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National Security

Transcript | ABC 7.30 Report | 27 January 2025

January 27, 2025

Monday 27 January 2025
Interview on ABC 7.30 Report
Subjects: Shadow cabinet reshuffle, 80th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation, antisemitic domestic terrorism crisis, mandatory sentences for terrorism offences, Israel-Gaza
E&OE…………………………………………………………………………….

SARAH FERGUSON: Victorian Senator James Paterson is the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs. He was also promoted to the Coalition leadership group in the recent reshuffle. Senator Paterson, welcome to 7.30.

JAMES PATERSON: Good evening, Sarah.

FERGUSON: Now on that reshuffle, first of all, you missed out on the prestigious Shadow Foreign Affairs portfolio because I quote you from Sky News. You and Peter Dutton agreed, Home Affairs is where you can do the most damage to Labor. Is that how you see your political role?

PATERSON: Well, first and foremost, my role in Opposition is to hold the government of the day to account. And when it comes to national security and community safety on the domestic front, which is my purview, there's no question that they have failed spectacularly. Whether it is boats and borders, whether it is released detainees or failed deportations or the antisemitism crisis and now the domestic terrorism crisis that we have in our country, it has been a series of shocking failures.

FERGUSON: But what did you mean? What did you mean? What did you mean by damage when you said you could do the most damage? Is that how you define your political role?

PATERSON: Well, it's my responsibility to hold the government to account for their failures and as I said, those failures are spectacular. And we do have an election coming up, and Australians will have to contemplate do they want three more years of weakness from Anthony Albanese and Labor, whether it's on national security and the economy? Or do they want to get our country back on track and put a strong Prime Minister and a strong government in charge under Peter Dutton and the Coalition?

FERGUSON: Now I just want to go to that point made in Laura Tingle's package just now, which is about the Foreign Minister in commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. We saw there, Peter Dutton say that her presence, her presence just being there is inappropriate. Is it acceptable to make political points around such a deeply somber event?

PATERSON: Well, forget about what Peter Dutton has said or what I've said. Let's have a look at what Dr. Henry Pinskier, a former vice president of the Labor Party, said this morning in The Australian newspaper. He said it was a slap in the face of the Australian Jewish community for the Prime Minister to send Penny Wong to Auschwitz for this commemoration. Or take the words of Bruce Hartnett, a 60-year life member of the Labor Party in Victoria, who wrote to Penny Wong last week to tell her that her behaviour and her conduct on this issue since the 7th of October had made him ashamed to be a member of the Labor Party. I mean, the concern about this issue is widespread. There are even members of the Jewish community who started their own petition calling on the Prime Minister to ask him to reconsider the decision to send Penny Wong. Last time I checked, they had more than 16,000 signatures online. So I think the concern about this issue is widespread and genuine, and heartfelt, and it shouldn't be dismissed as politics because I don't think members of the Labor Party are attacking their own Ministers or engaging in politics. I think they're just deeply disappointed.

FERGUSON: I want to go to the most recent antisemitic attacks we've seen in Australia. Now, we heard from the AFP, who say that they're looking into the possibility that overseas actors have paid criminals to carry out some of these attacks in Australia. Do you know any more, Senator Paterson, about who those overseas actors could be?

PATERSON: As I understand it, in the vast majority of cases of antisemitic violence that we've seen in our country over the last 15 months, there is no suspicion of foreign involvement. I believe there are a handful of cases where the Australian Federal Police have not yet been able to rule out the possibility of foreign involvement, whether that's indeed a foreign government or a transnational terrorist organisation, I don't know.

FERGUSON: And to be clear, no one has raised evidence of actors of that level yet. Have they?

PATERSON: No, I'm not aware of any evidence of that at all. But this claim has been put into the public domain by the government with limited information, and it has caused extreme concern and panic in the Jewish community. Many of them have asked me, does this mean that Iran is trying to assassinate us? Does this mean that some other foreign government or terrorist organisation is active in Australia and funding attacks on the Jewish community? I am very concerned about the decision to put this partial information into the public domain without more details and without reassurance.

FERGUSON: To be clear, that was put into the public domain by the head of the AFP, Reece Kershaw, right?

PATERSON: That's right, and the Prime Minister and other Ministers have repeated it and endorsed it and backed it. What they haven't done is provide any evidence to substantiate it or any reassurance to the Jewish community about what this means for them or what they are doing to protect them. Has the National Security Committee of Cabinet been convened? We don't know. Has the Prime Minister spoken to his Five Eyes counterparts? We don't know. What role are our other intelligence agencies playing in getting to the bottom of this? We don't know. And there are two possibilities here. One is that we have a purely home-grown phenomenon, and that is a massive failing on the Prime Minister's part. Or even worse than that, we have one of our most serious ever domestic national security crises in peacetime. And the Prime Minister has responded with weakness and equivocation, and that will be a stain on his record.

