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March 28, 2025
TOM CONNELL: Joining me now is Shadow Home Affairs Minister and Coalition Campaign Spokesman James Paterson. So you'll be talking to us plenty of times over the next five weeks.
JAMES PATERSON: Lucky me.
CONNELL: Lucky you. Anthony Albanese in that first press conference, brandishing his Medicare card. What went through your mind then?
PATERSON: A very odd way to start a campaign because there's no partisan differences when it comes to Medicare at this election. In fact, if anything, we'll be spending more on health than Labor has. We've committed to $9 billion, they've committed $8.5 billion and we'll be restoring the mental health sessions that they cut back, up to 20, which they put down to 10. So I'm not sure where the Prime Minister thinks the difference is here, but if there is one, it favours us.
CONNELL: There is the urgent care clinic, so that's one thing they're doing, you're not. Is there any reputational damage that the Coalition has done or had in the past in terms of Medicare to any element? Do you need to assure voters on that?
PATERSON: Well, Labor certainly runs scare campaigns a number of times on this issue. This is their third attempt in 10 years to run a scare campaign on Medicare. Infamously, they sent text messages in the lead-up to the 2016 election with false claims that purported to come from Medicare, which was a disgraceful act. And they're trying that again. But the record, actually frankly counts in our favour. When Peter Dutton was Health
Minister, the bulk billing rate was 84 per cent. It rose to 88 per cent in the pandemic period under us in government, and it has fallen to 77 per cent under Labor.
CONNELL: But it was going to be 0% if the 2014 budget passed, the GP co-payment. Is that the reputation? Does that thing still get raised with you at all? Do you think that's enough in the past?
PATERSON: In my nine years in the parliament, which was after that period, not once has an ordinary voter raised that issue with me. Certainly, the Labor Party is trying to make an issue of it.
CONNELL: Peter Dutton and part of his inspiration on how to run government and sort of have values I suppose as well. He's pointed towards John Howard, he's obviously a respected Prime Minister and revered within your party. Is it something that will inspire younger voters though? A lot of them would never have voted in a Howard election and certainly not a Howard victory, I suppose, if you go back to 2004.
PATERSON: Well, I think any Australian who's familiar with their history will know the amazing job that the Howard government did cleaning up the mess that they inherited from Labor. It was 13 long years of Labor, and it did enormous damage to our economy, not unlike what this government has done even in just three years, or what the Rudd-Gillard government did in six years. I think Australians will remember that it is often the job of Liberal and National governments to clean up the mess left with them by Labor, particularly on debt and deficit. And this government has made a lot of claims about that, but the budget revealed the lie: 10 years of deficits, gross debt rising to 1.2 trillion dollars. I mean that is an extraordinary legacy of this government in just three years.
CONNELL: But is it a nod as well to the fact that when you last left government, there were also no surpluses on the horizon?
PATERSON: We were in the middle of a global pandemic, Tom, and we took the necessary steps to support the economy and Australians.
CONNELL: But it's not like it was returning to a structural surplus four, five, six years. Again, there were none on the rise then.
PATERSON: Well, that's because we had very conservative forecasts coming out of a global pandemic, and that was appropriate policy settings at the time. We took the necessary [steps] to support Australians and to support the economy and jobs and we saved a lot of lives and livelihoods by doing so.
CONNELL: Big ticket item out of the budget in reply speech was the gas reservation policy, so Peter Dutton says the price of gas will go from $14 to $10, the wholesale price. Is that an election promise?
PATERSON: Well, it's the advice that we've received. It's the independent modelling that we have had conducted on this policy, and that is the advice of the impact...
CONNELL: So it's not a promise, though?
PATERSON: Well, what I'm saying is, Tom, if you do two really critical things in conjunction, you increase supply by speeding up approvals, by investing in gas infrastructure, by getting rid of taxpayer-funded environmental activism, and at the same time, implement an east coast domestic gas reservation, which forces more supply into the domestic market. That will drive down prices. And the advice we have is that it will be around $10.
CONNELL: Labor had advice too, independent modelling.
PATERSON: Well, and they lied to the Australian people 97 times.
CONNELL: They didn't lie, they had their modelling, this is your modelling.
PATERSON: Well, if it wasn't a lie, why has the Prime Minister not repeated it since the election? It was a very cynical pre-election move. They knew they could never deliver a $275 reduction. And look at where we are.
CONNELL: So how will it actually happen? Because in terms of a gas reservation policy, the Commonwealth only controls export licences. Will you use that leverage? Will it be a threat to the amount of gas companies can export?
