August 27, 2024
GARY ADSHEAD: Bang, that was Jim Chalmers talking about Peter Dutton. Well, in the studio with me right now is James Paterson, the opposition Home Affairs spokesperson, who joins us. Thanks very much for coming in.
JAMES PATERSON: Thanks for having me in the studio.
ADSHEAD: Your reaction to that, because that's like ratcheting it up, like out of nowhere, it was a speech that was made overnight and then he repeated it on Radio National ABC.
PATERSON: Jim Chalmers is the Treasurer of Australia. I would have thought he's got a bit on his plate trying to tackle the inflation and cost of living crisis in this country. But instead of that, he's gone for a deeply personal attack on the Opposition leader. Frankly, Jim Chalmers is behaving like he's the Opposition leader, not the Treasurer and attacking Peter Dutton, I think because the government is worried that Peter is resonating with Australians and cutting through.
ADSHEAD: You know, you would be part of it though. I mean do you sit down and discuss how to be divisive on a daily basis?
PATERSON: I actually think the last few weeks have shown how constructive we are in working with the government. They couldn't have got their CFMEU legislation through without us. They couldn't have got their reforms to get NDIS spending under control without us. And we're engaged in a very constructive dialogue right now on aged care reform to make that sustainable. These are ways in which we've been constructive and frankly, I think we've been positive. Peter is out there talking about his long term agenda for our country, he wants to make us a nuclear powered nation. He's got a vision for the future, and he's talking about that. Most people couldn't tell you what Anthony Albanese or Jim Chalmers’ vision for the future is.
ADSHEAD: So Madeline King, the federal Resources Minister, was speaking to me this morning as well. She says that there is definitely a playbook which is in relation to the base. And I mean, this is something that you hear in US politics, but the base, Peter Dutton, is to continue chipping away at immigration issues and continually sort of sow the seeds of doubt about people that have come here from Gaza. What do you say to that? Because that's part of, you know, your discussion as well and your narrative.
PATERSON: Frankly, I think that's pretty amateur political analysis. We've got compulsory voting in Australia. You don't need to motivate or turn out the base, they are there already. You've got to go after the swing voters in the middle. And my sense from the community is they're very concerned about community safety. They are concerned about the way in which the borders are being unraveled under Labor's watch. They are flabbergasted by the mismanagement of detainees by the former Home Affairs and Immigration Ministers, Clare O'Neil and Andrew Giles. I mean, even the Prime Minister had to acknowledge how bad that was. He sacked them both. So these are mainstream issues that appeal to a broad range of Australians, not to some narrow base.
ADSHEAD: So the arguments that were being put forward in relation to those leaving Gaza, war torn Gaza, coming here under certain visa arrangements, do you think that you've won that argument?
PATERSON: Well, there's a poll in Essential Research today, which is a left wing, union-affiliated pollster reported in the Guardian newspaper that says more Australians backed Peter Dutton's view that we should have a pause on processing people from Gaza right now, rather than the Prime Minister's view that we can just hand out tourist visas to 3,000 people with minimal checks and bring them in from a war zone controlled by a terrorist organisation.
ADSHEAD: James Paterson's my guest. He's the opposition Home Affairs spokesperson. If you'd like to call in feel free, 13 38 82. If you'd like to ask a question. Just in relation to immigration detainees argument that I know that you've been right at the forefront of pushing, I mean, this new information about 28 former immigration detainees being charged by Australian Federal Police for breaching bail. So this is still going.
PATERSON: That’s exactly right. So we're now up to about 178 of these former detainees who've been released into the community on Labor's watch. At least 28 of them have committed federal offences, 90 federal offences between them. But that doesn't include the state offences, including that horrific bashing of the Perth grandmother that's not included in this tally. And among that tally includes 13 offences relating to schools and other educational facilities. So those people are on visas that prevent them from going near schools. That's been breached 13 times. And yet the powers that the parliament gave the government, rushed through before Christmas last year, to preventatively detain people who pose a risk to the community - they haven't been used, not even once.
ADSHEAD: What do you know about that? Because, I mean, it sounds alarming. You know, it's 13 offences where they've gone to schools or near schools. Is that just because, you know, there's a school generally quite close to where you are? What do you say to that?
