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Transcripts
October 15, 2025
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Topics: Tom Hughes Oration speech, Future of the Liberal Party, Albanese government's contempt for transparency
E&OE…………………………………………………………………………………………..
SALLY SARA: The Liberal Party needs to end its post-election apology tour and mass therapy session. That's according to one of its most senior frontbenchers. In a wide-ranging speech last night, the Shadow Finance Minister, James Paterson, warned that his party could face destruction if it adopts a Nigel Farage-style populist agenda, but he's also rejecting suggestions that the Liberals should position themselves as free market Teals. Senator James Paterson joins me now. Senator, welcome back to Breakfast.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thank you for having me, Sally.
SALLY SARA: In last night's Tom Hughes Oration in Sydney, you said that what you described as the apology tour must end. What do you mean by that?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, we're absolutely right to be humble after the Liberal Party's worst ever defeat in our 81 year history. But people aren't going to vote for us at the next election in two and half years time because we've spent a lot of time apologising for our failings. They will vote for us if they are convinced that we're ready for government, that we have a policy agenda which solves the problems they face in their lives, that if they vote Liberal that they'll be personally better off and our country will be stronger, and if we've been successful in holding the Albanese government to account for its failings and I'm calling on for us to move into that phase of opposition.
SALLY SARA: Should the policy review being conducted by the Opposition, should that be wrapped up by the end of the year in the next few months in your view?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, I'm not putting specific timelines on specific components here because something like a policy review is an iterative and an ongoing process, you have to consider policy issues as they arise in the parliament when the government brings forward legislation and as we develop our own policies that we take to the next election, that's already happening. This is about our tone and positioning more broadly, and I really think we need to resolve the internal differences which we have, come together around a shared set of values which have served us well in the past, and then prosecute that case against the government.
SALLY SARA: You've said that the party is being presented with two false narratives. One of them is to approach a Nigel Farage style approach to politics. To what extent is that a rebuke of Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: It's not at all and some of the media coverage today has personalised my speech towards Andrew and Jacinta in a way that I didn't intend. This is a speech about ideas not about personalities and actually it's primarily people outside the Parliamentary Party who are giving us advice which I do not think is in our best interest - that the differences between liberals and conservatives are irreconcilable and that we should just split and go our separate ways. In my view that would be as successful for the Liberal Party today as the split in the Labor Party was for them in the 1950s and it will end with us being in permanent opposition and achieving the Prime Minister's dream of making the Labor party the natural party of government federally.
SALLY SARA: You're also warning that positioning the party as free market teals is also a false choice. What do you mean by that?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, there's some advice that the Liberal Party should not fight, quote unquote, culture wars, which is really a lazy term used to shut down debate on issues about identity and sovereignty and culture. I think that would be a big mistake for the Liberal Party because defending the institutions of patriotic Australia, like the flag and the anthem and the constitution, the ANZAC tradition, Australia Day - they're actually core to who we are as Liberals and they're very important to many of our supporters and widely shared by Australians. So we should take no backward steps on that, otherwise we'll find ourselves being a soulless hollow party that only speaks to the most narrow material aspirations of Australians.
SALLY SARA: How does the Liberal Party at the federal level move forward right now if it doesn't have policies?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, we are going through that process and of course, we have to develop and outline and articulate policies but we have to do it in a way that is deliberate and careful and considered. I think it would be even worse to rush policies out, which are not ready for public scrutiny, than it would be to have a period without clearly articulated policies. Sometimes in the last term we announced policies that were not ready for public scrutiny and it damaged our standing as an alternative party of government, which we can't repeat.
SALLY SARA: Why weren't they ready?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Because, I think most people found opposition harder than they anticipated. We'd just come off being in government for nine years. When you have all the resources of government, a ministerial office, departments, everything available to you, it is much easier to develop policy. Oppositions have to work harder, and it is not beyond the task of oppositions, but it's an adjustment that takes time.
SALLY SARA: What about the level of loyalty in the previous Coalition government? Did that come at some cost in a way in terms of having debate and developing policy?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think it did. I would never say that unity and discipline are not important in politics - they are essential. But they shouldn't come at the expense of a genuine debate about policies and the direction of the party which do need to be robustly contested. It's just a question of timing. We can have those debates now at the start of the parliamentary term. But if we're still having them at the end of the parliamentary term, close to the election I don't think it will send a good message to the Australian people. It would make it look like we're focused on ourselves, not on them. So I think there's a time limit to this debate and I'm urging that we get on with that debate, we resolve it and then we move into the next phase.
SALLY SARA: You're listening to Radio National Breakfast and you're hearing from Shadow Finance Minister, Senator James Paterson, who delivered a speech in Sydney last night. In that address, Senator, you compared the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to a petty despot for the government's proposed Freedom of Information changes and the slashing of Opposition staff. Why did you choose that language?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: The Prime Minister has done a lot of things since he came to office that I think are unbecoming of a democratic leader, particularly one who's just had a really big election victory. One of his first acts after being re-elected was to slash the staffing numbers for the Opposition, which made an already depleted number of people's tasks even harder to hold him to account. Independent groups have pointed out that this government is the worst in 30 years when it comes to complying with Senate Orders for the Production of Documents, that it refuses FOI at rates far beyond any recent government. And now there's a Freedom of Information, so-called reform Bill, which is in the Parliament, which will make it even harder for the public to access information. And I said it in a kind of semi-joking way that if this was happening in the developing world, our local embassy staff would be busily putting together a cable about the very troubling backsliding of democratic norms, and we shouldn't let that happen in Australia.
SALLY SARA: Is the Opposition in a position to argue that point, given that one of your proposals was to slash thousands of public service jobs and also under the last time you were in government the Prime Minister Scott Morrison had a number of secret ministries which no-one knew about for a very long time?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well the irony is that the Labor Party attacked us for both of those things and the Prime Minister in opposition was particularly strong on transparency, but independent groups have found that his government is far less transparent than the Morrison government. So I'm just seeking to hold him to the standard he set for himself and for us. And I think it is dangerous for democracy to widen the exemptions for Freedom of Information so that the deliberations of government, in other words advice that public servants provide Ministers, is an exempt reason for providing an FOI document. To add fees back in to the FOI system, to ban anonymous FOI requests, to significantly expand the grounds of what constitutes Cabinet consideration. I mean these are all the things that would mean the public has less access to information about the government which they pay for with their taxes and that is antithetical to a democracy.
SALLY SARA: James Paterson, thank you for your time this morning.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thank you for having me.
ENDS