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April 7, 2025
Transcript – ABC Radio Melbourne Mornings
7 April 2025
E&OE
RAF EPSTEIN: James Paterson joins us. James is a Liberal Senator for Victoria. He is also the Coalition's official campaign spokesperson. Good morning.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Raf.
RAF EPSTEIN: What's it like being part of an opposition that's panicking?
JAMES PATERSON: Nice try, Raf. Look, we've listened and heard the Australian people. They didn't agree with the work from home policy, and so we've changed it. And we will not proceed with any changes to Commonwealth public servants based in Canberra. We were never proposing any changes for the private sector, but we're now not even going to proceed with it for the Commonwealth public sector either.
RAF EPSTEIN: But how do we know now which policy you're gonna dump?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, we'll be up front and honest about it with voters before the election. And we're being up front and honest about this. You know, politicians from time to time get things wrong. We are human, and we should acknowledge when we get it wrong. We should admit when we get it wrong and we should correct course. I mean, the alternative here, Raf, is to proceed with a policy that we know that people don't want us to and why would we do that?
RAF EPSTEIN: There's a lot of criticism of a lot of your policies that you would say matter to you. So how do we tell, I mean, it's the core promise and non-core promise question, isn't it?
JAMES PATERSON: No, it's not, Raf.
RAF EPSTEIN: How do we know which things you really back and which things you won't back because you listen?
JAMES PATERSON: Everything that we take to the election, we will implement. And before anyone casts a vote, it'll be very clear what our policies are. And we've already outlined a number of them, whether it's on energy, whether it's on the economy, whether it's on national security, whether it's on immigration, which I know you want to talk about in a minute. We've been very clear about what they are.
RAF EPSTEIN: Don't think it's a problem, you think it is a virtue to dump a policy because it's unpopular. Is that a virtue or a vice?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, the alternative is to stick with something that is not being well received in the face of the feedback. And we live in a democracy, Raf. It's my job to represent Victorians. And I'm not going to force on them a policy that they clearly don't want. We've heard what people have said. We've agreed to change it. We acknowledge we got it wrong. I think that's what adults should do. I think it's what politicians should do. We shouldn't pretend that we get everything right. We haven't got this right and we're going to change it.
RAF EPSTEIN: Do you still get a $7 billion saving from having 41,000 fewer public servants?
JAMES PATERSON: Yes, our policy was always based on natural attrition and a hiring freeze, which over time will reduce the federal public service numbers back to what they were at the start of this government's term. They've increased it by 41,000 in three years, which is many times more than the Rudd and Gillard governments even did over six years.
RAF EPSTEIN: So you've dumped that policy or not? Because I don't think I've heard you or, I did interview Angus Taylor the morning after the budget. He did not use the words natural attrition. Is that a changed policy or no? I haven't heard natural attrition before today.
JAMES PATERSON: No, we only have released our public service policy today, and it was always based, and the costing which was sought from the PBO was based on a policy of a hiring freeze and natural attrition over time.
RAF EPSTEIN: It doesn't seem like a great way to run a campaign to not know, well, you've done one policy, you don't know the detail on this one until now. It doesn't seem like a great way to practise politics.
JAMES PATERSON: Well, hang on, Raf, we do know the detail. You've asked a question, I answered it directly. That is our policy. That's, I think, a distraction. We don't release all our policies on day one.
RAF EPSTEIN: Can I interrupt, James?
JAMES PATERSON: Please do.
RAF EPSTEIN: Because you had a lot of criticism on the public service policy for a number of weeks. If you'd said the word natural attrition at the beginning, that criticism would have been very different. That doesn't seem like a great way to run a political campaign. You've just copped a whole lot of criticisms you don't need to cop.
JAMES PATERSON: It's certainly true that Labor has been running a scare campaign on this issue, as they do on other issues as well. I can't control what the Prime Minister says in his willingness to mislead people and to scare people on issues like this.
RAF EPSTEIN: You can control your level of detail.
JAMES PATERSON: Yes, and we've released the policy today and the details are out there well before anyone will be asked to cast a vote. In an election campaign, Raf, you don't release all your policies on one day at the start of the campaign. It's normal to release policies throughout the campaign in a staged way, because frankly, Australians are busy. They have busy lives. They have many more important things to worry about than elections and politicians and our policies. And so we've got to outline our policies in a digestible way that people can understand over a period of time. And that's what we're doing.
RAF EPSTEIN: Your international student cap is not popular amongst some. We had an interesting critic this morning. Swinburne University don't think they would actually suffer any change in the number of international students, but their Vice-Chancellor nonetheless is still very upset; you're going to have 10% fewer international students than Labor. Wouldn't impact Swinburne; they're still upset. If I can just play you the Vice-Chancellor, Pascale Quester, what she told us.
