August 6, 2024
LUKE GRANT: The Shadow minister is on the line. Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security, Senator James Paterson, hope you are well.
JAMES PATERSON: Good to be with you Luke.
GRANT: Can I start by asking you about UNRWA and the report today that they have fired nine staff members. This is the agency of Palestinian refugees after an internal investigation found they, quote, unquote, may have been involved in a Hamas led October 7 attack against Israel. James, I had actually a listener from Israel ring me to talk to me about UNRWA early last year, an Australian now living in Israel and working as a Solicitor and I know this is an issue you've raised before and the prospect that Australian taxpayer funds were actually funding an organisation, that it would appear now were involved in the October 7th attack or at least some of their people were. I mean, this is outrageous, isn't it?
PATERSON: It is an absolute scandal Luke, and every Australian should be deeply concerned about this, because for years, Israel has warned the world that UNRWA had been co-opted and infiltrated and taken over by terrorists, that funds to UNRWA had been siphoned off by Hamas. And we now know that even in UNRWA's own estimation, they were employing nine terrorists who, on the 7th of October, participated in the worst atrocity against the Jewish people since the end of the Holocaust, where 1200 people were murdered and hundreds kidnapped and UNRWA employees participated in that. We warned this government about that, we asked them to stop their funding to UNWRA. They briefly paused it, but before the United Nations had finished their investigations, Penny Wong, in her wisdom as Foreign Minister, resumed funding for UNRWA. And now we know there's a very real risk that Australian government funds have gone to employ terrorists who killed innocent Jews.
GRANT: Well, this is just this is just completely and utterly unacceptable. And I don't know what happens next, James. I mean, you're the Shadow minister, and we've got an Opposition leader who's very strong like you on this funding has to stop yesterday, and we wrote an apology. People that go to work raising money don't go to work to raise money to help fund, at least in part, an organisation which may or may not likely did have people in it that were involved in October 7.
PATERSON: You're exactly right, Luke. It's a particular insult in a cost of living crisis when Australians are struggling to make ends meet themselves, they're struggling with their mortgage or their rent with their electricity and their grocery bills, with the petrol prices. And at this time, the Albanese government is taking more than ever before from their pockets in income taxes and sending part of it to an organisation that employed terrorists who participated in the worst atrocity against Jews since the end of the Holocaust. I mean, it is repugnant, it is offensive, it is a scandal. And we have been warning the government about this for some time. We said we could have no confidence that Australian taxpayer money wasn't finding their way into the pockets of terrorists. And now we know that it's very likely that it did and, I think the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister have real questions to answer after being warned they resumed this funding. They've got no excuse and they've got nowhere to hide.
GRANT: I Agree with you entirely. So now we move on to the next thing Tony Burke is the new Minister. There was an announcement yesterday, and I think the Prime Minister is keen to get ASIO closer to Attorney-General than Home Affairs. Firstly, is that a good thing? And why wasn't the Home Affairs Minister standing next to the boss of ASIO and the Prime Minister yesterday when this threat level was raised?
PATERSON: That's the key question, Luke. I think it's very clear for all Australians now to see that Tony Burke is Minister for Home Affairs in name only, because the Minister for Home Affairs is supposed to be responsible for counter-terrorism. And there is no more important announcement you could make on counter-terrorism than increasing the threat level. And yet, Tony Burke was missing in action when the Prime Minister made this announcement yesterday. Instead, the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, accompanied him and the director general of ASIO, Mike Burgess, to make this announcement. We've been warning ever since the Prime Minister started the process of undermining the Home Affairs portfolio, which he did after the election, and which he continued in this reshuffle by moving ASIO into the Attorney-General's portfolio, that this would be dangerous for our national security. Because we have a Home Affairs minister who's supposed to be responsible for keeping Australians safe. But now has no operational agencies to deliver on those outcomes at all. And how on earth is that making us safer?
GRANT: Now, that is such a good point, and I'll just ask you to repeat that so we better understand what you're saying. So we've got the Home Affairs Minister. We remember famously previous government, Home Affairs Minister, it started early with the stopping of the boats and as the time in office went on, the portfolios came together. And, you know, we looked to home affairs to be the key portfolio in the safety of Australian people. And that was something created under the Coalition's watch. So that's now been removed to the point where the Home Affairs Minister has no ability operationally to keep us safe. Or is that going a bit too far?
PATERSON: No, I think it's very accurate Luke. It was six years ago under Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister, that the Home Affairs portfolio was created. It was based on advice from our agencies and the international experience from our closest Five Eyes partners in the United Kingdom and the United States, that it makes sense to bring all together under one roof, under one minister, all of our key national security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies domestically. And so the Federal police, ASIO, which is our domestic intelligence organisation, AUSTRAC, which is our financial crimes regulator, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, which is our federal organisation that looks at organised crime, were all brought together under the Minister for Home Affairs. And under this model, we successfully stopped the boats and kept the boats stopped. We disrupted foreign interference and espionage plots. We stopped terrorism attacks on Australia. And yet this government has now dismantled that. And we have a Home Affairs minister who's utterly powerless, who has no levers at all to deliver on his important responsibilities to protect Australians and I fear it is putting us all in danger.
