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December 2, 2025
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OLIVIA CAISLEY: Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson is one of the people in Estimates quizzing his counterpart and joins me now. Before I get to the nitty-gritty of what's been happening in Senate estimates, though, I just wanted to quickly turn to a breaking story from my colleague Stephen Dziedzic. So, as we know, a Chinese naval task group is being monitored by Defence, and he has new details around the scope of these ships, if you like. So he says that it boasts ships of formidable firepower, including a landing helicopter dock ship, a destroyer, a frigate, and a refueling vessel. Obviously, we don't know whether it will actually make its way to Australia. It's certainly a concern. What do you make of this?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, it sounds like a pretty substantial task group from the People's Liberation Army Navy, PLAN, and similar to the size and stature of the group that circumnavigated Australia in February and conducted a live firing exercise in the Tasman Sea. That episode was particularly troubling because it appeared to catch the government by surprise. We first learnt that they were in our region conducting that exercise via a Virgin Australia pilot, an civilian aircraft, had to divert their route to avoid that live firing exercise. So I hope that the government has learned from that, and I hope that we're being much more proactive in monitoring this task group. It may not end up coming to our region or indeed in our territorial waters or exclusive economic zone. We'll wait and see. But very clearly, the Chinese government and Navy are trying to project their force and demonstrate something by that. They're trying to demonstrate their reach and their power and their influence, and that's designed to send a message to us and others in the region. And we have to be equally clear in sending a message back about what we regard as acceptable and unacceptable conduct.
OLIVIA CAISLEY: Thanks for that. Now let's turn to Senate estimates. So we've seen the release of the Briggs, So Called, "Jobs for Mates" report. It's found that the current system of appointments isn't fit for purpose. Ministers are now going to have to justify their picks for senior public service roles. Do you think this is a good result?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Just quickly, before I get to the substance of the recommendations, I think it is worth reflecting on the process here, because it's almost as revealing as the report itself. I mean, this was commissioned by the government nearly three years ago. It was handed to the government nearly two and a half years ago, and every single member of the Senate, other than Labor Senators, has repeatedly ordered the government to release this document, and they have repeatedly refused. It shouldn't require such pulling, and you know, grasping, and tearing to get a report like this out of the hands of the government and into the public domain. I think it speaks volumes that the Minister was so reluctant to publicly release it and has only now done so in the lead up to Christmas after the Parliament has risen for the year. I will study this report now that it has been released. It was only tabled at 7:00 AM this morning, although it was selectively briefed to some journalists yesterday, despite a Senate order existing for its production. So we'll consider the recommendations once we've had time to get across them.
OLIVIA CAISLEY: Look, I think your comments around the delays in which this report's been released are certainly fair enough, but isn't this also an indictment on the way the Coalition, I guess, dealt with appointments during the time that it was in power, given the report also says that this is a problem for successive governments. The Coalition, for example, appointed 85 former Liberal MPs, former Liberal staffers and other associates to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, for example, during its almost ten years in office. So I mean, what do you say to the fact that this seems to be a constant tradition, if you like, and do we need to see, I guess, improvements from everyone?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Yeah, without having read the full report, I think it's certainly fair to say it's critical of governments of both persuasions for their appointments. One thing where I do actually share the view that the Finance Minister Gallagher articulated today is that service in public life should not necessarily preclude someone from being appointed to a public role. There are people who serve in Parliament and in Ministerial offices and other places who have value to add to public life after they leave public life, and it's appropriate that they appoint them. And this government, for example, recently appointed a former South Australian Premier to be High Commissioner to London. I'm sure he will do a good job. It's one of those things, actually, former politicians are quite able to perform well in a diplomatic role like that. So I don't think we should have a fatwa or a ban on all people who've served in political life, but of course, they must be qualified for the roles they're appointed to.
OLIVIA CAISLEY: What about the election timing thing, though? So Katy Gallagher has rejected recommendations to ban direct ministerial appointments six months out from a federal election and to also block political staffers from being appointed to government boards within strict time frames. Do you think the government should adopt those recommendations?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, the government said they're not going to adopt that because, in their view, it would be impractical. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of these board appointments which roll over all the time, and a six month moratorium before an election would actually potentially impede the operation of these agencies and statutory offices. So I think that's fair. But I think the principle that Lynelle Briggs is driving at there is that we shouldn't have election eve stacks of public bodies. And I think that's a reasonable thing. I think the closer we get to an election, the more incumbent it is on the government to be mindful of their appointments and to consult with the opposition to make sure that they're not politically contentious.
OLIVIA CAISLEY: Now, as we say, Senate estimates is happening in the building at the moment. It's a great time to grill all the department officials. You've been drilling down on a range of issues, including the cost of the renovations to the Greens party room. How much have taxpayers spent on this kind of spruce up?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, this is a real head scratcher because I previously learned from a previous round of estimates that $886,000 of public money had been spent renovating one room by the Labor Party for the Greens. We've since learned yesterday in Senate Estimates, in fact, it was more than that. It was $1.6 million. Now you can build a brand new family home with four bedrooms and all the bells and whistles for four to five hundred thousand dollars. So it shouldn't take $1.6 million to renovate a single room in Parliament House. I appreciate it's not a standard building operation, but one room in Parliament House – that's an extraordinary amount of money and no adequate explanation has been given as to why it costs quite that much.
OLIVIA CAISLEY: Okay. And another issue you've been looking at, we saw the audit office or the ANAO saying that the Treasury committed a serious legal breach by paying $2.3 billion of energy subsidies without Treasurer Jim Chalmer's written approval. What went wrong here?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: This is quite a serious matter. This is a lot of public money and a department that should be very well versed in how to lawfully spend money. But they broke the law in handing out energy subsidies without the proper approvals. Now no one's quibbling with the handing out of that money, but governments must use the proper authorisations to spend public money. And the extraordinary thing about this is that Treasury has tried to downplay this, saying it's only a “technical” breach of the law. The ANAO was very clear about this. There's no such thing as a technical breach of the law. If you break the law, you break the law, and they broke the law. And in the view of the ANAO, this is a serious matter that goes to the fundamental power of the parliament and the government to authorise the expenditure of money, and they have to get it right.
OLIVIA CAISLEY: I wanted to quickly ask you, you're the Shadow Finance Minister. Last week, we saw the Coalition losing, if you like, its economic crown, or I guess there was this study showing that it's no longer the most trusted when it comes to the management of the economy. How damning is that, and how long is it going to take to, I guess, restore that title, do you think, in the minds of Australians?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: So this is a critical piece of research which is conducted by the Australian National University after every election. It's useful because they ask similar questions over a very long period of time, but we do need to be mindful of the fact that they ask these questions immediately after an election, not during an election. And so it is affected by the wash up of an election. And in the immediate aftermath of this election, it was the worst ever election defeat in the Liberal Party's 81 year history. And me and my colleagues have been having some big debates about the direction of our party. So I'm not surprised that we haven't been performing particularly well in studies like these. But to the more fundamental point, of course, it must be the Liberal Party's key brand equity that we are better to manage the economy, that we're better to manage the budget. If we're not winning debates with the Labor Party on who's best to manage the budget, on who's best to cut taxes, on who's best to deliver a more prosperous country, we're not winning elections. And we understand that, and that's the focus of our team.
OLIVIA CAISLEY: Well, Senator Paterson, thank you so much for speaking to us between the grilling of the department officials, and I look forward to tuning in later to see what you find out.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thanks, Olivia.
ENDS