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March 31, 2025
Transcript – Sky News Credlin
31 March 2025
E&OE
PETA CREDLIN:
Now to Coalition HQ, it's in the seat of Parramatta this time, so the edge suburbs of Sydney. We will go there every Monday night now that we are in the campaign proper. We'll catch up with the Shadow Home Affairs Minister, James Paterson, who's also now been named as the official Coalition headquarters campaign spokesman. Well, Senator, you are in the war room. I'm delighted to cross to you there tonight. Part of me wishes I was in there amongst it all. But of course now I've got a different role, as do you, in this campaign. Newspoll, there'll be a lot of Libs out there scratching their heads today thinking you've had a sluggish start. What would you say to them?
JAMES PATERSON:
Well, Peta, you've seen a few of these campaigns yourself, and you know that these polls go up and down. But actually, to be at the start of the campaign, to be roughly 50-50 in the polls with an incumbent government in its first term is a remarkable achievement. And it shows that this election is up for grabs, that we can win this election, but we must win the campaign. And it requires us to get our message out, our positive message for making Australia a more prosperous and secure country, but also reminding Australians what they've experienced under the Albanese government over the last three years. The worst loss in living standards in Australian history, the worst loss of living standards in the developed world since the end of the pandemic. And can Australians really afford another three years like that? We don't think they can, we think we've got a better way.
PETA CREDLIN:
Talk to me about fighting the dog. I think coalition supporters want to know that you will, you know, fight down to every vote, that you will pursue every seat. How's the sort of feeling in CHQ? What's coming to you about the target seats? Is that the case?
JAMES PATERSON:
Well we've got a very ambitious target seat list at this election and every month more seats get added to that list based on data, based on evidence, particularly in our home state of Victoria, Peta, where seats we never dreamed of being competitive in are coming on the target seat lists. And we hear intelligence from the Labor side that they keep adding seats to their defensive key seat list, seats they've always held and never worried about before and probably took for granted, they're now doubling down. And you can see evidence of that on the social media pages of some Labor MPs who are pretty low energy in their approach to their electorates in the past, who are all of a sudden turning up to the opening of a car door and that tells you everything you need to know about where this fight will be and where seats are that we can win.
PETA CREDLIN:
Talk to me about what's happened over the weekend. A man was shot by police in Melbourne. He's a former immigration detainee. So one of Labor's released foreign criminals. He's been out on bail. He was released after that High Court ruling. I thought you gave the government legislation that it said it needed well over a year ago now to deal with this.
JAMES PATERSON:
You're absolutely right, Peta. That's exactly what the Parliament did. At the Coalition's urging 16 months ago, we passed a Preventative Detention Order regime, which allowed the Government to apply to the courts to take people off the streets who are a risk to community safety from this cohort. Now, this person was apparently on bail, had apparently been bailed five times according to reporting in the Herald Sun today, and is exactly the case study of someone who should have been off the street thanks to a Preventative Detention Order. But neither Tony Burke nor any of his predecessors have got on their skates and got any of these applications into the court and so all of the 300 of these people released into the community are free in the community and are re-offending at an extraordinary rate. Over 100 of them have been charged with new offences since they were released from immigration detention.
PETA CREDLIN:
Just quickly, I mean the Chinese call it a research vessel. You and I would call it a spy ship. There's no doubt about that. It's circling southern Australia. When he was asked about it today, the risk is that it's going to track our deep sea submarine cables and other things. When asked about today, the Prime Minister was pretty sanguine about the whole thing, pretty relaxed about it. James, should he be relaxed?
JAMES PATERSON:
No, he shouldn't be. It was a flippant and dismissive response from the Prime Minister and one which slurred the professionalism of the men and the women of the Australian Defence Force. He compared what this vessel was doing in our waters, our exclusive economic zone, but also apparently our territorial waters, according to reporting from Andrew Green from the ABC tonight, to what we do in the South China Sea. Now, no Australian vessel is engaging in deep seabed examination in the territorial waters off the coast of China. We don't even have these sorts of vessels. So to compare the two was a false moral equivalence and a slur on the men and women of the ADF, and he should retract that and apologise. And frankly, he should get across the detail. I think from his answer today that he had no idea what he was talking about because he has no natural instinct or interest in national security, and it really shows.
PETA CREDLIN:
I suspect now that we've got caretaker conventions, you'll be getting the briefing that the Prime Minister clearly has not had. James Paterson, thank you. We'll check in with you next week.
ENDS