GRANT: And you know what? The other side of this and frankly, Senator Paterson, I really, I hate saying this, but this is largely about politics. And I have to accept, given how, lettuce leaf weak the government is in this space, that they are playing a game of, electorates, I don't want to say politics, they are shoring up support in key electorates. I heard that first and thought, geez, no way. You've got to put, what's right for the country first. I am no longer convinced that they do that. I think it is a game of politics. It brings me no joy saying that.
PATERSON: Me either, Luke. I wish it wasn't the case, but I think it now very clearly is the case. You certainly wouldn't appoint Tony Burke to be the Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration based on his track record. As you said earlier, he was only the Immigration Minister in the Rudd-Gillard era for a short period, but gee, he packed a lot in in that short period. In 80 days as minister, 83 boats arrived. That's worse than even Chris Bowen's performance in the portfolio. 6634 people showed up on his watch, and children in detention peaked under Tony Burke at 1992. And that is because of the disastrous policies that that government put in place, which this government is going down the same road. We've already seen 19 attempted people smuggling ventures since the election two years ago. Three of them have reached the Australian mainland, dropped people off and returned again undetected. And we've seen, as you said earlier, disastrous falls in aerial surveillance and maritime patrol days, down 22% for aerial surveillance, 14% for maritime patrol days. It's no wonder that boats are sneaking through. And can anyone have any serious confidence that Tony Burke will turn it around? Now, given that track record, there really is no other reason why you would appoint someone like him to this portfolio, unless you are dictated to by local politics, by domestic politics. In southwest Sydney, Tony Burke and his colleagues are under enormous political pressure from Muslim Votes Matters and other independent groups that have said that they're weak on Gaza.
GRANT: So I saw someone suggest elsewhere, might have been in the Oz today, that you're always better having a Senator and your Home Affairs Minister, someone that's not reliant on, you know, the electoral boundary, even though they are reliant on the state boundary, and I was a bit persuaded by that. Now there will be a faction that try and get control, obviously or try and get influence. But do you agree with that proposition that you are better with a Senator rather than a Lower house member, as your Home Affairs Minister?
PATERSON: It's very difficult for me to disagree with that, for obvious reasons as a Senator and the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs. But it was Greg Sheridan who made that point today, and I thought it was spot on, because I just don't have confidence that Tony Burke will put the national interest before his political interest. We've seen that ever since the 7th of October. As Greg Sheridan pointed out, Tony Burke was one of the last MPs to say a single word of criticism of Hamas after the 7th of October. He along with his colleagues have failed to step up to the challenge of anti-Semitism, which has exploded in our country since those terrorist attacks and now he's going to be responsible for our national security, but also our social cohesion. And this government has frankly tolerated an explosion of anti-Semitism on their watch, which has strained the bonds of social cohesion. We are much less united country than we were two years ago, where much less safe country than we were two years ago. And frankly, I don't think if these guys get another three years, we're going to be any safer than we are today.
GRANT: Yeah, well, it's almost a hallmark. I think the government, you know, if you include, the voice and many other policy areas, I think that have been divisive, which is why when I saw the Prime Minister say, you know, we've got to be careful with how we say things and tone things down. And as it turns out, later in the day, that criticism was aimed at the Greens, and I have no problem agreeing with the PM there. But where I started yesterday morning, hearing that was, hang on, we've had all these things happen in Australian society, not the least of which was that appalling, October 8th event at the Opera House in Sydney and the and the marking of parliamentary offices and the weekly protests taking up, you know, precious police resources. This government, it might not just be them, it might be state government, but the body politic has been excuse the French, piss weak on calling out this division. Things go awry and they go, we've got to tone things down. We should have toned things down last year.
PATERSON: That's right and the Prime Minister, at every step of the way has shown weakness and moral equivalence instead of moral clarity when it comes to these questions, every other Prime Minister before him, Labor and Liberal would not have tolerated what he has tolerated. They would have ensured that the law was enforced. They would have used the position of Prime Minister and the office of Prime Minister to call out this conduct much earlier and much more forcefully. He's right to draw attention, as you say, to the way in which the Greens are weaponizing this issue. But what's he actually going to do about that? Will he do another preference deal with the Greens at the next election, as he always has done in the past? Will he help get Greens MPs elected around the country so they can undermine our national security and our national cohesion? And if he's in a minority parliament after the next election, reliant on the Greens, just imagine how weak he'll be on these issues compared to the last two years.
GRANT: Yeah. Always good to talk to you, Senator. Stay well, James, I'll talk again soon with you, no doubt.
PATERSON: Thanks for having me.
ENDS
