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Transcripts
October 30, 2025
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Good morning. I just want to comment on two issues first, and then I'm happy to take some questions.
Yesterday's inflation figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics were a truly shocking set of numbers, as so many economists have pointed out this morning. Not only is inflation rising on Labor's watch, but it may even spell the end of the Reserve Bank's easing cycle of interest rate cuts. What that means for Australian families is already they are about $20,000 a year worse off under Labor because of higher interest rates if they're on an average mortgage. And some economists even say that the next move, RBA rates, might be up instead of down. And that would be disastrous for Australian families that are struggling through the cost of living. As bad as the 3.2% headline figure is, it masked some truly extraordinary numbers underneath that, including a 23.6% increase in the price of electricity over the last twelve months. This government has shockingly mismanaged our energy system and has attempted to cover it up with energy subsidies. But Australians are now starting to see the real consequences of this mismanagement. Labor is responsible for this because their reckless spending is driving inflation up. The Reserve Bank Governor, Michelle Bullock, herself, called this out in a speech last week. It was time for Labor to change their approach because it's hurting Australian families.
Secondly, we've seen an utterly extraordinary and petulant response from the Albanese government today in response to their failure to adhere to Orders of the Production of Documents by the Senate. Independent integrity groups, like the Centre for Public Integrity, have found that this government is the least transparent in decades when it comes to complying with Orders for Production of Documents and FOI. And so the Senate, the entire crossbench and the Coalition voted together to require the government to answer more questions in question time until they start complying with OPDs. The government's response is more like that of a petty authoritarian government than a democratic one. They're saying they're going to strip deputy chair committee positions from the Opposition in the House of Representatives. That's an extraordinary response, and not one that a democratic government should engage in. What the government should be doing is complying with the orders of the Senate. They should be a transparent government, as they've promised they would be, but they've been anything but.
JOURNALIST: Senator, should the government continue its energy rebates, or are you calling for more structural reform?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I'm not going to make a unilateral call about energy rebates. As Jim Chalmers has said himself, this is not something that can go on forever, it's not sustainable in the long term. But the problem that he faces is his colleague, Chris Bowen, is presiding over a disastrous energy system, and he either has to reveal the full extent of that to the Australian people by forcing them to pay their own electricity bills, or he has to continue to deteriorate the budget, by subsidising their bills. The budget is back in deficit, and there are ten years of deficits to come, $1.2 trillion of debt forecast on Jim Chalmers' watch. So he faces a terribly difficult dilemma. But he won the election. They are in government. And they have to make the best decisions.
JOURNALIST: How do you propose they fix the energy system? Are you calling for more gas, abandoning net zero?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: We will have a lot more to say about the reforms that we will take to the next election, to the energy system to drive down prices. But we won't do what Labor has done, which is to legislate and announce unrealistic targets by 2030 and 2035, which everybody knows are not on track and will not be achieved. In order to achieve the 2030 targets, they have to achieve 82% renewables by 2030. You can't find anyone in the energy industry who thinks that's a realistic or achievable task, and what that haste is doing is driving up costs for Australians. So this government is the author of their own problems in here, and they have to take responsibility for it.
JOURNALIST: Anthony Albanese was sitting at Donald Trump's right hand overnight. Do you welcome the fact that he seems to be getting along well with the U.S.?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Certainly it seemed to be a very convivial exchange between the Prime Minister and the President, and we wish him well in that. In this regard, it's a team Australia issue. The Prime Minister's success is Australia's success. It's a critically important relationship. We want it to succeed.
JOURNALIST: We've struck one critical minerals deal. Are other deals close in negotiations? Do you think we could strike them?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, I certainly hope so. There are both strategic and commercial opportunities for Australia in critical minerals. It is not in our national interest or the national interest of our allies for the People's Republic of China to control 90% of the market, as they do. They have strategically captured that market, we need to break that stranglehold. Australia can be part of the solution to that problem, and I'd like to see much more exploitation of those critical minerals.
JOURNALIST: What position is the Coalition taking on the EPBC Act that Murray Watt is rolling out today? Are you negotiating, or are you unlikely to support it?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, the public is only going to see the full bill today, finally, after months of talk from Murray Watt, it will be very interesting to see what is in there. We've been engaged constructively in a bipartisan way with the government. We do recognise the need to reform. But our Shadow Minister Angie Bell has said this morning and throughout this week that the bill is not where it needs to be, that we don't think it's in Australia's national interest, and we're not going to vote for a bad bill. Nor is it our job to try and make a bad bill a little bit better. We will vote for this bill when we think it's in Australia's national interest, when we think it will unlock the economic opportunities that Australians really could take advantage of.
JOURNALIST: What are the elements that are bad?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, I will defer to Angie Bell to talk about the specifics, but obviously, some of the contentious issues are the powers granted to this new Environmental Protection Agency at the federal level, whether or not it has discretion over approvals or whether or not the minister can step in, that's one of those contentious issues. Others are, are we genuinely going to actually streamline approvals between the state and federal governments, or are we just going to duplicate them as we have in the past? Unless those big issues are tackled, we will find it very difficult to support it.
Thank you.
ENDS