June 10, 2024
RAY HADLEY: Senator James Paterson, the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, is on the line to have a talk about these problems with these border boats. Senator, good morning to you.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Ray.
HADLEY: Well, you can hardly believe the story presented on 60 Minutes and published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age this morning that they’re going to Bunnings to buy fans to cool equipment at sea. What sort of, you know, outfit are we running up there?
PATERSON: You're right, Ray, it’s an absolutely extraordinary story by your colleagues Nick McKenzie and others last night on 60 Minutes, and it’s worse than that even. There was a very serious fire on board the Cape York, which is one of the Australian Border Force vessels that's supposed to be monitoring our north-western approaches. And it was in the engine room, it was so serious that the officers on board had to run and put the fire out, and then nurse the boat back to Darwin for maintenance. But when they did so they left their area of surveillance completely open, and a day later thirty-nine asylum seekers made it all to the Australian mainland near a remote indigenous community near Beagle Bay, and wandered around undetected until they were spotted by the local community. And so this failure to protect their officers and give them seaworthy vessels has resulted in a serious breach of our borders.
HADLEY: So now they're whistleblowers. They're not supposed to talk to them, but obviously they are privately and anonymously, and they’re saying they should have rounded up these people very quickly, but because of the fire, they had to return under half speed to Darwin, so as a result we had to go searching for them all over again.
PATERSON: That's right, Ray. Now I was wondering why it was that all these boats seemed to be getting through to the Australian mainland. There have been fourteen attempted journeys since the election, but three which have made it through to the Australian territory, and that's virtually unheard of in the last decade. We’d normally always intercept them at sea, and one of the reasons why they're not being intercepted at sea is very serious safety issues on our vessels, which means this government has failed to deliver the maritime patrol days that the previous government did, it’s down by about 12% since the election. But they've also failed to deliver aerial surveillance as well, that’s down by about 20% since the election. And so, it's no wonder that boats are managing to slip through and make it all the way the Australian mainland, and no wonder the people smugglers are having some success convincing desperate people to pay exorbitant amounts of money and get on a dangerous and make this dangerous journey to Australia.
HADLEY: It's not just those on board blowing the whistle; the unions got involved as well. So, we have a Labor government and a union, via the Community Public Sector Union secretary Melissa Donnelly, saying vessels are going to sea with defects and it's putting our members’ lives at risk.
PATERSON: You’re right, Ray. Full credit to the union for standing up for their members, it’s the right thing for them to do, even if it might be sometimes politically uncomfortable. And it is a scandal that two years into this government, on their watch, these serious safety issues are arising and they're doing nothing about it, and it is putting professional Australian public servants in danger, and it is opening up our borders to being exploited not just by people smugglers, but also illegal fishers, which is absolutely through the roof over the last few years.
HADLEY: So, we're seeing violent criminals, rapists, murderers, child sex offenders released into the public via, of course, Direction 99, which becomes Direction 110 eventually, sometime later this month. But there's another story I noticed on Saturday I wanted to comment on, and get you to comment on. So, we're not tough on those criminals. We're not tough on them. We let them back out without any monitoring, you know, we don't have drones watching them like the Minister said we did, they don’t exist those drones; the only drone there is the minister himself. But an Indonesian people smuggler who helped transport thirty-nine men on a boat to mainland Australia in February has revealed how he was caught by Australian authorities, only to be released and sent home without charge. The fishermen turned people smuggling foot soldier who The Herald and 60 Minutes tracked to a remote village in a part of Indonesia has described his relief at escaping criminal charges in Darwin. He struck a deal with the authorities in Jakarta to trace the organised criminal running the networks. Marine Resources Fisheries Supervision Acting Director from Indonesia said Australian authorities had urged their Indonesian counterparts to crackdown on illegal fishing operations in Australia amid concerns such fishing risked fuelling people smuggling, while Indonesian fishermen were crossing the border. It turns out they have a hidden agenda, which is people smuggling. He said Australian authorities were reporting about ten Indonesian fishers a month. So, they catch them up and then I say, no, no charges, but you're going to be our whistleblower. I mean, what guarantees the block is going to give anyone up? He's back in Indonesia living happily!
PATERSON: Well, that's right, Ray. And the Minister for Home Affairs has got some explaining to do here. It has been in the past that we have often charged people smugglers when we have caught them in our territorial waters here in Australia, and they've gone to jail here in Australia. But they’ve now started sending them back to Indonesia, on the understanding that they would be charged in Indonesia. But this person hasn't been charged. So, what is the deterrent? What are the consequences for someone whose participated in an illegal
people smuggling venture and tried to penetrate Australia's borders? If there's no consequence, well I’ve got a prediction: they're going to try again.
