June 11, 2024
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KENNY HEATLEY: The Coalition is calling for an annual report on interference from China. It argues the Office of National Intelligence needs to take action against Beijing's propaganda operations. Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson will put forward the proposal in a meeting today. Joining me live is Shadow Home Affairs and Cyber Security Minister James Paterson. Good to see you, James. We'll get to that in just a moment. But first I want to ask you will the Coalition commit to a new 2030 target by, before, the next election, rather.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, the most important thing that we've said in the last week, which is not new, is that it's very clear that the government won't meet its own target for 2030 of 43% reductions. All the independent experts in industry who’ve looked at this say we're miles away from that because the centerpiece of that plan is 82% renewables by 2030. We’re not even halfway there to that task and on nowhere near the trajectory. So, we'll have more to say about our own policies prior to the election, but we're not going to sign up to a lie to the Australian people or the international community that the targets that Labor has signed us up to are achievable, or sustainable.
HEATLEY: The PM says watering down climate targets would be catastrophic for relations with the Pacific and the rest of the world. How would you explain this change to them, in particular the Pacific nations?
PATERSON: Well, I don't think it's any better to lie to them, to say that we can achieve something that we actually can't achieve. Under the Coalition we will do as much emissions reduction as we can without harming our economy adversely, and we'll do it better than Labor will, because we have a reliable, proven technology in emissions free nuclear technology, which we propose to roll out in Australia. We're the only party putting forward a coherent plan for reaching net zero by 2050. Labor can’t do it on the technology mix that it's proposing.
HEATLEY: The blue-ribbon seats that the Liberals lost to the Teals; how does watering down climate targets convince voters there to come back? How do you get elected again?
PATERSON: I live in one of those blue-ribbon Teal seats, and I’m Patron Senator for one of those Teal seats, and what I've encountered in the electorate is a lot of support and excitement for our emissions free nuclear energy policy, because they understand that it's a technology that's widely used in the international community among all G20 nations, except one, among every country that's got an ambitious emissions reduction targets, except one. And that it's not responsible to try to reduce our emissions without having a baseload, reliable, 24/7 electricity source like nuclear. We can achieve our 2050 targets, unlike Labor, because we're proposing to use technology that's widely available internationally that can achieve it.
HEATLEY: Okay. You're speaking today at the Global Information Conference Australia in Adelaide. You want Australia's peak intelligence body to issue annual threat assessments calling out Chinese foreign interference. Why do you think this is important?
PATERSON: Whether Australians know it or not right now we are on the receiving end of information warfare by foreign authoritarian states, including China. What those campaigns aim to do is influence our thinking and constrain our choices, so that ultimately we make decisions that are consistent with their national interest instead of our own. Now, the good news is that we can push back, and we should push back, and we can do so in a way that's consistent with our values. All we have to do is tell the truth about what they're up to, particularly in our own region, particularly in the Pacific. We should be calling out their malign activities, their grey-zone activities, which involve trying to capture elites in developing countries to corrupt them and to steer them away from the national interest of those countries. And if we do that, that will be a pretty powerful deterrent for countries like China engaging in that behaviour, and it will also equip those countries to better able to defend themselves against it.
HEATLEY: So is the Albanese government, in your opinion, too soft on TikTok and China over these attacks? TikTok - just an example, because there's been a bit of a to-and-fro over that - but in the hope of repairing relations in exchange for lifting trade bans. Would you agree with that?
PATERSON: I don't think we're doing enough to defend our own democracy against external threats, including by addressing vulnerabilities like TikTok. And I don't think we're doing enough to help other democracies in our region defend themselves. That's why I'm proposing that the Office of National Intelligence publish an annual, unclassified assessment of the geopolitical trends and concerning developments in our region involving foreign interference and espionage, cyber attacks, and other things. To call that out, and that be accompanied by an annual speech by the Director-General of Intelligence to give some flavour to what we're seeing happen in our region with the intelligence that we collect, including with our partners.
HEATLEY: Would you worry that that might sour relations between Australia and China though?
PATERSON: Yes, there may be some bilateral consequences for doing so, but I don't think we should be complicit with our silence. I don't think we should observe abhorrent things happening in our region, which undermines our security and the security of our friends and partners, and stay silent while that happens. Because the reality is the problem is not us calling out that behaviour; it's the behaviour in the first place by the People's Republic of China and others. It causes the problems in the bilateral relationship and in our region, and we should be proud and open as a democracy in calling out that malign behaviour.
HEATLEY: James Paterson, great to have you on the program. Thank you.
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