FERGUSON: Let me ask you a broader question, if I could. Do you expect that the attacks that we've seen so far in Australia will come to an end if the ceasefire in Gaza holds? What's your personal view about that?

PATERSON: Well, I would certainly hope so, but I'm very pessimistic about that because a number of the incidents have occurred after the ceasefire was agreed to. And frankly, I think some of the people in the community who are responsible for this or are egging this on aren't really motivated by foreign conflicts. They're motivated by their hatred of the Jewish people. And you can see that by the fact that they are targeting Australian Jews as if they are in some way responsible for the very difficult decisions that the state of Israel has to make while defending itself from a listed terrorist organisation and trying to recover hundreds of kidnapped citizens.

FERGUSON: Now the Coalition has called for mandatory minimum sentencing to combat these attacks. A former President of the Law Council in Australia, Arthur Moses, says that studies done both here and in the U.S. show that mandatory sentencing rarely acts as a deterrent. Are you prepared to listen to legal expertise on this subject?

PATERSON: Well, deterrence is one of the reasons why you would have mandatory minimum sentences. And I do think it is important that we send a very strong message that there are serious consequences if you are caught with this conduct.

FERGUSON: But this is a question precisely about mandatory sentencing that the Law Council and its previous President have said doesn't work as deterrence.

PATERSON: Yes. And that's one of the reasons why you would have mandatory minimum sentences. The other is to protect the community from people who can do harm to them. The longer they are locked away, the less likely they are to do harm, the more safe the community is. And the third, and a critically important reason, is to give a sense of justice to victims. They want to know if they become a victim of a crime, that the legal system will impose adequate sentences that are commensurate with the severity of the crime. And I don't think six years is too little to impose for a serious Commonwealth terrorism offence. I think that is the bare minimum of how long someone should go away for.

FERGUSON: This is this is a question not about a specific sentence. It's a question about whether or not mandatory sentencing works and legal expertise has shown both here and in the U.S. That it very rarely works as a deterrent. So the question was, are you prepared to listen to legal expertise on the subject of mandatory sentencing?

PATERSON: Well, those lawyers are very much entitled to have their view, and I understand their perspective. They are very much apprised by the importance of judicial independence. But I think more important than that is sending a strong, clear signal of the severity of the consequences if you engage in this behaviour. Of protecting the community by taking these people off the street for a long period of time. And giving victims of these crimes a sense of justice that they had taken away, that there is an appropriate punishment for the crimes of the people who perpetrated them. Because otherwise, we'll have a situation of people taking things into their own hands. And that's the last thing that any Australian should want to see.

FERGUSON: You referred just now to the fact that some of these attacks have taken place, had taken place after the ceasefire. Today, we've seen those quite extraordinary pictures of people in Gaza returning to northern Gaza. I wanted to get your response to President Trump's startling call for 1.5 million Palestinians to be cleaned out of Gaza, suggesting that Egypt and Jordan should take them. What's your response to that suggestion?

PATERSON: That's not my view, and that's not the policy of the Liberal Party in Australia, nor has it been the bipartisan policy of both parties for about 20 years in this country. We support a two-state solution that includes a state for Palestinians and a state for Israelis within their own borders securely. But critically, the Liberal Party maintains the view that that should not be something which is imposed from the outside, not by Australia, not by the United Nations or anyone else. It's something that can only come about after the successful peace process and negotiation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Labor has changed their view in recent times on that. They now believe it's appropriate to unilaterally recognise a Palestinian state, to impose those conditions from the outside before any resolution of those issues and, critically, before Hamas is taken away from power.

FERGUSON: Yet at the same time, that position that you're stating, as you put it, depends on the Israeli government taking part in negotiations, being involved in and supporting negotiations towards a two-state solution. But the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, for many years, has made clear his opposition to a two-state solution. So what does that mean for Coalition policy if the Israeli government is opposed to the idea?

PATERSON: Well, Sarah, it doesn't just require the Israelis to participate in negotiations. It also requires Palestinian leaders to participate in negotiations. And they too have refused to participate in negotiations for a number of years. The most recent peace offers made have been by the state of Israel, and they've been rejected by Palestinian leaders. In fact, some pretty risky offers were made politically for an Israeli government in recent memory, and they were rejected by Palestinian leaders repeatedly. Things that would have gone to the establishment of a Palestinian state. And I think that's a tragedy. So it does require the will of both parties. I understand why, immediately after, following the worst loss of Jewish life in a single day, the Israeli political mood is not leaning towards a two-state solution right now. But I hope they will return to that because it's my view and the long standing bipartisan policy of the Australian government that that is the only sustainable solution to this problem.

FERGUSON: Senator Paterson, thank you very much indeed for joining us. Thank you.

PATERSON: Thanks, Sarah.

ENDS

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