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April 22, 2025
SARA SALLY:
Well, let's have a further look at politics now. And it's that time in the election campaign when early voting begins. So, will there be any more major policy announcements from the major parties? The Australian Electoral Commission estimates that around half of all Australians who are eligible to vote will cast an early ballot. James Paterson is the Coalition Campaign Spokesman and Shadow Home Affairs Minister, and joins me now. James Paterson, welcome back to Breakfast.
JAMES PATERSON:
Good morning.
SARA SALLY:
Before we get to the election, the opposition leader Peter Dutton has been among those making tributes to Pope Francis overnight. How will you remember the Pope?
JAMES PATERSON:
I'm personally not religious, but I have great admiration for people like the Pope who've lived a life of service and sacrifice to others in service of his faith in his church, but also people in desperate need around the world. I think that is a rare quality in the modern world and deserves great admiration and respect. And I know Catholics in Australia, around the world, will be in mourning for the loss of the Pope today.
SARA SALLY:
Thank you. If we return our focus to the election campaign, early voting does get underway today. Apart from defence spending, does the Coalition still have major policy announcements to make?
JAMES PATERSON:
Yes, we will have a few more policy announcements to make including defence spending, but also on domestic violence, which I know you were foreshadowing with your other guests later this morning, in the coming days.
SARA SALLY:
Early voting is getting underway. Are you worried about the latest polling and how the Coalition is tracking at this stage?
JAMES PATERSON:
No, I'm not. What all the polling shows is that this election will be close, particularly in the key seats around the country, and that there's a very significant number of voters who are yet to make their minds up. Many who have not yet tuned into the detail of the election, some of whom won't do so until the final days of the campaign, even as they walk into the polling booth. Research shows that as much as 10 per cent of voters can still be undecided at that point. So there's still plenty of time for us to get out our message about how people will be better off under a Coalition government with our 25 cent litre cut on petrol and diesel tax, with up to $1,200 back on their income tax, with a plan to get the cost of living under control.
SARA SALLY:
What's your research in the polling telling you about what's not working for the Coalition at the moment on the campaign trail?
JAMES PATERSON:
You'll understand, Sally, if I don't want to go into great detail about our internal research publicly during a campaign, but this was always going to be a tight election, a close election. It was always going be an uphill battle for the Coalition because no one has unseated a first term government for 100 years in this country, and the Labor party had a significant lead in terms of seats going into this election compared to us. So we always had a big task ahead of us, but we're confident that in the remaining two weeks, we can get our message out and win voters over.
SARA SALLY:
Are you picking up disengagement in general?
JAMES PATERSON:
Yes, I think no question that's a feature of this campaign that voters are disengaged from the political system, and are not following the election very closely. When asked, they often don't have a great deal of recall about things that have happened in the campaign. And that's understandable, frankly, because people have other priorities in their life other than listening to politicians and tuning into what we have to say and considering our policies, particularly in the middle of a cost of living crisis, when they can barely see past their next electricity bill or their next visit to the grocery store, contemplating politics is beyond a lot of people understandably.
SARA SALLY:
It's interesting, with the cost of living crisis at the moment, was there an alternative view that people might be really tuned in because household by household, there's a lot on the line at the moment.
JAMES PATERSON:
Some people certainly are, some are highly engaged, and they're looking for that instant relief. And that's one of the reasons why we're proposing that cut in petrol and diesel tax, and why we are proposing a tax offset for the cost of living. And that is being well received by Australians who are struggling. But others just have so much on in their own lives with their family, with their work, with their ordinary lives that they just can't tune into every detail of politics, and that's understandable and probably a healthy thing. There are some countries around the world where elections are live or die. And in Australia, while we've got many differences with our political opponents, we're a stable, prosperous democracy, and that should always be the case.
SARA SALLY:
So you're saying that there will still be a domestic violence policy announcement as one of those is yet to come from the Coalition. What's the thinking behind leaving this so late in the campaign if you've got a disengaged electorate anyway, and with every day that goes by, more and more people would have voted anyway?
JAMES PATERSON:
Well, domestic violence is an issue which is very close to Peter Dutton's heart. As you know, he was a police officer for a decade before he entered the Parliament, and he worked on many cases involving violence against women and children. It's one of the reasons why, as Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, he cancelled more than 6000 visas. And it's a worthy policy of attention in its own right. We didn't want to merge it in with any other policy initiative. And in the coming days, Peter will have more to say about it. But yesterday, as part of our crime and community safety announcement, we did announce one particularly important measure that deals with violence against women, and that is cracking down on the scourge of the importation of date-rape drugs, which is a very troubling trend, which has escalated in recent years. We're not scanning enough mail and cargo that comes into this country, and contraband like date-rape drugs and other illegal substances are coming in through the mail, and we must stop it.
SARA SALLY:
Will the Coalition be doing enough to finally deal with the issue of the thousands of people who are the names and the faces behind unmet needs when it comes to domestic violence services?
JAMES PATERSON:
We must do everything we can to help people in these desperate circumstances. They deserve the support of state and federal governments, and we will have initiatives which will seek to address that. But this is a problem which I think we can be candid that no political party or no government of any stripe has solved, and it is going to require continued investment and focus.
SARA SALLY:
On a separate issue, the Electoral Commission is investigating almost 50,000 unauthorised political pamphlets distributed in independent MP Allegra Spender's seat of Wentworth in Sydney's eastern suburbs. She says the pamphlet has false and offensive claims. You're the spokesperson for the Liberal campaign. What do you know about this issue?
JAMES PATERSON:
Nothing more than that has been reported in the media about it, and I condemn any unauthorised political material that's circulated in this campaign. It is illegal and should be dealt with harshly by the law. All the material that the Liberal party circulates in the campaign, we authorise properly and appropriately.
SARA SALLY:
On the issue of foreign affairs, have you or anyone from the Coalition received a briefing yet from the government about the story of Russia reportedly seeking to base aircraft in Papua?
JAMES PATERSON:
No, we haven't, and we're very disappointed that the government has yet to provide that. It is a bipartisan tradition in this country to brief the opposition on significant national security matters. In the last campaign, we briefed the opposition about a Chinese Navy vessel off the West Australian coast and then, leading up to the last campaign, we briefed them on the Solomon Islands agreement. I don't understand why the government thinks it's appropriate to hide this information from the opposition, and really, they should explain what it is that they don't want us to know.
SARA SALLY:
Could it be that there's no information at all to hide?
JAMES PATERSON:
No, I don't believe that is likely at all, and there have been shifting explanations from different government ministers about this. I mean, on Sunday, Murray Watt said that there'd been no proposal from the Russian government to Indonesia. No other senior minister has made that claim. And I think that needs to be urgently clarified. Are they really saying there's no proposal from Russia, that Russia has no interest in basing air assets in the region? I'd be very sceptical if that were the case.
SARA SALLY:
James Paterson, thank you for your time again on Breakfast.
JAMES PATERSON:
Thank you.
ENDS