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March 19, 2026
GARY HARDGRAVE: James Paterson, Senator from Victoria, is the Shadow Minister for Defence. He joins me now. Good to talk to you, James. I mean, surely we should be morally sending a ship there, although it seems like we haven't got one capable of going.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Gary, thanks very much for having me and thanks for your interest in this critically important issue. As you've pointed out, the first criteria to determine whether or not we could send a ship to a contingency like this is, firstly, do we have any available? Secondly, are they able to defend themselves in a modern conflict environment involving drones and missiles and other things? And then thirdly, what else do we need them for, and are there other more important missions we need them for in the Indo-Pacific, for example? Now, the government hasn't explained why, so far, they are declining to send any to the Strait of Hormuz to reopen the Persian Gulf, because, as you pointed out, we do have an interest in making sure oil flows from there. But we have good reason to think that one of the reasons might be that our ships aren't capable of defending themselves in that environment, because in 2023, the Biden administration made a similar request to Australia to help in the Red Sea against the Houthis terrorist organisation. And it was widely reported at the time the reason why we didn't is that we didn't have ships capable of defending themselves available.
GARY HARDGRAVE: And I know that war is changing, and what I don't want to see, I don't think anybody wants to see his troops on the ground. I think that the way the war is being played out at the moment, with the technology of drones and so forth, it's all on remote control, James Paterson. And it seems safer to most people, 13 Americans have died to date. But let's face it, Australia does have a huge coastline. We have enormous interest, I would have thought, in our sea defence, and yet we don't have any capacity, and this is a long-held problem. It's well before you entered the Parliament, frankly, it was well before I entered the Parliament 30 years ago. We have to have a plan to try to fix this up.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: You're right, and we should be clear that this is no criticism of our men and women in uniform. They do remarkable work with the resources they're given. But let's also be honest, they've been given very little to work with. As you point out, we're an island nation, and we're a nation incredibly reliant on maritime trade. We're discovering that again right now, with the possible risks to oil supply and petrol and diesel supply to our country over the next few weeks. But it's critical for Australia's national interest that we're able to police our immediate waterways for our exclusive economic zone, but also the contested waterways to our northern approaches. And right now we don't have a combatant surface fleet that's adequate for that task, nor, frankly, do we have a submarine fleet which is adequate for that task because although the Collins-class submarines have been, in many ways, unfairly maligned, they are now very much at the end of their life and not due to be replaced for some years by hopefully, eventually, soon, U.S. Virginia class nuclear powered submarines.
GARY HARDGRAVE: Hopefully so. I mean, James Paterson, I spent a couple of weeks in the North Arabian Gulf, as we're meant to call it, not the Persian Gulf, that's what the Americans call it. But I spent a couple of weeks there, including a week on board the HMAS Toowoomba back in 2007. Embedded as I was as a Member of Parliament to see what was happening. And I just know how busy our men and women on board that ship were, constantly supporting things like the HMS Invincible, the legendary UK Ship. I mean, there was a lot of activity going on there, but the Americans had Coast Guard vessels over there dealing with interdiction. They had problems with these little fishing boats, these little finger craft that if they loaded up with bombs, they become themselves an improvised explosive device. This is part of the problem in that region. It's tricky, it's difficult, but we're not there, and I just think we've lost the moral compass that we need to say we should be there because I think we should be part of this.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: That's a really important point about the way in which modern warfare has changed. We've seen in the Ukraine's conflict with Russia, the Ukrainians have sunk the entire Black Sea fleet of the Russian Navy without having a navy of their own. They've done it through cheap drones, which cost a tiny fraction of the multibillion-dollar platforms that they've sunk to the bottom of the Black Sea. And we would face the same risk if we deployed our vessels to the region. So we need to have adequate defences. And like you, I'm very concerned that we don't have that. And we should have used the time since the Red Sea two years ago to invest in our counter-drone and counter-missile defences for our combatant surface fleet. But as far as I'm aware, on the public record, there's no evidence that that's the case, and the government should come out and demonstrate that they have done that if it is the case.
