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Transcripts
June 2, 2025
Monday 02 June 2025
Interview on ABC Melbourne Mornings
Topics: election loss, Tim Wilson's victory in Goldstein, appointment as Shadow Finance Minister, nuclear
E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………………….
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: You might have seen the news over the weekend, America is talking about the potential for conflict with China over Taiwan and even the furious debate about superannuation tax. If you zoom back a bit, that's how on earth do we fund the stuff we all want and are we doing it the right way. So how does the Liberal Party deal with those issues? Right now they are fessing up to some of their mistakes. One of them, when the Liberal party said during the election campaign that they would put income taxes up after the election. Surely that was one of the mistakes. Someone who's got to deal with that is the newly minted Shadow Finance Minister. That job has been given to James Paterson, one of the Liberal senators for Victoria. Good morning.
JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Raf. Thank you for having me.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Was that one of your mistakes about income tax?
JAMES PATERSON: Yes, it was. It confused our supporters in the community who support the Liberal Party and vote for us because they expect us to lower taxes whenever we have the opportunity to do so. So to oppose a tax cut, as small as it was, and to promise to overturn it, I think sent the wrong message.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: You're the campaign spokesperson, and politics is a team sport, so I acknowledge you don't always get to say what you think, especially when you're in shadow cabinet, but did you kick up a fuss about that during the campaign?
JAMES PATERSON: I want to be careful about not disclosing private conversations, particularly from the leadership group of the Coalition, but it has always been my view that the Liberal Party should consistently argue for lower taxes and we should never get ourselves in a position where Labor can make an audacious claim that they are in fact the party of lower taxes. But in politics, you don't always win those arguments. And as a member of the shadow cabinet, you're bound by the positions that are collectively taken.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Do you feel like you did what you could?
JAMES PATERSON: Yes, I think I did what I could, except probably all of my colleagues, we would reflect that we didn't push back hard enough, that we didn't contest ideas robustly enough, that we chose unity and discipline over that contest of ideas. And it is a balance to be struck, because if you don't have unity and discipline, then it's just anarchy and you're not a political party, you're a group of independents. But if you only have unity in discipline and you don't contest the ideas, then you've got the other problem.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: And I don't want you to breach anything, but it's a bit like a relationship, I guess. Like how do you know when you're crazy or you should speak up? So going forward, you're going to be in another shadow cabinet. What have you learned from that? How are you going to know what's the marker for you? When's James going to speak up and when is James going to go, no, the leader gets to be the leader?
JAMES PATERSON: Sometimes I think you give the leader the benefit of the doubt, particularly when things are going well or you feel or they appear that they're going well. And for the Coalition after the Voice, we were very competitive quite quickly. And really up until about January or February of this year, most of the polls either had us level or even slightly ahead. It really went off the rails after that. And there's a lot of complex, interesting reasons why that happened. And so the reason why we probably gave Peter and the leadership more authority to make those big calls is because it seemed to be going well.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Isn't that a mistake?
JAMES PATERSON: I think clearly it was.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: No, but I mean your principle around when things are going well, you give them more leeway. Maybe you should just always speak up when it's something that matters?
JAMES PATERSON: Yeah, I think that's a fair observation. But I think political parties do prize unity and discipline with good reason. Because if we are at odds with each other, frankly, as we have been over the last two weeks in the Coalition, you see how messy that is. And that's not really what the public wants from political parties. They want us focused on them, and they want us fighting for them, not each other. So that is an important balance to be struck.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: James Paterson, you might remember him as campaign spokesman during May and April. I do want to get on to some of the broader implications of the loss for you, but we just had Zoe Daniel on. We did have Tim Wilson, but she said some things, so if I can get a response. She was saying that some of the, let's call them liberal aligned, liberal backed proxy groups were lying about her record in Goldstein. If I can just play that to you.
[CLIP START]
ZOE DANIEL: What was happening at the polling booths, particularly during pre-poll, with multiple proxy groups swarming that queue and really lying to people directly to voters as they were going in to vote is wrong. That should not be happening. Not only to me, to anyone on any side of politics.
[CLIP END]
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: You had a key role in the campaign, what do you think of that?
JAMES PATERSON: Yeah, I heard part of Zoe's interview and I've got compassion and empathy for her, frankly, because it's a very difficult, gut-wrenching thing to lose an election and I understand why she's disappointed. Many of those groups that were organised locally in Goldstein and Kooyong and other places are completely independent of the Liberal Party. Some of them were organised by Jewish mothers and grandmothers who became politically active for the first time in their whole lives because they felt that their local members let them down.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: That's not Jason Falinski's group.
JAMES PATERSON: Yeah, well, that's why I said some of the groups, not all the groups. So some of those groups that were focused locally were organised out of the Jewish community, had nothing to do with the Liberal Party and in a free and open and liberal democracy, they're entitled to participate in the electoral process. And they felt their local member let them down. They felt in the middle of an antisemitism crisis that she didn't do enough to stand with them and advocate for them. And they wanted to change their local member, they're entitled to do that.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Some of the texters and Zoe Daniel saying the lies thrown her way and the way people like Monique Ryan were beyond the bounds. Do you agree with that?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, I don't agree, particularly when it comes to their voting record. I mean, the Parliamentary Library publishes those statistics. The Financial Review did a completely independent piece of work, which also found that Zoe voted most often with the Greens.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: But they're often not about issues of substance, right? They're processed in the Parliament.
