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February 8, 2024
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning. I'd just like to make a few comments about a very disturbing story in the Financial Review by Andrew Tillett this morning, which says the Minister for Defence and the Department of Defence and the Australian Defence Force have been at loggerheads and have been fighting like cats and dogs at a time in which we're facing our greatest strategic peril as a nation. It is deeply concerning that Richard Marles cannot get on top of his department and cannot deliver the capability that our ADF and our nation needs in a time of strategic crisis. This article reported that the Minister had failed to read and respond to dozens and dozens of briefs that the department had sent him. The department has complained that he'd failed to secure the funding that they need to deliver the Defence Strategic Review, and in turn, the Minister is apparently saying of the department that they are incompetent and incapable of delivering what the government asked of them. This is a terrible state of affairs and its time for the Prime Minister to step in, it's time for him to either get his minister performing and back him to deliver the things he needs or move him on and get someone who can do the job. It is a terrible state of affairs that a Deputy Prime Minister has to go to the Expenditure Review Committee, cap in hand, asking for more money for defence, and fails every single time because he gets rolled by Penny Wong, Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher. This really is a dire state of affairs and we should expect better, particularly in the grave strategic circumstances we face.
JOURNALIST: Do you trust, the Minister to comfortably and successfully deliver the AUKUS program, given the huge scale of that task?
PATERSON: Well, this article raises very serious questions about whether or not he and the department of capable of doing that together and really have to get their house in order. This is not a time for drift. This is not a time for bickering. This is not a time for failing to read your briefs. Or, as the AFR reported, send the briefs back because they've got spelling mistakes, rather than deal with the substantive issues that are raised in them. It is a deeply concerning state of affairs, and the Prime Minister really needs to step up today
and explain what's going on between his Minister for Defence and the department, get them back on track and make sure they can deliver critically important projects like AUKUS.
JOURNALIST: On the sentence handed out to Dr Yang Hengjun earlier this week. Do you believe the government's response in just calling in the ambassador is strong enough? Do you want to see more targeted measures, potentially sanctions?
PATERSON: We will support whatever measures the government wants to bring forward in Dr Yang's interests and to secure Dr Yang's release, and we're prepared to work with the government in a bipartisan way to support them to do that. I think all measures do need to be on the table. I think we need to consider all options. I won't publicly canvass them here because it is sensitive, and I don't want to do anything to make Dr Yang's circumstances any worse than they already are. We know he has been held for five years, under very difficult circumstances, with inadequate medical care, inadequate legal representation, inadequate access to family and consulate support.
JOURNALIST: There was a lot of this debate yesterday in Parliament yesterday around the government's support of Israel and we know that Penny Wong has had to assuage concerns from her own backbench about the decision to strip funding to UNRWA. Is the government taking the right tack on this here? Are they being strong enough on this issue?
PATERSON: I was very alarmed to read in the Capital Brief publication yesterday that 20 Labor backbenchers went to Penny Wong to complain that she had paused funding for UNRWA because there had been credible accusations of UNRWA employees had been involved in the 7th October terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel, that resulted in the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. I would have thought that any Australian, but particularly members of parliament, would understand the importance of making sure that taxpayers money did not go to a terrorist organisation. And I was even more concerned to read there was at least one Labor backbencher who complained that the Minister for Home Affairs finally activated the Victims of Terrorism Payment, which grants up to $75,000 to people directly affected by the 7th October attacks. I mean, who could possibly take issue with that? Are we seriously saying that Australians whose loved ones lost their lives on the 7th of October, don't deserve the support they're entitled to as Australian citizens? I mean, that is a disgrace.
JOURNALIST: The Foreign Minister suggested she was willing to resume funding to UNRWA once the allegations were cleared. Is she moving too fast in taking that approach? What do you make of the credibility of the allegations?
PATERSON: Well, the Foreign Minister has been repeatedly warned that UNRWA is, at the very least, an organisation that has promoted pro terrorist content and attacked and included anti-Semitic content in school books that they teach in their schools. That funding from UNRWA had been siphoned off to Hamas to help build their terrorist tunnels and UNRWA employees have been involved in the 7th October attacks. Despite those warnings, the Foreign Minster still gave millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers money to this organisation. That's a worrying thing. If the Foreign Minister now resumes that funding without being absolutely certain that not one Australian dollar goes to a terrorist organisation, and I think her position is in grave doubt, as the opposition leader has said. It is untenable for an Australian Minister to allow taxpayers money to an organisation which is listed under our law in its entirety as a terrorist organisation.
Thank you.
ENDS
