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July 15, 2025
STEVE CANNANE: It was the Treasury advice that was meant for the government's eyes only, but a table of contents which was accidentally included in a Treasury response to an ABC FOI request now pours doubt on whether the Federal Government will be able to meet its target of building 1.2 million homes in five years. Treasury has also advised that the budget cannot be fixed without raising taxes and cutting spending. The Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers, meanwhile, says he feels relaxed about the advice being made public. And remains confident that the government will meet its housing target. James Paterson is the Shadow Minister for Finance and also the Acting Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness. James Paterson, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Great to be with you, Steve.
STEVE CANNANE: Let's start with that Treasury prediction. Is it time the government amends that target, or is it a good thing to be ambitious?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: It's certainly a good thing to have targets, and it is a good thing to be ambitious, but the ambition has to be realistic and achievable and not delusional. And I think we're now getting into that level of delusion because a target of 1.2 million homes by 2029 would require the government to be building about 250,000 homes a year when only about 170,000 are being constructed, which is a fall from under the previous Coalition government of about 180,000 a year. So we're going backwards, not forwards, and it's time for either radical policy change to deliver those houses or acceptance that the target is not going to be hit as Treasury says.
STEVE CANNANE: One of the options to help achieve this housing target included using the skilled migration system to get more construction workers on the ground and building in Australia. The Coalition went into the last election wanting to reduce net migration. Is it time to rethink that policy?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, all of our policies are under review, given the nature and the extent of the loss which we just suffered at the election, and we'll be using this parliamentary term to develop new policies to take to the next election. But even in the last term, while we were arguing for overall reduced migration, we did say that one area that should be prioritised within the skilled migration program, which would have continued, was construction, given the urgent national priority of building more homes, and given that Labor, probably under the influence of the CFMEU, was actually de-prioritising some urgently required construction skills.
STEVE CANNANE: At the last election, the economist Chris Richardson labelled the major parties' policies on housing a dumpster fire of dumb stuff. Does the Australian public deserve better from both sides of politics when it comes to housing policy and increasing supply?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, I think we took quite an ambitious agenda on housing to the last election, including allowing people to - first time buyers - to deduct part of their mortgage against their income tax, including a five billion dollar fund to fund the end stage infrastructure that unlocked new housing estates and more housing supply. But like all of our other policies, it will be under review. And Andrew Bragg, our new Shadow Minister for Housing, has said he will have a laser-like focus on expanding supply. Now, the truth is, the federal government doesn't control all of the levers around supply. State and local governments have enormous influence there. But there are things that I think we can do to work with them, to encourage them, to expand that supply and reward those states that have succeeded in expanding supply against those who haven't.
STEVE CANNANE: I know you are in the process of reviewing the policy, but what kind of areas might you be looking at to help the states unlock the kind of land and increase development in certain areas that will really add to supply?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: You're right, I can't unilaterally announce new policy today on RN as much as I'd like to do so, particularly because it's not my portfolio area. But Andrew Bagg, our spokesman in this area, has talked about carrots and sticks to encourage states to do more, to unlock housing, to bring on more supply. And I think that's going to be a combination of new supply on the boundaries of our cities and new supply within our existing footprint of cities as well.
STEVE CANNANE: Ok, on Radio National Breakfast, it's 23 minutes to eight o'clock. We're talking to Senator James Paterson, Shadow Minister for Finance. I want to bring you to the PM's China visit. It was reported in the Financial Times on the weekend that Elbridge Colby, the U.S. The Under Secretary of Defence for Policy has been pushing Australia to make clear what role it would play if the U.S. and China went to war over Taiwan. If that is true, is it inappropriate for a U.S. Defence official to be making demands that would undermine strategic ambiguity when it comes to China?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, as you might be indicating, the United States government has its own policy of strategic ambiguity. The United States doesn't declare whether or not it would come to the aid of Taiwan in the event of an annexation attempt by the People's Republic of China. And it's had that policy consistently since 1979, when the Taiwan Relations Act passed Congress. So it wouldn't be appropriate for the U.S. government to ask Australia to do more than the United States is willing to do in relation to that. And I'm not sure it is what they're asking for is for us to preemptively and publicly declare what we would do in the event of a hypothetical Taiwan contingency.