PATERSON: Well these conditions are not applied lightly. These are applied to former sex offenders and child sex offenders among this cohort who are roaming free in the streets. And one of the conditions of them being free is that they can't go near a school or a kindergarten or childcare centre. So for them to breach that is not a light thing. It's a very serious thing. They should be locked up. And frankly, the powers that the parliament gave the government should be used.
ADSHEAD: Are they stateless, these particular people we're talking about here?
PATERSON: Some of them are stateless, not all of them. Some of them, they won't go back to their country because they have a genuine fear of persecution in their country. Some of them are stateless, but the problem that they pose to the community, is that they can't go to a third country. They can't be resettled in a third country because of the offences that they committed while they were here that led to their visas being cancelled.
ADSHEAD: So in other words, because I, you know, sometimes just sound it off at the mouth saying, when you have situations with people like this that have completely abused the visa process, completely abuse the opportunity to have another chance at life after fleeing somewhere that they maybe persecuted or whatever is going on around them. That you dump them somewhere like Nauru?
PATERSON: Well that's not an option with these people.
ADSHEAD: Not an option?
PATERSON: The High Court has said you can't do that, and other countries aren't willing to take them. But frankly, the government, because they can't do that, they should do what they can do, which is apply to the court for a preventative detention order to put them behind bars, where they can't pose a risk to the community.
ADSHEAD: Just on another matter, of course. The northern borders of Western Australia are no stranger to boat arrivals, and sometimes it just happens to be people who are, fishing illegally in our waters and we've seen that recently. But here is some new information though, which came through in the last 24 hours from one of the tourist operators up near Broome. His name is Peter Tucker. Have a listen.
PETER TUCKER: These people, these illegal fishermen, have a habit of disappearing again and hiding in a different spot. That's the big concern. The biosecurity, if they are bringing pests in from the outer reaches of Indonesia. These boys don't just live in their boats like they hide deep in the mangroves and get around and walk on the mainland.
ADSHEAD: Which is extraordinary, really. But, you know, you obviously accept it's a big state. It's a long, long coastline. But is it unacceptable that we have people that perhaps could be, you know, hiding in our mangroves on our shorelines for two, three months at a time?
PATERSON: It's completely unacceptable because it's not just a biosecurity risk. It's a national security risk. If you can work out as a fisherman that you can get that close, without being detected, to Australia, well then you might try your luck as a people smuggler, which is even more lucrative. And we've seen that with 3 boats reaching the Australian mainland, drop people off and leave without being detected. Now there is no wonder why this is happening. Aerial surveillance on this government's watch is down by more than 20%, and maritime patrol days are down by more than 10%. So when you're not delivering that surveillance, you're not going to spot these people at sea, you're not able to stop them from getting to Australia. And that's why they're getting through.
ADSHEAD: The threat level of them, I mean, obviously they they're not coming here to try and migrate, they're not coming here to try and live. They seem to be just coming here to try and steal fish from our waters. And other items. I mean, how important should it be for Border Force?
PATERSON: Critically important, because there's no arbitrary distinction that you can draw between illegal fishers on the one hand and people smugglers on the other. They are one and the same. They can use the same vessel for both purposes. And when they work out how easy it is to get here and how much more lucrative it can be to have a passenger on board instead of fish on board, you're going to see more of it. There's already been 19 attempted people smuggling ventures since the election, so this should be a top priority for Tony Burke as the new Home Affairs Minister. But there's no evidence that it is.
ADSHEAD: Now, Phil Coorey wrote a story this morning. It's on the front page of the AFR, certainly online, that came up this morning. He says that he has information that you're planning well, somewhere between $50 and $100 billion in cuts to the Albanese budget commitments in order to pay for some tax concessions for those earning over $135,000. And this is obviously in relation to the changes that were made as part of the stage three tax cuts. Is it true you're looking at massive cuts to what the Albanese government are planning?
PATERSON: We haven't finalised our election policy yet, nor our costings, but we will be transparent about that before the election, and we'll put that all out for the Australian people to judge. I mean, it is in the Liberal Party's DNA to be careful with taxpayers money because we know you work hard for it and in a cost of living crisis, we shouldn't take $1 more from people than we absolutely need to. We want to return as much as possible to provide that relief for people right now.
ADSHEAD: Clearly, one of the items that you would suggest would be, would be slashed and burned, would be the production tax credit, because, you know, Peter Dutton has already said that its corporate welfare, nothing more. So is that definitely going to go?