PATERSON: Well, we will use any public policy leaders available to us to make sure that Australia, which is a resource-rich country which exports gas all around the world, doesn't have a shortage of gas in our own country. It is madness that we have that. And no wonder gas prices are up 34% on this governance watch, in addition to the electricity price increases we've also had.
CONNELL: And when you say any available tool, could that mean tearing up contracts at the moment?
PATERSON: No, no, we've said very clearly that the foundational export contracts with our key partners in the region, like Korea and Japan, will be respected, will be upheld. We won't be tinkering with those. What we will be relying on is the spot market to force more of that supply into the domestic market.
CONNELL: And the force element, so you're not clear yet how you'll do it?
PATERSON: I'll defer to Senator Susan McDonald and our Shadow Energy Minister, Ted O'Brien.
CONNELL: Is there work to be done, or is there a clear method?
PATERSON: It is a fiendishly complex area of public policy, Tom. I'm not going to wade into minute detail on that. Ted and Susie can talk about that in great depth if you want to.
CONNELL: We will have them on, I'm sure, when they come on the program. The Labor price cap they wanted to introduce, well, they didn't introduce it with $12. The Coalition said, you'll have less gas because of a price cap, less exploration. Now you're talking about a $10 price and that won't have an impact?
PATERSON: We're not having a price cap, we're not proposing a price cap.
CONNELL: But you're saying the price will go to $10.
PATERSON: The price will fall because we will force more supply into the market. It is madness, Tom, that my home state of Victoria is contemplating building an $800 million import terminal to bring gas in from the international market to Victoria when we are a resource-rich state that's got hundreds of years of supply...
CONNELL: The only way to do that in a relatively short term is not gas in Queensland because the pipes run at maximum capacity through winter. So we're talking what, Narrabri or something in Victoria, you'll have to have the states on board, won't you?
PATERSON: Well, one of the aspects of our announcement was a billion dollars investment into gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage, because that is a key part of the problem. We do have to get gas into those markets.
CONNELL: So is that sort of proving it against states not wanting to, New South Wales or Victoria, not wanting new gas?
PATERSON: I cannot think of any state government that will refuse more gas supply, particularly in this environment.
CONNELL: But haven't they been doing that?
PATERSON: There are experts who are saying that, for example, in Victoria this winter, we could have gas shortages. Now, no state government, Labor or Liberal, would want to bear the responsibility of that. And if we win this election and a mandate for this, I think the states will come on board.
CONNELL: 41,000 public servants will go. In Peter Dutton's speech, it was Canberra-based public servants. There are only 80,000 in Canberra, so half of the public servants in this town will go?
PATERSON: Tom, we'll outline the details of how we'll get to our target of reducing the number of public servants. But we've been very clear, we don't think Australians have got good value from the increase of 41,000 that's happened on this government's watch in three years. They have increased more public servants in three years than the Rudd and Gillard governments did in six years, and that was not because they were a particularly conservative fiscal government. They were pretty reckless too, but this government has even surpassed that.
CONNELL: So that number might be out of the total nationwide, and I know I'm not going to sort of win Liberal hard heads by saying poor Canberra, but that would be, so 40,000 jobs gone in Canberra, that would be one in six Canberra jobs, that would decimate the town.
PATERSON: Tom, as I said, we are going to talk more about how we'll achieve that objective in the coming weeks. You will have that detail.
CONNELL: Will it need more contractors?
PATERSON: I'm not going to go ahead of my colleagues who have announcements to make in that area until it is time to talk about it.
CONNELL: Okay, finally, I guess a broader sort of parameter question. Last election, the Coalition lost 19 seats. Eight of them were to Greens and Teals. Is it fair to say you have to win a decent portion of them back to have a successful campaign from a strategy point of view?
PATERSON: We are highly competitive in both Green seats and Teal seats, and the message that's resonating there, particularly in the Teal seats, is what you bought at the last election is not what you've got after the election. Those Teals have changed since they came to Canberra. They ran basically as quasi-softer, friendlier versions of the Liberal Party, but they voted, in Monique Ryan's case, 77% of the time with the Greens, in Zoe Daniel's case, 76% of the time with the Greens, and this is a particularly extreme version of the Greens political party. They have harboured antisemitism, they're obsessed with Israel and Gaza. They're completely out of touch. And the Teals did not say before the election that's who they'd be voting with.
CONNELL: So you're confident you'll win a decent proportion of them back? Because it's nearly half a seat you lost. This is almost forgotten about.
PATERSON: We're highly competitive in many of those Teal seats. We're also very competitive in those Green contests as well.
CONNELL: James Paterson, we will talk again. Congratulations on your new role, and we will talk through the campaign.
PATERSON: Thank you, Tom.
ENDS