HADLEY: No doubt, no doubt. Now, to another matter which we didn't know about when we came on air, but we do now. Look, I got photos from listeners this morning which appeared to be gunshots through the windows of, of course, the consulate at North Sydney on Miller Street, the American consulate, US consulate. It's now being portrayed by police that even though they look like gunshots through the window, it's been done by a small sledgehammer. One person’s done it, graffiti paint on the door. Now, since I organised to have a yarn to you, we've found a bit more about it. Some imbecile, apart from destroying and doing this to the consulate, which would be of concern to them as it would for us, he then painted some sort of red mark which appears to be a triangle, which is the way Hamas identify Jewish sites in that part of the world. So, not only is this person destroying public property, he's also portraying that this is a target for Hamas. I mean, what sort of madness are we dealing with here?
PATERSON: Ray, you're right. There's no prizes for guessing the likely culprit behind this incident, and it's a disgrace that a US Consulate is being targeted this way in our country. You're also right that that red upside-down triangle symbol is not only a symbol of Hamas, it's actually a symbol of the Al-Quds Force, which is the militant wing of Hamas. They are the ones that actually undertake the terrorist activities in Israel, and the Middle East. And so for any Australian to appropriate a symbol of the militant wing of a terrorist organisation here in Australia is an absolute travesty, and the book should be thrown at them. Very serious penalties must follow because we must discourage this appalling behavior in our country.
HADLEY: Well, this is on the back of, again, Mark Scott, the Vice Chancellor of Sydney Uni, who has said, I've said many times and he hasn’t reacted to it, in most times he'd be wearing a keffiyeh and protesting like those he allows to protest and scare Jewish students and Jewish staff. And now that we find out today that cheating at Sydney University has gone up by 1,000% under his guidance, and we find out that the sort of behaviors are indicative of what he's encouraging there, happens on Berry Street North Sydney, and the Greens, and people like Mark Scott are thinking there wouldn’t be too much is wrong with that, with the upside down triangle, obviously, because, you know, people have that right to protest.
PATERSON: Well, there's a lot of people in our country, Ray, who are frankly engaging in cosplay and trying to dress up like their terrorist fans overseas, and frankly it's pretty sickening, and it's occurring because of weakness. Weakness on the part of Vice Chancellors like Mark Scott, who allow this to happen on their campuses. Weakness on the part of our state and federal governments, who failed to enforce the very strong anti-incitement laws that we have in this country, which have very serious criminal penalties if you are guilty of inciting violence against other people, particularly on the basis of their race or ethnicity. But also very serious penalties at the federal level in this country for supporting a listed terrorist organisation. Now the one good piece of news in the last couple of weeks was that at least one, possibly two, students have been expelled from ANU for openly supporting Hamas. Good on ANU for taking that step, but I’d like to see other universities follow; there has to be real consequences for this behaviour.
HADLEY: Well, not if Mark Scott’s the person doing the decisions on consequences. But anyway, that's unrelated to the story we have this morning, but it just, I mean, the Greens are up in arms, and of course we had bipartisan support from the government and the opposition in relation to condemning the behaviour of people supporting Hamas in Australia. But then when Peter Dutton called them out and said, well, if you’re so worried about these sort of people - the Greens - and what they stand for, don't share preferences with him at the
next election. Well, based on the Newspoll results today they'll be clambering over broken glass to get hold of the Greens to make sure they retain government.
PATERSON: Sadly I think that's exactly right, Ray. The Labor Party talks tough sometimes when it comes to the Greens, but when it comes to the crunch they do cozy preference deals, and that's bad enough on a national level, but in a seat in Melbourne called McNamara, which has the highest number of Jewish residents of any seat in Melbourne, and every election in the past the Labor Party has preferenced the Greens. Now previously that was a theoretical problem because the Labor Party normally finished second. It’s now likely that Josh Burns, the Labor MP, will finish third and his preferences will determine the winner, and unless they change their practice of preferencing the Greens, they're going to give the Jewish community in Melbourne at the very least an anti-Israel MP, but we also know the Greens have tolerated anti-Semitism within their ranks. I mean, that is an unconscionable situation, and the Prime Minister should at the very least be able to rule out giving the Greens preferences in Macnamara.
HADLEY: Well, let's see what happens. As always, thanks for your time, Senator. Senator James Paterson, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs.
ENDS