PATERSON: We're strongly supportive of the resources industry. We want to make their job easier. We want to get approvals moving faster. But we don't believe that taxpayer subsidies is the right way to do that. It's about clearing the obstacles, clearing the red tape, making it easier to explore and to develop the mines. This is a government that is cancelling approvals for mines across the country right now. So we are sceptical about that taxpayer subsidy, no question.
ADSHEAD: All right. Because you know that in some way that seems a little bit counterintuitive I would suggest. For the libs at the moment, needing to win over the mining and resource sector and all the people that work in it right here in WA, in terms of winning an election, why have you gone down that path as opposed to just let that one sit out there rather than describe that as corporate welfare?
PATERSON: Well, we think the best way to help the mining industry is to get the red type and the green type out of their way. I mean, mining is a very sophisticated in their businesses, They know what they're doing. They don't need taxpayers’ money to do it. In fact, even with the offer…
ADSHEAD: They said they did. A lot of them have sat down with the government and said we do, because incentives to get into the critical minerals sector.
PATERSON: Well, let's look at, Fortescue and Twiggy Forrest. I mean, even with the offer of billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies he has walked away from a lot of this, you know, speculative stuff because he doesn't think it can add up. So if you can't even make it work with taxpayer subsidies, we think the much better way is, make it easier to explore. Support miners to do that. Make it easier to dig. Make it easier to extract. That's what we're here to do.
ADSHEAD: Right. Brian is on the line, I think, on the same sort of subject matter. G'day Brian.
CONSTITUENT: Yeah, G'day, good morning. I want to find out, I heard a news report about, they're doing some budget cuts, the Coalition, and one of the things they mentioned was housing, I think public housing. Now, the last thing we need with this current environment is cutting back on public housing. Even if you need to save money, that's probably one area where you shouldn't be trying to cut back when people are in desperately need for housing. What's the story with that?
ADSHEAD: Right. I'll ask him.
PATERSON: Look, the housing crisis has got a lot worse on this government's watch because they've brought in a million people over two years, but they're building less than 250,000 homes, and it just doesn't add up. What we need to do is firstly get migration under control, so it's sustainable. We're not bringing in more people than we can build housing for, and then we need to remove the barriers to getting the skilled workers and the materials into the building industry. The truth is that 95% of Australians will never live in a public housing or social housing environment. They live in the private rental market and the private mortgage market. And so that's where the opportunities need to be delivered.
ADSHEAD: You're not suggesting, as Brian, thought he'd heard, that, you know, there would be actual cuts to the, let's say, ambitious targets that the federal government have around social and affordable housing. You're not going to just undermine that are you?
PATERSON: There is a role for the federal government in supporting social and public housing, but this government has failed it every step of the way to either convince the parliament, or the public that this is working and that they can actually deliver it, because there's so many bottlenecks in the industry around planning and approvals at the state and local level, around skilled workers and around materials. So it doesn't matter how much taxpayers money you pump into it, you are actually not going to deliver any more housing unless you deal with those fundamental issues which this government is either failing to or actually exacerbating and making worse.
ADSHEAD: Before I let you go, how are things? How are you feeling about Western Australia? Because you may or may not have noticed that we're pretty colloquial over here. We keep telling people on the East Coast, you know, without Western Australia, the country would go down the drain, and without, anyone winning the West in terms of the electorate, that you've got no chance of forming government. What do you say? How are you feeling about that?
PATERSON: Well, there's a reason why people like me from the east coast are coming over here more and more often and that is to hear Western Australians, to hear and understand their perspective, to make sure that it is heard in our policymaking process so that we have the policies that unleash the prosperity and potential of Western Australians and back Western Australians. So I was with Howard Ong, our candidate for Tangney yesterday, listening to voters who are particularly concerned about community safety. I will be with Tom White this afternoon, our candidate for Curtin, I spent some time with Andrew Hastie this morning. Getting out there listening to West Australians, feeding that into our process.
ADSHEAD: Did Andrew Hastie whinge about the traffic on the freeway, by the way?
PATERSON: He certainly did.
ADSHEAD: He usually does, whenever he comes on this program, that's The first thing he kicks off with is a bit of a whinge about the traffic. Anyway, he chose to live down there. Thanks very much for coming in and joining us. We will no doubt see you more as the campaign trial heats up towards the end of the year and into next year.
PATERSON: You sure will, thanks for having me.
ENDS