JAMES PATERSON: Well, even Zoe Daniel herself produced a pamphlet which she distributed in the electorate, which tortured the data to make it look like she voted with the Greens less often, but it still showed the political party she voted with most often was the Greens, followed by Labor and the Liberal Party last. She can't run away from her record, and politicians are judged on their record and fairly so.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: James Paterson is a Liberal Senator, he's now been given the job of Shadow Finance Minister. Let's look more broadly at the Liberal Party. Let me try and draw an analogy or draw a parallel and tell me if you agree. In 2018, in the state election in Victoria, crime is the issue, there's no doubt crime is an issue. The Liberal Party relentlessly attacked the state government about it, but didn't offer enough of a positive vision and they got smashed, they are still recovering from that loss. 22, the state election is the same. COVID is the underlying issue. It might not have been spoken about. The Liberal Party constantly amp up anger at the state government about that. They don't offer enough of an alternative vision. Labor increases their majority. There's a lot of parallels in May. Cost of living is undoubtedly the issue of the last three years. You guys spend a lot of time blaming the government and not offering a positive alternative. Isn't there a pattern there that you, you are systemically chasing headlines and anger and not offering an alternative?
JAMES PATERSON: I think on the cost of living we did offer an alternative, but it obviously wasn't compelling enough, which is why people didn't vote for us. We had the fuel tax cut and we had the $1,200 low income and medium income tax offset. But people didn't feel like that was what they needed or it wasn't adequate for their needs.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Am I wrong to, sorry, because I don't want to get into the nitty gritty of policy, because then we argue about policy merit. Am I wrong to draw those parallels across those three elections? Because that's what it looks like. You guys are good on the negative and bad on the positive.
JAMES PATERSON: Well, I certainly think we failed to articulate a clear economic agenda for the future, a positive vision for why, if you had voted Liberal and National at the last election, your personal financial circumstances would improve and the country would be better off because we didn't articulate a reform agenda on the economy that was bold or ambitious.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: I'm trying to draw you into the state stuff because it looks like a systemic issue, am I wrong?
JAMES PATERSON: And I am steadfastly resisting being drawn into the state stuff for obvious reasons. I don't want to commentate on state politics. That's for my state colleagues to do. But I'm happy to be honest and reflective about our failings, which are very clear in this space. And we're determined not to make that mistake again. We'll be outlining much more of an economic agenda before the next election. It will be positive. And I hope it will give people confidence and hope that if they vote Liberal or National that their country will get stronger and they will be better off personally.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: So let me try one that's fully focused on the federal arena. From the outside it looks like nuclear power is, there is an ideological attachment to nuclear. There's sort of, there's something deep in the Liberal soul that needs Liberal, needs nuclear power. No one else, no one in the power industry is interested in nuclear power, none of the 1500 people who talked to the AEMO about the grid, they're not talking about nuclear power. It looks like you're just sort of ideologically attached to it without a sound rationale.
JAMES PATERSON: Well, do you think that Sir Keir Starmer, the British Labour Prime Minister...
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Different country, different economics.
JAMES PATERSON: Well, let's not be myopic and just look at Australia. Let's look at the world. Centre-left leaders around the world, including Keir Starmer, including Joe Biden when he was president, including Emmanuel Macron, all believe that nuclear energy has a role to play in the emissions reduction challenge that we face ahead. In fact, many of them have said words to the effect of, we're not going to complete this transition to net zero without...
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Haven't you lost the argument by pointing overseas? If you haven't got people here who want to invest in it, doesn't that mean you've lost the argument?
JAMES PATERSON: Well, I think the answer for the Liberal Party going forward on this is probably not to take what we did to the last election, which is a government initiated and managed and run programme where taxpayers would finance and build them, but instead go for a more traditional Liberal approach, a more market-based approach, which is repeal the prohibition on nuclear power, and then leave it up to the energy industry to decide if they want to invest in nuclear. But it shouldn't be against the law to, which it is what it is right now.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Just a purely personal reflection. I hope this isn't a cruel question, but I'm interested. How did you feel on that Saturday night? Once you see that you go backwards big time, you obviously believed in the things you were arguing. How did that feel on the Saturday night?
JAMES PATERSON: I was pretty shocked because it wasn't what we were expecting. I was self aware enough to know that the campaign had not gone very well and that we'd lost support since the start of the year, but our internal Liberal Party polling showed that we were ahead, that we would have a swing to us and that we would pick up seats. So to not only not do that, but to go backwards to the extent that we have was pretty shocking. I'm personally resilient and okay and fine, but I feel terribly sorry for my colleagues who didn't see it coming, who didn't know it was coming, who were told that they were fine. We've lost some really good quality, talented people. Keith Wolahan, my friend here in Melbourne, just one of many, who without whom, it'll be harder to rebuild than it otherwise would have been.
RAFAEL ESPTEIN: Thank you for coming in.
JAMES PATERSON: Thank you for having me.
ENDS