March 2, 2025
LUKE GRANT: I was tuning into Senate Estimates, and I was really impressed, although I have great respect, and I quite liked Senator James Paterson well before what happened last week. But he was brilliant, forensic, measured, determined in calling our government and raising really important issues about our security because of security, amongst other things. It just doesn't feel like the Australia that perhaps this government inherited. It doesn't. We're too wishy-washy on this front. And when you look at what happened with these Chinese boats, the task force, I think it's referred to. How, you know, our security was subcontracted to a couple of pilots working for Virgin. As I joked yesterday, where are we going to end up here? We're going to be saying to passengers on Virgin flights, hey, we'll give you 50,000 bonus Velocity Points if you find an enemy ship in our waters. Is that where we've come to? It's extraordinary now. James Patterson, the Shadow Home Affairs Minister, has been on Insiders this morning and now he's on the telephone for me. Good morning, Senator. Did they look after you on the ABC, or did it get a little bit willing?
JAMES PATERSON: Oh, look, it was a respectful and professional interview by David Speers; he's one of the best in the business. And I treat him with respect as he deserves with the experience he has.
GRANT: Righto, Well, let's hope this is respectful. I'm pretty sure it will be. I don't know where we begin here, but perhaps we should talk about the timeline with these Chinese ships off of Tasmania. Now, you brought this to a head, and in fact, I watched you go through a timeline with the insistence of the assistance, at least in part of the Chief of Defence. This all happened in a gap from 9:30 am to about 3:00 pm in the afternoon when they, the Chinese, announced that they would be doing some live testing or they'd be propelling live ammunition, and that was heard by a Virgin Australian pilot. We didn't have, as I understand it, surveillance. We were relying on what New Zealand were doing. We were working in concert with them. And I understand that we've got to we've got to do that. But a lot went wrong, didn't it?
PATERSON: A lot did go wrong. Luke because as you said in your opening, we should not be reliant on Virgin Australia pilots to be reporting the first instances of a foreign military exercise in our own region, and it has still not been adequately explained why we weren't notified more quickly as part of the joint task force monitoring this exercise with our friends in New Zealand. It led to a serious delay in response, and it led to serious inconvenience and possible risk to civilian airliners in the area. We now know that there were 49 flights which had to be diverted around this exercise area because adequate notice was not given by the Chinese government.
GRANT: So when we've got a commercial airliner flagging what is going on, we are entitled to ask what were our brothers and sisters in New Zealand doing? And in fact. Am I right in saying, and I was listening to your interrogation as intently as I could. Am I right in saying that it was, in fact, Airservices Australia who alerted defence, not our counterpart from New Zealand?
PATERSON: That is right. Our New Zealand counterparts did eventually notify us, but only after the Virgin pilot first notified Airservices Australia and Airservices Australia notified Defence, so the first notification to Defence came through a civilian emergency reporting chain, not through a military reporting chain. And I think we have to ask questions about this because the Defence Industry Minister, Pat Conroy, has said we have had the highest level of surveillance on this task group in history. Well, I would hope so because it was unprecedented. But even with that so-called highest level surveillance, we're still reliant on people looking out the window of commercial airliners looking for Chinese ships in the waters. And that's a travesty.
GRANT: Yeah, it absolutely is. And who was the first federal minister to be made aware of it? Was it the transport minister, I think might have been alluded to with the deputy PM who found out first?
PATERSON: That's right. It was the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Catherine King, who was notified before the Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles. And that's the remarkable thing. If, in the future, we are to be warned of potential conflict in our region, should we seriously be reliant on picking up the phone and calling the transport minister to find out what she knows about it?
GRANT: Yeah, it's an excellent point. Now, we read today in the Daily Telegraph that PNG via their Foreign Minister, Justin Tkatchenko, I think, is the right pronunciation. China actually let him know and their government know a couple of weeks beforehand that there would be People's Liberation Army warships into their waters. And it was a courtesy. It seems that we weren't extended the same courtesy.
PATERSON: Well, you are right. It's an extraordinary discourtesy by our Chinese partners who were supposed to have a stabilised relationship with, and in fact, a comprehensive strategic partnership with that they notified the PNG government weeks in advance but didn't provide any notice to us at all, despite the Prime Minister's attempt, our own Prime Ministers attempt to say that they had, and to downplay the seriousness of it.
