February 13, 2024
Tuesday 13 February 2024
Interview on Sky News The Kenny Report
Subjects: The Albanese government’s weak handling on detainees and defence
CHRIS KENNY: Let's go back to Canberra now and catch up with Senator James Paterson, who is the Shadow Home Affairs Minister. Thanks for joining us again, James. You, of course, deserve credit for flushing out the information we have about the 149 convicted criminals now in the community. Yet we can't seem to get here even after two days of questioning in Parliament enough information about where everybody is, who's under surveillance and who's not. And we learned that there aren't even any applications made to put any of them into preventative detention.
JAMES PATERSON: That's exactly right, Chris. I mean, it's a scandal that the government decided over summer that they could get away with stopping publishing this information and withholding it from the Australian public. It shouldn't have required the Senate in the estimates process to draw this out of them. But you can see now that it's out there in the public why they didn't want it to be released in the first place. It's shocking from the severity of the crimes of the offenders. Seven murderers, 37 sex offenders, 72 other violent criminals, plus domestic violence abusers, drug traffickers and a nebulous category of international crimes involving five people. From that to their failure to apply for a single preventative detention order, and the fact that 18 of these people have been arrested for reoffending in the community, seven of them have breached the conditions under their visa, and the Border Force and Home Affairs departments were unable to say if any of those people, or how many of those people are in custody. This government has been a shambles from start to finish when it comes to this issue, and it goes to the heart of the core problem here, which is, they are weak on national security, they are slow on community safety, they do not prioritise these issues and Australians are victims as a result.
KENNY: Well, exactly. I found it astounding today to see Andrew Giles in Parliament saying they're still preparing applications, not that they're waiting for findings or results, they're still preparing their arguments, their application on this issue. And let's just have a look at him also criticising you.
[CLIP] ANDREW GILES: It's very disappointing to hear how Senator Paterson has characterised this, because he knows, because he himself talked about the very high threshold that is required to make a successful application for an order of this type.
KENNY: Well, James Paterson, your response to that? But I stress, firstly, though, I don't care what the threshold is. The applications need to be made post-haste.
PATERSON: Exactly right, Chris. So what Andrew Giles is referring to is a speech I gave in 2021 as chair of the Intelligence Committee, referring to a similar, but not exactly the same scheme to detain terrorists after the end of their sentences. The difference here is that that's a continuing detention regime for people who are already in prison. So it's not as urgent as this case where we've got 149 people out on the streets committing crimes against Australians, but obviously it is urgent. Now, I was prepared to be generous towards the government and say, okay, maybe not all 149 applications would be filed by now to get those people off the streets. But even in my wildest dreams, I thought they were competent enough in two months to make one application. Perhaps they could start with the murderers. Or perhaps they could start with child sex offenders. I mean, your prioritisation here shouldn't be too hard, and with the resources at the Department of Home Affairs, no resources should be spared. Everything should be thrown at this. And yet it seems like they've just got a couple of people sitting around slowly working their way through this, rather than the urgency that this demanded that the Australian people are entitled to expect from the government.
KENNY: It is deeply worrying, and we will come back to it. But before I let you go; I want to get your thoughts on our defence vulnerabilities. We're waiting to hear the government's response on the surface fleet review, which shows how vulnerable we are at sea, but also revelations about just how desperately the Defence Force is finding its personnel issues just not getting enough people into the Defence forces.
PATERSON: There are three key things you need in your defence force to defend yourself adequately in a time of crisis. You need platforms. You need munitions. And you need people. And this government is failing on all three. They were supposed to do a short, sharp review into our surface fleet, well a year later where's that up to? They were supposed to acquire ammunition so that we can have something to fire in the event of a crisis, well where's that two years in? And they're supposed to recruit even more people for defence and retain people that we've already got in defence, and they're failing to do that. So it's zero from three for Richard Marles as Defence Minister. And it's shocking weakness again for national security.
KENNY: Yeah well summarised. Thanks for joining us James.
ENDS
