Media
|
Transcripts
July 2, 2026
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: Time to talk to Shadow Defence Minister, Senator James Paterson. James, good morning.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Good to be with you.
CENATIEMPO: I do want to talk about defence for a moment, but I mean that's the attitude of a lot of small business people at the moment, that it's just not worth doing business in Australia anymore. What a sad position we find ourselves in.
PATERSON: Mate, I think it's absolutely tragic. And the overwhelming sentiment I encounter when I talk to small business people, particularly people who have been running business for a long time, they're contemplating retirement, moving on to the next stages. They sincerely say they wouldn't advise the next generation to get into small business, to start a business for themselves. They would advise them just to get a salaried job and be an employee and have an easier life. And I think that's a tragedy for our country. We want more small businesses. We want more entrepreneurship. We want more people having a go and backing themselves. But to encourage them to do that, they need a government that backs them as well and not punishes them. And unfortunately right now, Labor seems intent on punishing people who create jobs and create wealth and create opportunities.
CENATIEMPO: It's absolutely extraordinary. Now the other big issue, and I always say that the first responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens, and at a federal level that is largely about border security and making sure that our defence system is strong. But the Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy, is going to deliver a major address today talking about these massive blowouts in defence procurement and effectively saying well it's nobody's fault, it's just the way the system works and nobody is really in charge so we'll just put in another level of bureaucracy. I mean this is just madness.
PATERSON: It's frankly shameless from Pat Conroy, who in opposition, of course, said every single delay and every single blowout under the previous government was the fault personally of the ministers involved. And when he and Richard Marles were sworn into their portfolios after the 2022 election, they said they would take personal responsibility. They would exercise political leadership and they would fix this system. Now four years into government, four years in to being ministers, they can do nothing other than blame others and make it someone else's fault rather than take responsibility. And he's even gone to the extraordinary length of publicly attacking his own department, his own public servants and our men and women in uniform and saying they've been presiding over these delays, this indecision and these blowouts. Well the buck stops with you buddy and you've got to take responsibility.
CENATIEMPO: The other thing that I have a problem with here is that the system of defence procurement has been a problem for a while now, and the previous government has got to take some responsibility for this. But particularly here in Canberra, we have a lot of small businesses and start-ups that are doing state-of-the-art work in defence technology, particularly in things like drones and anti-drones, and they tell me it is almost to hard to do business, that it's almost impossible to deal with the federal government because the deal or the attitude of defence is, oh, you're not big enough, we can't afford you falling over, so we're going to buy an expensive foreign piece of equipment that doesn't work.
PATERSON: I think we do need quite significant reform of the way we procure defence capability in this country. But that's not something that we've just discovered this month or this year. That's been something that's been evident for a while, and I think particularly since the commencement of conflict in Ukraine following Russia's invasion, it's been very clear that we are no longer in a peacetime period. We are potentially in a pre-conflict era, and we need to have a procurement culture and system that reflects that, which means moving fast. Getting things into the hands of warfighters as soon as possible, focusing on capability above all else as our priority. And that has not been the case for a long time, and we are moving at a glacial peacetime pace, like we've got endless time to prepare for potential future conflict, and I think that's reckless and dangerous.
CENATIEMPO: So James, is Pat Conroy onto something with this new procurement process which is effectively going to take it out of the hands of Defence?
PATERSON: Well, the honest answer is maybe. We don't know. I'm open-minded about this new Defence Delivery Agency that the government is seeking to establish, and it may be part of the answer to the problems we face. But we are four years into this government, and only now they're having this major machinery of government change, which people in Canberra understand well. But if this change was so necessary, why have they waited four years to do it? And won't this MoG just be yet another excuse to delay making decisions? The critical thing we need is decisions from governments. We don't need the paperwork piling up in the in-trays of Richard Marles or Pat Conroy, we need decisions and we need funding to match the security environment we face.
CENATIEMPO: So what is the process here now? Are there going to be reviews? Because my understanding is that effectively there's a transition period before this new agency will be fully in control of procurement. Will there be the usual checks and balances and inquiries and things like that before this is established.
PATERSON: That's right, it will start as the Defence Delivery Group within the Defence Department and it will transition to being an independent agency next year. And right now, actually, they don't have a permanent head for this new agency, they're still trying to hire someone and media reports suggest they're trying to tempt people from overseas to come back to Australia to run it. I hope they find someone really capable with great commercial expertise who can shake the system up. But honestly, we don't have the time to wait. The warning time for future conflict has gone. It could break out at any moment, even in our own region, in the Indo-Pacific, and we are just not ready. The ADF is not in a fit state to defend our interests and our values, should that challenge come, not due to any failings of our men and women in uniform who patriotically get up to serve every day, but because they haven't had the support they need and they particularly don't have the funding they need.
CENATIEMPO: I just want to touch on something else before you go, and this is the sale of surplus defence land. I know there's people on the government side that are as wary of this as people on your own side, but clearly there is some rationalisation that can happen there. What's the latest on that? Because I get the impression that the government is now sort of backing away from some of those sales.
PATERSON: You're right. So there's 67 sites the government is contemplating selling, and some of them could be sold without any harm to either our military heritage or our current defence capability. But many of the sites that are being sold are either priceless items of military heritage, or have critical ongoing roles to play in Australia's defence capability, and I think the government has rushed into this without thinking it through carefully. I think it's a reckless pursuit of a couple of dollars to try and make up for the fact that they can't get the funding they need from the budget and they shouldn't be selling priceless items of military heritage, nor bases that we might need in the future. So I'm really urging them to stop and reassess and rethink some of these sales and I hope they do so.
CENATIEMPO: James, good to speak to you this morning.
PATERSON: Thanks for having me.
ENDS