STEVE CANNANE: Obviously, the Prime Minister was asked about this on the weekend when he was in China. He said he did not support any unilateral action on Taiwan, and Australia's spending on both defence and aid was about advancing peace and security in our region. Was that a reasonable response?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think it is. I think our interests clearly are deterring conflict, preventing conflict and doing so by working with our allies, especially the United States, and Japan, and the Philippines and others who have the same interests that we do in the region. We don't want to see any unilateral changes to the status quo on either side of the Taiwan Straits. And let's be clear, the greatest risk, according to military analysts, is that the PRC takes some kind of unilateral military action to change that status quo. That would be disastrous for Taiwan, for China, for the whole region and the world, and we should be working as hard as we can with our allies to prevent that.
STEVE CANNANE: But John Blaxland from the ANU, who will be our guest in a moment, has written a piece for The Conversation where he says recently the U.S. administration has made demands of allies, including Australia, the likes of which have not been seen in living memory. He's referring to tariffs, he's referring to defence spending and now Taiwan. Is the Trump administration treating Australia like the close ally it has been for over 80 years?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Certainly, the Trump administration has an unconventional approach to some areas of foreign policy and trade, including on tariffs, which we obviously profoundly and completely disagree with. But actually, some of the concerns that the Trump Administration holds have been held by previous administrations, including the Biden and Obama administrations, just expressed differently. For example, President Obama and President Biden warned the Europeans for a long period of time that their defence spending was not enough, and they urged NATO to lift their defence spending to at least 2% of GDP. Now, President Trump has gone further than that; they've now agreed to spend much more than that, but it's actually a consistently long-held US concern for a number of their allies.
STEVE CANNANE: Yesterday, I spoke to Kenneth Stern, who was the lead drafter of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of antisemitism that's now been adopted by Australia and supported by both the government and the opposition. He says the definition is not being used for its original purpose. He said that he's seen it being weaponised in the U.S., and it's now restricting free speech, and he compared that to McCarthyism. Do you share any of those concerns?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I didn't hear his interview on RN yesterday, but I'm broadly familiar with his views. I think the IHRA definition of antisemitism is important because what constitutes antisemitism is a highly contested thing. So people don't naturally accept what constitutes antisemitism, and in many ways maliciously seek to downplay or seek to avoid attributing things to antisemitism. So, I think it has been a very helpful tool, and it's a helpful guideline. No one in Australia, though, is proposing that IHRA should be legislated, or that there should be consequences under the law for transgressing IHRA, and I don't think anyone should propose that. I don't think that would be consistent with Australia's approach to free speech.
STEVE CANNANE: When you first started out as a Senator, you were one of the driving forces inside the Liberal Party to push to change the section of 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act to remove the words offend or insult from the act. And at the time you said, "freedom of speech is one of the most fundamental things about living in a Liberal democracy and if there are things that we can't talk about, that we cant write about, that we cannot debate, because it may offend or insult someone, for example, then I think we've lost something really important." You don't now have similar concerns around freedom of speech that Kenneth Stern does around this definition and how it's being applied?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, there's only been one 18C case since the 7th of October in Australia. It was against the Muslim hate preacher, Wissam Haddad, and he was found to have contravened the law because what he did would have humiliated and intimidated, or indeed, in the words of the judge, harassed people of Jewish faith because of his sermons. Now, if the reforms that I and others were advocating at the time were successful, he still would have been found to contravene the law today. I have always believed that freedom of speech is sacrosanct, but advocacy or incitement to violence is well outside the bounds of what is permissible. And in the last parliament, I advocated for strengthening the criminal provisions against incitement to violence because there has been too much incitement to violence in this country since the 7th of October which has gone unprosecuted when it should have been.
STEVE CANNANE: Senator James Paterson, good to talk, thanks for your time this morning.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thanks, Steve.
ENDS