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March 12, 2025
HAMISH MACDONALD: New local newspapers, they fall under a grouping called Gazette News. They run a number of local pages, including one called the North Shore Lorikeet, covering Hornsby, Ku-ring-gai, Lane Cove and North Sydney. There's one called the Mid North Coaster, covering Coffs Harbour, Port Macquarie, Bellingen. There's some in Victoria, there's the Eastern Melburnian, there's the West Vic Brodgar in south western Victoria, the Gippsland Monitor. Now, the Gazette's three major funders have donated more than $1.7 million to Climate 200. And it's associated candidates, obviously. That's according to disclosures to the Electoral Commission. The Coalition is very upset about this, describing them as fake newspapers. James Paterson is the Shadow Home Affairs Minister. Good morning to you, what's the issue here?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, there's a couple of issues here. This is not transparent. And when the Teals ran at the last election, they promised they would do politics differently. They said integrity was one of their top priorities and that they would fight for transparency. And yet, it now emerges that Teal donors are funding pro-Teal fake newspapers covering the geographic areas which just happened to be seats the Teals are targeting at the next election. And they're using advertising on social media to target voters in those electorates in the lead up to elections. This is a political campaigning tactic masquerading as independent news.
MACDONALD: Just to break that apart, and to be clear, these are not the teal candidates doing this right. You are not alleging that?
PATERSON: It's good that you asked that question because many of the Teal candidates have done interviews for these local newspapers and have shared the content of these local newspapers, thereby promoting them to their communities and never disclosing that it is being funded by their donors, and that it is running pro Teal editorial content in their electorates. And I think that is dishonest. And I think those Teal MPs should come out today and condemn these tactics.
MACDONALD: Is it breaking any rules, though? I mean, all political parties are trying to get information out there in as many ways as they possibly can. For example, using influencers that spread content on social media, there are all sorts of different tools and tactics being deployed. Why this one specifically is a problem for you?
PATERSON: Well, we've written to the AEC to ask them to investigate because we think this constitutes electoral expenditure. And if it is electoral expenditure, as in otherwise, it's motivated to influence the outcome of an election, it needs to be declared, and it hasn't been declared, and it is not being transparently disclosed to the electorate. Voters have a right to know.
MACDONALD: But the people behind this, these Gazette publications are saying this is this is actually independent content, it's not paid content.
PATERSON: Well, it is paid for by Teal donors. It supports Teal candidates. It's glowingly positive about them. It is in to target electorates only. And the Teals themselves have promoted it. So I mean it is a hell of a coincidence if all those things just happen to happen organically, isn't it?
MACDONALD: But it's not. It's not only Teal candidates that they cover, as I understand it.
PATERSON: Yes, but the coverage of the Teal candidates is uniformly positive. Never has a negative article about the Teals appeared in any of these. And they've done things like promote the campaign launches of Teal candidates and invited people to come and attend those launches, and yet their coverage of Liberal, National and Labor MPs is much more critical.
MACDONALD: So do you think this breaches any actual rules?
PATERSON: We think there's a very real risk it does breach the rules, particularly around the disclosure of electoral spending. And that's why we've asked the AEC to investigate. But even if it doesn't technically breach the rules, which the AEC will determine, not us, I think it is very bad form. It's very bad taste, and it's not consistent with what the Teals promised at the last election. But this wouldn't be the first issue where there haven't been consistent. They said they were independents, but they vote on average 73% of the time with Greens.
MACDONALD: Kerry from Gum Scrubs called in, you've seen some of this, have you?
CALLER: Hello Hamish, how you going? No, in the past, we had a paper called the Port Paper. I live near Port Macquarie, and that was found to be funded, and the editor was the National Party, and it was about bad stats about Robert Oakeshott. And it ended up getting closed down because they found it wasn't independent journalism. So I think every party has skin in this game. And it's not good because they get their people who sort of side with them to write letters to the editor, and it looks like a quasi-paper, but it's actually not.
MACDONALD: Wasn't the real deal?
