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October 24, 2023
ANDREW BOLT: Joining me is the opposition's home affairs spokesman, James Paterson. James, thanks for your time the government and keep this secret for a month now wont tell us anything about these so-called asylum seekers but there’s only 11 of them. Are this not so many? Should we care?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, Andrew, we've seen this movie before, haven't we? Labor gets into office, they weaken the strong border protection policies of the Liberal and National parties. The boats start again and human misery results. And it's only with the election again of a Liberal and Nationals government that we stop the boats, that we secure the borders, that we closed down detention centres, get kids out of detention centres and even close down some of those regional processing centres. But Labor hasn't learned from their mistakes, and I am deeply worried that we now have the first people transferred to Nauru in nine years and the government is not willing to be open and transparent at all because I fear we are headed into those dark times again.
BOLT: Yes, look, I'm not going to start panicking about 11. They said, well the boats were to rickety to turn back. So they brought them in but I don't know. It all starts with a few and then ends up with well whose knows how many. James Paterson another issue, a little bit like that last one that came out of a Senate estimates hearing late yesterday. Solar panels, now Australians have gone absolutely nuts on them, you know and the thing is, 99% of them are imported and they all need smart inverters to convert the energy into electricity. But of those smart inverters. More than half come from communist China. They're all hooked up into the Internet and they could be switched off by China who’s put a bug in there or hacks or does a hack or something. Liberal Senator Holly Hughes as the government expert about exactly this yesterday.
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BOLT: James We've gone from relying on our own coal fired power stations using our own coal for electricity. Now to using a lot of solar panels among the other things that can be switched off by China, it seems to me, an idiotic thing to do.
PATERSON: Andrew, energy security is national security. And at the same time that Europe has learned the danger of being dependent on an authoritarian neighbour for their energy source and they're seeking to reduce it, Australia is going in the opposite direction. We're moving from sovereign controlled sources of energy to a sources of energy were we are dependent on an authoritarian neighbour. It was several months ago that I first revealed that 58% of the smart solar inverters being installed in Australia were made by companies controlled or linked to the Chinese Communist Party, including Huawei. That was on the front page of The Australian newspaper, through Cameron Stewart. And then several weeks later, the respected independent Cybersecurity Cooperative Research Centre released a report backing my concerns. It's only now the government has publicly acknowledged this risk, admitted this risk and said it's a problem. But in the meantime, they've done absolutely nothing at all about it. Every day, right now, there are thousands of these inverters being installed on the roofs of family homes, small businesses, schools, community organisations. And every one of those represents a cyber security risk to this country, which is activated, if taken advantage of by a strategic adversary like the Chinese Communist Party, could shut down our grid. Now, we cannot afford to be this vulnerable in such an uncertain strategic environment. But the Albanese government has no plan whatsoever to deal with it.
BOLT: James, one last thing. I was sitting down on the weekends for the funeral, which is why I couldn't do the show last night. Apologies to viewers from my hotel in the city. I could look across the border to the Port of Darwin, which dominates the estuary up there and behind that is the Darwin industry zone and there is a rail link, you can go straight to Palmerston which is a big satellite city, there's a gas hub as well. And I can't believe we have leased this clearly strategic site to China, the Port of Darwin, to China and the Albanese Government last Friday when, you know, everyone closes up shop that the time to dumb bad news announced just before the prime minister flies to China as well. Oh, actually change your mind, there's no security issues with this it's all fine and what really underlined it for me and thanks to my cousin's husband for pointing me out on this one. What I didn't know and what makes the decision even more bonkers is that the US military actually has a huge depot behind the wharf for use in times of war. How can this not be sensitive?
PATERSON: Andrew you can't understand it. I can't understand it. And when he was in opposition, Anthony Albanese couldn't understand it either. In fact, he described it as a grave mistake and he promised if Labor was elected that they would deal with it and he would commission a review. Well, finally they did commission a review, they have not released it, we do not know what it says. As you say on Friday afternoon, after doing his press conference for the day after the Parliament has risen and just before he flies to the United States, he dropped the decision that the government will not be doing anything about this at all. So I really hope, Andrew, that this is not a quid pro quo ahead of his visit to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping. I really hope it is not in exchange for the lifting of sanctions on Australian products. Because as we know, those were unlawfully applied in the first place. There is no legitimate basis for it and it was always incumbent of the Chinese government to remove those for that reason. They would have failed if the challenges at the World Trade Organisation were allowed to proceed. So I really hope that this is not a policy concession to China from the Albanese government because they promised they would not back down when it comes to Australian sovereignty.
BOLT: Hoping and praying and hoping and praying. I tell you what, Kimberley Kitchen, the late Kimberley Kitchen, the late senator, lovely, lovely woman, friend of mine I said to her the last conversation I had "Labor is going to go soft on China". "Of course". and I think this might be part of it, thank you so much for your time, James Paterson.
ENDS
