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Transcripts
August 12, 2026
STEPHEN CENATIEMPO: He's the Shadow Minister for Defence, Senator James Paterson. James, good morning. Good to be with you. Before we talk AUKUS, the whole Prime Minister podcast thing has erupted again. I get that the official line from the government is we didn't see what we actually saw, we didn't see the Prime Minister juggling his hands like he was juggling a pair of melons, something akin to a Benny Hill skit. I've had two members of the government say no, no, that's not what you saw. It's a bit like falling off a stage, apparently.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think there's some serious industrial scale gas lighting going on here, and I'm not sure it's wise for ministers to keep saying that people should watch the footage for themselves. Because if they do, they will see what you've seen and they will see what I've seen because it's very plain. The Prime Minister engaged in lewd banter and he made crude gestures about a female leader of one of our closest and most important allies. And rather than just admit that he got it wrong and apologise, which he should do, instead they're engaged in this elaborate denial and cover-up to try and downplay the seriousness of the issue. I mean this is not the time to be talking about some of our closet allies in the way that he is.
CENATIEMPO: Look I imagine that the Japanese government probably looks at it and says this bloke's an idiot and don't take it particularly seriously, but there has been correspondence between Japan and the government that's been leaked and you've referred this to the AFP.
PATERSON: I'm really concerned about this, rather than just admitting that he got it wrong, the Prime Minister's trying to justify himself, and in doing so, confidential correspondence from the Government of Japan has found its way into the Australian media. Now, that's a potential criminal offence under Division 122 of the Commonwealth Criminal Code, where confidential information cannot be made available by public servants to the media and it could constitute an offence. And it needs to be investigated because we want our allies to believe that we take very seriously their confidential communications, that we would never use them for political purposes as I fear has happened in this case.
CENATIEMPO: I want to talk about the substantive issue here, and this is this public inquiry into the AUKUS agreement, particularly the $368 billion acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines. Five commissioners, one of whom is Peter Garrett, the former head of the Nuclear Disarmament Party, so I think we can pretty much guarantee what his thought on this are. We've got former Western Australian premier Carmen Lawrence, Malcolm Turnbull, who obviously has his own personal gripes with this. The only thing that gives me any comfort here is that former Admiral Chris Barrie is one of the commissioners here But I want to, I'm sort of at a loss as to what the point of this whole exercise is?
PATERSON: I don't want to shock you or your listeners, Stephen, but I think we can make a reasonably confident prediction of what this report is going to recommend, and that is people who are opposed to AUKUS are going to say AUKUS is not a good idea. I think we can safely dismiss those conclusions because these people have never thought AUKUS was a good idea. No evidence will change their mind about whether it's a good idea or not, and none of them have had access to a classified intelligence briefing about either the threat environment that Australia faces nor the capability of nuclear-powered submarines. In fact some laughably ignorant evidence has been given to the committee by people like the former foreign minister Gareth Evans about what the purpose of nuclear submarines is, and he revealed in his evidence that he just had no understanding of what these platforms are capable of doing and what their primary purpose is. And so I think it can be safely dismissed. But the government must do a better job, particularly of making the case to its own supporters of why AUKUS is important and why we must stay the course.
CENATIEMPO: Chris Barrie said to me earlier in the week, and he didn't make a judgement one way or the other, but he said conventional submarines are quieter and therefore if you're going to sneak up on somebody and do whatever you're going to do, they're better, but if you need to be underwater for prolonged periods of time, nuclear submarines are the only answer. So why do we need that latter capability as opposed to the prior?
PATERSON: Well, a diesel electric submarine can be quieter for very short periods of time because it doesn't need to constantly run the diesel engine. But what it is required to do is regularly surface to snort, which is to take in air to continue to power the diesel submarine. And as soon as they do so it becomes obvious where it is. It also has an incredibly limited range, which not only means that it takes a long time to get to where they want to go, but it can't stay what we call “on station” in the theatre it needs to operate in for very long before it has to return again to be refuelled. A nuclear submarine is much faster. It can go much further and it can stay on station virtually for an unlimited period of time. It's only the endurance of the men and women on board and the amount of food supply that they can carry with them that constrains how long they can operate for. They can be at sea for months at a time, and often are, and they can also carry a much more formidable payload, both in terms of the offensive payload, and in terms its intelligence collection capabilities, which is a critical element of nuclear submarines. The most important thing about it is our potential adversaries have no idea where they are, and would fear that they could, you know, be deployed and deliver an effect in a combat environment without any warning, and that's very different between a diesel electric and a nuclear submarine.
CENATIEMPO: Malcolm Turnbull is suggesting that we'll never get these submarines and I've got to say, he obviously has an agenda here, but I have the same concerns, particularly given that the US is struggling with its own capacity and is now shifting away from the submarines that we're purchasing towards these new Columbia class submarines and then the UK has its capacity constraints with relation to delivery of the AUKUS class submarine. Are we actually going to these ships?
PATERSON: So I visited the shipyards in the United States where the Virginia class submarines are made, but also where their ballistic submarines are made, and their nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. And it is not true to say that the United States are moving away from Virginia class submarines. Virginia class submarines are one of the most important capabilities for the US Navy and are continuing to build them in great numbers and are spending billions of dollars - assisted by the Australian Government - to increase the capacity of their supply chain and to increase their workforce, to increase the production rate of those submarines. I am confident that we will get these submarines, but I acknowledge that there are risks in our submarine program, particularly between the ageing Collins class submarine and the arrival of the first Virginia class submarine and between the Virginia class submarines and our what are called the SSN-AUKUS class submarines which are the ones we are going to jointly make with the UK in the 2040s. Now, there are risks in that program. We should be honest about that. We should prepare for that. We should mitigate that. But that doesn't mean abandoning AUKUS.
CENATIEMPO: Just quickly before I let you go, James, I've got a text from a listener saying "ask him about the undersea cables being cut off the coast of WA; an unidentified ship hovering around there for weeks and we're only just hearing about it."
PATERSON: It's a very good question. I am very concerned about this based on the media reports that I have seen. It is suspicious to me that a ship appears to have damaged the submarine cables. Sometimes this happens by accident, but often it happens on purpose. There's examples in Northern Europe where submarine cables have been damaged by Russian vessels, for example. The listeners might be surprised to know that about 98, 99% of our internet traffic travels through these submarine cables. As an island nation, we are vulnerable. If you cut them off, you could shut down our economy and our society. So we need to get to the bottom of who this ship was, what it was doing, and whether this was intentional or not. And if so, it's a very serious matter.
CENATIEMPO: I'll keep on top of this. James, I appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us this morning.
ENDS