CALLER: No, no, the Nationals did it too. And it makes us, the people on the ground who are just trying to sift through all the propaganda, very hard to disseminate the real facts.
MACDONALD: Kerry, thanks for your call this morning, James Paterson. I'm actually getting lots of texts from people asking me about, well, if I read News Corp papers, they seem to support the Liberal Party. I guess if you read the Guardian, you know, maybe it's more supportive of Labor policies or Greens policies. What's the difference between that and what you were talking about this morning?
PATERSON: Well, no one is suggesting that those are fictitious media outlets that were founded on the eve of an election to support political candidates or political movements.
MACDONALD: But I guess, your side of politics gets a lot of support from a particular type of newspaper, and other parties might be wanting the same.
PATERSON: Those newspapers are, you know, 100 years old; both of them, the Guardian and the News Corp papers, are 100-year-old papers that have both critical coverage and positive coverage of political candidates. Both the Guardian and News Corp, from time to time, run content that is critical of the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Labor Party and the Greens. This content is not. It’s uniformly positive of Teals. It is propaganda. It is not journalism. It does not interrogate their record. You'll never read in these newspapers that the teals vote with the Greens 73% of the time despite running to be independents. And it is dishonest. It is political campaigning masquerading as journalism. And I think it's important that the Teals come out and distance themselves from it and condemn it today.
MACDONALD: How often are you reading critical coverage of Liberal policies in the Australian?
PATERSON: Literally every day, you can open the newspaper today and there will be critical articles of the Liberal Party and the National Party on a range of issues.
MACDONALD: I'm speaking to James Paterson, the Shadow Home Affairs Minister. We spoke to Vasyl Myroshnychenko earlier, the ambassador, the Ukrainian ambassador to Australia, and he was positive about the possibility of Australia sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine as part of a Coalition of the Willing led by the Europeans. Why is it that the Coalition wouldn't do that? He says it is in Australia's interest to support another democratic nation.
PATERSON: Because this is a thought bubble by Anthony Albanese, not a serious proposal. He hasn't substantiated any detail about this or how this would work. I mean, frankly, the Prime Minister can't track a People's Liberation Army Navy task group in our region without Virgin Australia pilots.
MACDONALD: Hold on. You're saying you're only saying you won't because of something Anthony Albanese said? What about the principle of this?
PATERSON: It's not a serious proposal from Anthony Albanese.
MACDONALD: But why wouldn't you? This is a question. You might be in government very soon. So the question is, why wouldn't you contribute?
PATERSON: Because there's no greater responsibility than deploying Australian troops overseas, potentially in harm's way. It should be something which is done with very careful consideration and planning. And the Prime Minister hasn't given that. And he's proposing to deploy them to what is right now an active war zone, potentially without any American support, any security guarantees, from our most important ally in a way that would risk their lives. And it's done so flippantly in a press conference, not the normal way that this is done through very careful consideration by the National Security Committee of Cabinet. And we are not even currently capable of maintaining surveillance on a People's Liberation Army Navy task group in our region. We're relying on Virgin Australia pilots to tell us about what's going on. The idea we can deploy people to the other side of the world safely in a war zone is, frankly, ludicrous.
MACDONALD: On another topic, we spoke to you back in January after that caravan was discovered with explosives in it. I just want to play what it is that you said about it at the time.
[CLIP START]
PATERSON: But I think politicians should call it as we see it, and it's really hard to describe this in any other way. It's certainly how the Jewish community feels. They feel like they are on the receiving end of a domestic terror campaign. And we look at the classic definition of terrorism. It is politically or ideologically motivated violence or religiously motivated violence. It appears very clear to me that the people engaging in these attacks, particularly based on the fact that they're using swastikas, that they're targeting Jews and Israel in their graffiti and the types of venues that they're targeting, that they're either motivated by ideology or they're motivated by religion.
MACDONALD: Just on that day, Senator, but should the politicians leave it to the police to make the determination? I guess that's really at the heart of this question.
