drowning. And we don't know any more details about that, there are limited reports. But it is very worrying that the shocking human tragedy and toll of this people smuggling trade appears to have been revived on this government's watch, and it's not a surprise given the policy decisions they're making.
JAYES: All right. I want to ask you about two other things that have come across my desk. This is a radical Islamic cleric has said abhorrent things about Israel. He's teaching Sharia law to kids as young as five, as reported by The Australian newspaper. And he seems to be doing this preaching without consequence. Is it hate speech?
PATERSON: Laura, there's been some very troubling reports in The Australian over a matter of months about two particular extremist hate preachers in south western Sydney who have engaged in serious vilification, if not incitement, against the Jewish community with some of that shocking rhetoric, which I won't repeat on your program. Now, in my view, they should have been charged with incitement to violence. We should test in the courts whether or not their conduct meets that threshold. But neither the New South Wales government nor the federal government has sought to do so. So these people have got off so far, scot-free with their conduct. And we learned in new reports today by Alexi Demetriadi that these people are teaching children on the weekend, Quran and other teachings. I mean, that is really alarming. These are, abhorrent people with abhorrent views, and they appear to be inflicting that on future generations and young children. No wonder we have a crisis of anti-Semitism in this country. But what on earth is the Albanese government doing about it? They haven't sought to charge anyone. They haven't sought to change the law to make it easier to charge someone. They have barely done anything at all when it comes to this crisis, and it is getting out of control.
JAYES: Okay. And just news out of the UK and indeed out of New Zealand. Both these countries have been the victims of a cyber attack from China.
PATERSON: It's a very good move that the UK government and the New Zealand government have publicly attributed to the Chinese government attacks on their parliamentary institutions and, in the case of the United Kingdom, their electoral commission as well. And they are pursuing justice for that in the UK case, they're looking at sanctions for the people responsible. Now I've just seen as I came into the studio, Laura, that the Foreign Minister has issued a statement of rhetorical support for that. But the question that Penny Wong needs to answer today is, will she use the powers under the Magnitsky legislation that the parliament gave her, to also join our allies in sanctioning these individuals so there is real costs and real consequences for their behaviour? It is shockingly malign behaviour to attack members of Parliament and to attack electoral systems in democracies. That is not the act of a friend. And yet it appears that Chinese state sponsored hackers have been doing that in the case of the UK and New Zealand. It wouldn't shock me at all to learn that they had done the same here in Australia, although that has not been publicly announced today.
JAYES: Okay, James, thanks so much for that. Appreciate it.
PATERSON: Thanks, Laura.
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