GARY HARDGRAVE: James Paterson, you're a cluey bloke and by reputation, a deep thinker. And I'm not just blowing smoke your way. I'm just simply saying the challenge, though, with that observation is to think not about just the next election, but the next generation. Where are we going to land reputation wise as a country? If we can't do something about these kinds of times, we've got to make sure that somewhere down the track, it's not this bad again. And I don't know whether it's going to be a carrier fleet in the Indian Ocean, a carrier fleet in the Pacific Ocean and I know I've just spent a couple of trillion in making that statement, but it strikes me, James, that unless we have the capacity to make kit like that here ourselves, which means a steel industry, which means whole lot of gearing up of stuff that we no longer do, Australia is going to be prone to these problems again, and again, and again, over years ahead.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, I absolutely want to see a really significant investment in sovereign Australian defence manufacturing capability. We absolutely need it, and we particularly need it in the consumables of war, things like missiles and bullets and artillery shells, which we've learnt from Ukraine, are in very short global supply, and that has been demonstrated by the Gaza War and the war against Hezbollah by Israel, and now again in Iran. And yet we've been, frankly, on the go-slow as a country acquiring the capability to build those sort of guided weapons in particular, those expensive, hard-to-find weapons that are critical to deter our potential adversaries from threatening our interests, but also to defend ourselves and to take out a drone or missile heading our way if anyone ever sought to do that to us in the future. And I'm frankly worried this government doesn't appreciate the seriousness of the challenge because they've kept defence spending at 2% of GDP, despite all the warnings from our best informed experts that say that's just not enough.
GARY HARDGRAVE: Well, it's not. And as soon as anybody thinks that, suddenly I'm being hawkish, that I am provoking a warlike footing. No, I'm not. I don't want to ever have to fire an angry shot odd or otherwise, but it's just the back of house stuff, the industries that are developed around the smarts to develop everything you've just talked about. And maybe back to the more rudimentary hard platforms that float around the oceans. Each of those things requires an industry setting, A logic that says national sovereignty, national security, is more important than environmental issues, for instance. We just have to put Australia first.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: And if you talk to Europeans now, they would say, we made a terrible mistake cutting our defence spending after the end of the Cold War. We thought a new, peaceful moment in history had arrived, and it was permanent, and we could get away with spending as little as 1% of GDP, in some cases, on defence. And they realised when Russia invaded Ukraine, that if you want to ramp up and meet that challenge with more defence production, it's not a light switch. You can't just flick it on. You've got to invest in it in peaceful times, so you have it in conflict times, and hopefully by investing in those peaceful times, you deter that conflict from ever happening. We are in the war prevention business, and the better prepared we are for conflict, the less likely it is to happen.
GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah, peace through strength is a mantra. That's why I still count Ronald Wilson Reagan as the greatest president of my lifetime so far. And we'll see how Trump goes by the end of it all. But James Paterson, you no doubt talk to counterparts in America. It must be an awkward conversation when they say, you Aussies used to be reliable. Now you're like a sucker and we're the host. It is just that we just want them to do the heavy lift. We have to actually put some effort in otherwise they're just going to get bored with us real soon.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Americans have an incredibly high regard for Australians, particularly if they've served because so many of them served alongside Australians in Afghanistan and Iraq and other places. And so they rate our soldiers, man-for-man and woman-for-woman, on their contribution. But they and many others are very well aware of the limitations of the Australian Defence Force through this lack of funding. They see when the government announces that they are cutting capability, like military satellites, like infantry fighting vehicles, like self-propelled howitzers, like the fourth squadron of F-35 jets. They see that and so do our potential future adversaries and they know we are vulnerable and unless Richard Marles and Pat Conroy can secure more funding from the Treasury and Finance Ministers - who are so happy to spend it anywhere except defence, they'll spend it on any cause except defence - unless they can convince them then this is going to get worse before it gets better.
GARY HARDGRAVE: I think the biggest weapon we've got in our artillery is the mountains of white papers that have been produced over the last quarter of a century. I mean, we just throw them at the enemy, that'll confuse them, it's confused government decision makers anyway. Look, either way, James Paterson, I wish you well. Let's talk again on this because I think it's absolutely critical that Australia has the capacity to fend for and defend itself. I feel sad that the Senior Service, the Navy, is in such a run-down state, and you're right, the personnel are terrific, the government's just not.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thanks for having me, Gary.
ENDS