[CLIP START]
PASCALE QUESTER: I do not believe necessarily that it is xenophobic, but it's simplistic. It is making the international students guilty for things that are actually failures of the general strategy and planning of this country in terms of housing facilities, social housing, etc.
[CLIP END]
RAF EPSTEIN: Is it simplistic, James Paterson?
JAMES PATERSON: I don't blame international students at all. It's not their fault. It's the fault of the government, and it's our migration policy settings that haven't been working. There's been a 65% jump from the start of this term, when there were 517,000 international students in the country.
RAF EPSTEIN: That involves a post-COVID bump as well, doesn't it?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, hang on, let me finish. I haven't even got the numbers out yet. Up to 853,000, that's a massive increase. And it's put enormous stress on the housing market, particularly rental markets in our major cities. About nine in 10 international students come to our major cities, particularly Melbourne and Sydney. So no wonder we've had a rental and housing affordability crisis over the last three years, which has got much, much worse. So it's not the fault of international students personally. Of course, they would want to come to our country and study here, but we've got to put in place migration policy settings that are in Australia's national interest, and we think it needs to be much more sustainable than it has been
RAF EPSTEIN: So you're going to have 10% fewer international students. We still don't have a net migration number from the Coalition. We know what the government expects the overall migration number is in the next financial year. How do we know that your- you say migration's a factor in housing? How can we assess your policy if we don't know what your overall migration number's going to be?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, we've outlined a lot of detail about our immigration policy. Firstly, we outlined our permanent migration policy, which is to bring those numbers down to by about 25% over four years, starting with 140,000 international or permanent arrivals in our first year. We've now outlined our international student policy, which is a really important contributor to that net overseas migration policy. And before the campaign is out, we'll have the rest of the detail out. But Labor has proposed to reduce international students commencements by 50,000 a year, we will reduce it by 80,000 a year, an extra 30,000 because we don't think it goes far enough. And Labor hasn't met any of the targets that they've set for themselves in the past anyway.
RAF EPSTEIN: So I'm not saying you haven't released some of your migration policies, but it is very hard to assess. Like, the net overseas migration is basically the overall number. You haven't actually produced that number yet. People are going to be voting, I think, two weeks from today. Like, these details matter, don't they? They don't need to be out a bit sooner than they have been?
JAMES PATERSON: Raf, of course, the details matter and of course, the details will be provided in a timely way, as is normal in election campaigns. I mean, we've got two more weeks to go before people can cast their early votes, and we've four more weeks to go before election day. That is plenty of time for us to continue to outline these policies and continue to provide this detail. We're not going to dump it all on people in one day and have hundreds of different policies that they have to get over. We're going to produce this in a staged, and careful, and methodical way.
RAF EPSTEIN: Are you worried about the polls?
JAMES PATERSON: No, I'm not. The polls show that this election is going to be close. They show that it's within the margin of error, that either party could win the election, depending on how we perform over the next four weeks. And I think as Australians contemplate, can they afford another three years of Anthony Albanese and Labor? Many of them will decide that they can't afford that for their families or for their communities.
RAF EPSTEIN: Are you worried about the comparisons with Donald Trump? For Peter Dutton to be compared with Donald Trump?
JAMES PATERSON: I know the Prime Minister is desperate to get that line up and is trying to allude to that in all of his speeches and press conferences. I don't actually think it's a very responsible thing to do.
RAF EPSTEIN: Can I interrupt again, James? Just to say I went to Michael Sukkar's seat and I went to the suburb of Croydon. Three people brought up that comparison and said Peter Dutton is like Donald Trump in a good way. They just brought that up on their own, I didn't even mention Donald Trump. I do think it is something that comes up from time to time. You're allowed to attack the government's lines, that's legitimate. Is it a problem for you that some voters just automatically associate Peter Dutton with Donald Trump?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, just to finish my answer from before, the reason why people are talking about that is because the government is desperately trying to get that up, and they're using the unions and proxies of theirs out there in the community to try and raise the prospect of that. I think it's a deeply unfair comparison. I think Peter Dutton is a very different person. He's a traditional centre-right Liberal, and that's how he intends to govern our country. And I actually think it is irresponsible. I mean, our relationship with the United States is very important. This President is different from previous Presidents; we have to deal with him in a careful way in the national interest. And I don't think introducing comparisons to him in a domestic political context for partisan advantage is a responsible way to deal with this. We've got some big issues on the table with the United States. I don't know how it makes it easier to get an exemption from the tariffs, for example, that have been put on our exporters, by weaponising Donald Trump in a domestic context.
RAF EPSTEIN: Thank you for joining us this morning. I appreciate it.
JAMES PATERSON: Thanks, Raf.
ENDS