GRANT: So what's the go here, James? If we're going to spend $600 million on a Rugby League deal with PNG. Does that, I don't know how that works, which is why I ask you, does that mean that we have a relationship whereby the PNG Foreign Minister hears from China and he, without telling anyone, of course, picks up the phone and says, oi, you clowns in Canberra guess what's happening. Should we expect that?
PATERSON: I don't have visibility of that, Luke. It's possible that he did do that and that he did give us a heads-up. And it was just the Chinese government who didn't. But either way, we have a real problem here. We have a problem that the Chinese military was clearly trying to send us a message of clearly exercising in our region to make a point and has engaged in unprecedented military drills in our region. And we need to be able to have the earliest warnings of that. And if they're not going to tell us, well, then we need the defence and intelligence capability to make sure we know about it ourselves.
GRANT: Now, you were pursuing this, and this is simply did Kevin Rudd meet with Donald Trump. Now, this is a thing because it appears what Kevin Rudd had to say. Did you get an answer to that?
PATERSON: Well, in January, the Prime Minister said on the radio that Kevin Rudd, our ambassador in Washington, has met with President Trump. He didn't go into any more detail than that. But he said they had met. And so I asked perfectly innocent factual questions about when this meeting occurred and where it was, and what was discussed. And the officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Foreign Minister reacted with extreme sensitivity and defensiveness. And I was very surprised by that. And it does raise real questions about this meeting. Did the meeting happen at all, or did it go ahead but just go very badly? I mean, the extreme reluctance to discuss any aspect of it, they took every element on notice, shows that there's something else to this story, and I don't know what that is, but I think we should get to the bottom of it.
GRANT: And of course, the problem now is if we have an election called in the next week, then any question you have on notice or any question that remains unanswered, it'll stay that way, won't it?
PATERSON: There's no doubt in my mind that the government doesn't want those questions to be answered before the election. And when they call the election as is normal, all of the questions will be wiped, the slate will be wiped clean, and we may not know before Australians vote whether or not this meeting took place or how this meeting went if it did take place. And I think it really is incumbent on the government to be upfront and honest about this, it's our most important relationship. It is a critically important diplomatic post. If it's working, great. If it's not, we need to know. We need to know now.
GRANT: And it's just it's part of the potential shifty ness of all of this. If he had a meeting with Donald Trump or if they had a telephone call or something, wouldn't you say, yeah, as the PM's said? We met on this occasion at this time and, well, we had a telephone call or whatever. I mean, I don't know why you hide that, which is why it struck me as being so bizarre. Now your leader, Peter Dutton, and Shadow Defence, Andrew Hastie, have come out today saying that the Coalition would buy more F-35s if the Coalition wins office. Why is that such a thing? I think Australians think that our security has diminished under this government. Do F-35s fix that?
PATERSON: Well, ever since the 2009 Defence White Paper, Australian governments have agreed we need 100 of the fifth generation strike fighters that are available, and the F-35 is the most advanced platform available to us today. Even the Gillard government planned to buy 100 of these. But the Albanese government, in one of its many cuts to defence, axed the fourth squadron of these joint strike fighters and left Australia with only 72 instead of 100. So we're going to reverse that cut and we're going to acquire these joint strike fighters to take it up to 100, as was always planned. And this is a down payment on our commitment to increased and faster defence spending, because in this strategic environment, we must have it.
GRANT: You want the US to think that we're fair dinkum come about defending ourselves? That's part of it, isn't it?
PATERSON: Well, exactly right. We have to send a message to our closest ally and our most important ally that we are willing to do the heavy lifting in this relationship and that we are not just going to leave it to them. We're not going a free ride off them we're going to fulfil our obligations to defend our shared interest and our shared values in the region.
GRANT: And just one final quick one in Tony Burke's electric vehicle. You have a concern, don't you, that there is a potential security risk? What worries you?
PATERSON: It emerged recently that the Minister for Home Affairs and Cyber Security is driving a Chinese electric vehicle, and that is despite five briefings he's received from his department about the national security risks of vehicles like these, which includes that they can compromise any device like a mobile phone that's connected to them, which includes that they can monitor conversations inside the vehicle and includes that they can monitor where the vehicle goes. It's astonishing to me that the Minister thinks this is a good idea, and I asked the Department of Home Affairs and other intelligence agencies about the steps that would be necessary to mitigate those risks, and they are very extensive. But even taking all those steps, it doesn't eliminate the risks. And it's extraordinary to me in this strategic environment that the Minister thinks it's appropriate.
GRANT: Yeah, great to talk to Senator. Thank you for your time.
PATERSON: Thanks, Luke.
ENDS
