November 5, 2024
RAY HADLEY: Senator James Paterson, good morning to you.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Ray.
HADLEY: Can you explain to me in simple terms, I'm a humble person, a simple person. What cultural reforms mean in relation to the taking down of our flag and the indigenous flag from photographs?
PATERSON: Ray, I'm going to try, but please don't hold it against me if I fail, because frankly, I found it hard to understand as well, The cultural reform that Stephanie Foster as secretary of the Department of Home Affairs is driving is to airbrush the Australian flag out of the picture, literally, on the basis that somehow having an Australian flag behind a portrait of the senior officials in the department made them seem more formal and less approachable to the department. And if we only got rid of the flag, it would make them more approachable. I mean, I think this is a pretty bad message for the Department of Home Affairs to send. It is the department which administers the citizenship test. It is the department which is responsible for promoting Australian citizenship and Australian values to new migrants. And central to that are critically important unifying symbols like the national flag. But if the secretary of the department thinks that it's embarrassing or uncomfortable or too formal to be associated with the Australian flag, it sends exactly the wrong message.
HADLEY: What's the background of Stephanie Foster? She came in to replace Mike Pezzullo. But where she come from? I wish to, you know, be as polite as I can, is she from the left somewhere.
PATERSON: She's a senior, long serving public servant who has served under governments of both administrations. But she was appointed by Anthony Albanese to lead the Department of Home Affairs after Mike Pezzullo was removed from his position. And frankly, I would have thought she had a few other things that were higher priority on her plate. On her watch, the department failed to refer cases of convicted violent non offenders to the minister to have their visas cancelled after they successfully appealed that the AAT. On her watch hundreds of people have been released from immigration detention following the NZYQ decision, who have then gone on to re-offend against the community. And now 12 months on the government has still not re-detained any of them under the special powers that the parliament gave the government. We've had a social cohesion and anti-Semitism crisis. We've had extremism out of control. We've had a failure to enforce the law. All of these things I would have thought would be a higher priority for the Albanese government and the Department of Home Affairs than airbrushing the Australian flag out of existence.
HADLEY: Well, just perhaps she thought, and she's scared to try and justify this, this cultural reform. That one of these officials will either drop to one knee or shock horror, salute the flag.
PATERSON: Maybe. I'll tell you, under a Peter Dutton led Coalition government, if we win the next election, respect for the Australian flag will be central to our cultural agenda and the only cultural reform that we'll be driving is that Australians should be proud of our history, we should be proud of our country and we should be proud of our symbols like the flag which will be prominently and proudly displayed at every opportunity.
HADLEY: Just while you were talking, I knew I had done a story about Stephanie Foster before. March this year, it became the subject of media attention following the release of a document concerning crimes purportedly committed by released immigration detainees. The document was made public at a meeting of Senate Estimates hearings. Contrary to the reported wishes of the Home Affairs Minister, Clare O'Neil, who had preferred the document to remain undisclosed, intended for Foster to address inquiries verbally later on the same day, subsequent reports indicated the Foster departed from the minister's office, visibly distressed after rebuked for disclosing information deemed embarrassing to the government. Foster, addressing a Senate committee, refuted allegations of verbal abuse from the minister and denied any attempt by the minister to influence her decision. She did not deny newspaper reports that she left the meeting with the minister in tears.
PATERSON: That's right Ray, and that was information that I sought through the Senate on behalf of the Australian people because I thought they were entitled to know that of the among now 215 people released following the High Court's decision, how many of them committed which crimes. And we now know, but only because it had to be pulled out of the department by the skin of their teeth, that there are 12 murderers have been released from that cohort, that there are 66 sex offenders, but there are 97 people charged with other violent offences, there are 15 charged with domestic violence offences. And all of them are free in the community today and have not been re-detained, unless of course they've gone on to commit other crimes which we know about 60 of them have and some of them are detained, but only because they've committed new offences against the Australian people that they never should have had the opportunity to do.
HADLEY: Now you also discovered that thousands of individuals who have come from Gaza and Lebanon would not count towards Australia's 20,000 person annual cap under the refugee humanitarian program. We've got 3041 visas granted to holders of Palestinian holders. that would be from Gaza. They did refuse 7200. But of the 15,525 temporary visa applications out of that Lebanon. 8333 have been granted. Stephanie Foster confirmed that the intake would not count toward the refugee humanitarian program. Someone said to me earlier it was 13,000. Not counting. The best I can come up with here is about 11,500. But it's 11,500 that won't be counted in the 20,000. So in effect, if we do fulfil the quota of 20,000, at the moment we'll have about 32,000 here, not 20,000 that.