PATERSON: Well, the Prime Minister and others eventually called the Adass Israel firebombing a terrorist attack after a number of days. And I think it is appropriate for us to call it as we see it. That doesn't impede any way on the police and what they do. I hope if they see the evidence through their processes that, they also call it this, but I think we should call it as we say it.
[CLIP END]
MACDONALD: James Paterson, now that you know more of the detail, do you think you over-egged it?
PATERSON: No, I stand by everything I said at the time, which was consistent with what the New South Wales Premier said, which he called terrorism based on the briefing that he had.
MACDONALD: But it wasn't consistent with what the police were saying, and that was the key detail.
PATERSON: It was also consistent with what the Prime Minister said. He said it was terrorism.
MACDONALD: If they come on, I'll ask them the same question, but I'm asking you why you went out beyond what the police were saying that were very clear about it and they were not going to give it that definition. You know that this became a huge political issue. I'm just wondering, and this would go to any politician that had done it, whether you went too far?
PATERSON: Hamish, I don't agree with you. The police said that they were taking this seriously, that the counter-terrorism squad was investigating, that it had a potential blast radius of 40m.
MACDONALD: But we had the police on and they were very specific in saying that they were not calling it that, and they said that there was good reason for that.
PATERSON: And as I said to you at the time, I didn't seek to intervene in any way with what the police did, and they were allowed to conduct their investigation as they saw fit. But the facts available at the time clearly indicated that this was a likely terrorist attack, and it was consistent with the advice that we had at the time from the police to call it that. That's why the Prime Minister called it that. That's why the Premier called it that, and that's why I called it that. And critically, I talked about the impact that this had on the Jewish community and how it made the Jewish community feel. They felt terrorised, and with good reason, because the people who are alleged to be responsible for the caravan are also alleged to have actually firebombed a Jewish-owned bakery in Sydney. Now that has terrorised the Jewish community, they feel like they're under attack, and I understand why they feel that way.
MACDONALD: Will you be more cautious about this in the future?
PATERSON: I'll continue to call it as I see it because I think that's what political leaders should do.
MACDONALD: Shouldn't political leaders be sensitive to the impacts that their words have on communities in dialling up, disharmony, discord? We've lived through this here in Sydney. You're in another state. I'm just wondering whether you have a bit more responsibility.
PATERSON: Excuse me, Hamish, we've lived through this in Melbourne too. We've had a synagogue burnt to the ground, and the people responsible for that still haven't been caught. And I tell you, I talk to the Jewish community in Melbourne and Sydney on a weekly basis, and I can tell you how they feel about political leaders standing up for them and political leaders who fail to stand up for them, and I am very comfortable with what I have said about these issues.
MACDONALD: But it's about the responsibility leaders have to be careful with their choice of words in moments that are highly sensitive.
PATERSON: Political leaders represent the people that they are elected to represent, and we are expected to reflect how they feel based on the best information we had at the time. And we did that. And I do not regret one word that I said at that time. And we continue to have a very serious antisemitism crisis in this country. Some people might seek to downplay it, but I think organised criminals concocting fake terrorist plots and targeting the Jewish community is a very serious matter, and we should treat it seriously.
MACDONALD: Just on the question of briefings, obviously, the Home Affairs ministers made some serious allegations about Peter Dutton deliberately avoiding receiving briefings. Is it the case that you did, and he didn't get briefings? Is that, is that where the difference lies here?
PATERSON: I was briefed by the Federal police on Thursday, the 30th of January in the afternoon, along with a member of Peter Dutton's team and we debriefed Peter Dutton afterwards about that. This is a complete red herring that Tony Burke has thrown out there to distract from this government's failings on domestic security issues.
MACDONALD: And in those briefings, were you given any hint that this may be something else?
PATERSON: No. At no stage did they say to us that this was a hoax. They said that all lines of inquiry were open, that they were taking it very seriously, and that the counter-terrorism squad was investigating.
MACDONALD: Okay. I appreciate you coming on this morning, James Paterson; thank you very much.
PATERSON: Thanks, Hamish.
ENDS