PATERSON: And Ray the important thing for Australians to understand is that we were already an incredibly generous country resettling refugees. Under the previous government we settled about 13,000 a year and that put us in per capita terms right at the top of the league table. This government has already increased it to 20,000 and now they're proposing to increase it again and it doesn't come cheaply. It has a real cost. We've calculated it's about $25,000 a year, per refugee. If all 3,000 Palestinians are granted refugee status, that's going to cost the Commonwealth about $76 Million a year or over $300 Million over the next four years. And frankly, given the haphazard process in screening these Gaza tourist visa applicants, I don't have complete confidence that this would be done in a way that upholds the character provisions of the Migration Act, or the security checks that are necessary.
HADLEY: Given that we've been very generous. Could you tell my listeners how many people have been repatriated from this troubled area by immediate neighbours, perhaps like Jordan and Egypt? How many have gone there given that we're being very generous in bringing them halfway across the world to resettle here?
PATERSON: Well, a couple of months ago we did some research on this and it showed that Australia is globally unique in the approach it has taken. We've offered visas to about 3,000 Gaza residents. In the immediate region most countries have resettled virtually no Gaza visa recipients, offered them no permanent visas and internationally, compared to our likeminded partners like the United States and Canada and the United Kingdom and France and Germany, we are ten, if not dozens of times more generous than they have been with Gaza visa recipients. And so really, the government has never explained why we've taken this globally unique approach.
HADLEY: Okay. To another story today in the Telegraph, you're questioning whether Australia could become a dumping ground for Chinese made electric vehicles as overseas countries moved to ban them. Now, just on this, another issue about these vehicles, be they made in China or anywhere else, we will get to why you're worried about them being made in China and Tony Burke having one that's made in China. I got a lot of mates in the motor trade, a lot of mates. They can't get enough hybrid vehicles, second-hand hybrids. They can't get enough. In fact, one company I know bring them in from Japan, second-hand hybrids from Japan to sell in Australia because they can't get enough. They're saying to me these vehicles at the moment where people are paying anywhere between $50,000 and $150,000 for an electric vehicle, they have no idea how much they're going to be worth in ten years when they are halfway through their battery life, no idea. There's no proof that they'll retain value or lose value at a greater value than combustion engine vehicles. Has anyone thought about that? You know, you talked about it being a dumping ground for electric vehicles, but we may be a dumping ground for second-hand vehicles. Where are they going to go? Are they going to pack them out in the desert like they do with the airplanes or something.
PATERSON: Well, I think it is becoming increasingly clear that demand for electric vehicles is peaking because there are real concerns about range anxiety and there are also real concerns about how you replace the battery and at what cost it will be to replace the battery when it runs out of its life, as it naturally will. And so, as you say, demand for electric vehicles in the second-hand market is very low and there is much higher demand for hybrids, which are both petrol and electric or both diesel and electric because they are much longer lasting and have longer range. So it seems like a strange time to be one of the only countries in the world not doing anything about the national security risks posed by EVs. The United States, Canada and EU are all acting. We haven't. And so we could become that dumping ground for Chinese made EVs.
HADLEY: Okay. And you're concerned that what the Home Affairs rather, I should say. Yeah, Tony Burke, the Home Affairs Minister, has a Chinese made EV, and there's some suggestion from the United States of America that they could be used as spy vehicles by the manufacturers in China.
PATERSON: Not just in the United States of America. I asked Department of Home Affairs officials last night in Senate estimates what were the national security risks of these products. They said they can listen to their occupants. They can track their movements. They can compromise devices like phones that are plugged in, and they can record video outside the vehicle of other people and transmit that all back to their owner and controller, whether it's China or elsewhere. And then they revealed when I asked them that the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security is driving one of these vehicles. I mean, effectively Tony Burke is driving around in a Chinese listening device as the Cyber Security and Home Affairs minister, it's reckless and irresponsible and he shouldn't be doing it.
HADLEY: Well, look, I don't think he'll say anything too bad. I mean, probably, he doesn't know too much about what's going on.
PATERSON: There's not much evidence that he does, is there?
HADLEY: No. I mean, look, you know, I can imagine the puzzled look on the Chinese spy agencies looking at each other and said “Did you hear what he just said?" "No." "Did that make any sense to you?". "No." Oh That's why they call him those names back in Australia. Anyway, fair dinkum. Okay. Thanks for your time, as always.
PATERSON: Thanks, Ray.
ENDS
