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Transcripts
October 15, 2026
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PETER STEFANOVIC: Joining us live this morning, the Shadow Defence Minister, James Paterson. It's good to see you this morning, James. So he'll try again with no changes, apparently. What's that saying about doing the same thing twice, expecting a different result?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, good luck with that, Mark Butler. In my experience, if you show contempt for the Senate, that contempt is returned, and so it should be in this case, because this is a particularly cruel cut, a cut of $3 billion to older Australians who are taking out private health insurance, and in doing so, taking pressure off the public system. And the particularly cruel thing about this is that about a million of those victims of Mark Butler's cuts were pensioners. These are people who don't have a lot of spare cash, but value their health, and have decided to take out private health insurance. And Mark Butler effectively wants to kick them off the private health insurance system by taking away up to $800 a year per person, or $1,600 a year per couple, and many just can't afford that.
STEFANOVIC: So you expect these moves to be kicked out again?
PATERSON: Well, unless the Greens buckle, that's the only issue. We are not for moving. The Liberal and National parties have led the fight every step of the way against these cruel cuts to older Australians. We'll continue to fight them because we think they're wrong in principle and they'll lead to unintended consequences of harming our public health system as well.
STEFANOVIC: Senator Shoebridge is coming up in the program a little bit later on, we'll see if they do buckle. Elsewhere this morning, James, Labor's digital duty of care laws to be introduced into Parliament today, the government scrapping ministerial powers replaced by legislative amendments, news content to be protected. Your thoughts on these changes and where it's at overall.
PATERSON: My view is this bill is unsalvageable, and it should be abandoned, and we cannot support it because ultimately the problem here is not any one clause in the bill, it's the government's intent. And Anika Wells, the Communications Minister, had made that very clear from the beginning when she said the problem that the government was trying to solve is that people don't trust her or believe her anymore. And there's a very good reason why they don't trust her or the Labor Party or the Labor government, and that is because they lie. They've lied repeatedly on negative gearing, on capital gains tax, on trusts, on superannuation, on income taxes, on so many other issues. And it turns out if you lie to people repeatedly, then they don't trust you, and no social media bill is going to fix that problem for you, but it might censor the views of Australians in the process.
STEFANOVIC: So you think it's more about censorship than online safety?
PATERSON: Of course it is. Of course it is, I mean, Anika Wells herself has made that very clear in her comments. The Prime Minister made that very clear, in his comments when he was over in New York. This is a government which has tried a number of times, including through their misinformation and disinformation bill and other times, to secretly control Australian speech, to censor Australian speech. And we won't have a bar of it.
STEFANOVIC: Ok, so what's the alternative for online safety though, particularly for kids, is it just to let it rip?
PATERSON: No, I mean the whole point of getting children under 16 off social media is because we recognise that social media can't be made safe for children. No matter what other measures you put in place, it's an inherently unsafe place for children, even if you could remove all the abhorrent content and all efforts to do so so far have failed, it's just not good for their mental health and their brain development because of the way in which the algorithms feed them and the way in which they respond. It's just no good for their concentration, for their intellectual development. So I think the government should focus on actually delivering the only policy they have in this space, which has so far failed to get young people off social media.
STEFANOVIC: Ok, the expenses saga has caught Anne Aly in its dragnet. She's billed taxpayers about $150,000 to visit nine countries over 17 months. Now, she is the Minister for International Development, which would partly explain that, but she's also Minister for Small Business at a time when small businesses are struggling to find a buck. What are your thoughts on this?
PATERSON: Well, ministers do have to travel internationally occasionally to do their jobs, but nine trips in such a short period of time is a heck of a lot of travel, and $150,000 is a lot to spend. I think one of those trips to Spain on its own cost $40,000. Most small business people work their entire lives and would never dream of being able to afford one trip like that in their retirement. And at a time when small business is struggling, at a time when this government is smashing small business with credit card surcharge bans, banning the payment of tax debts to the ATO, hitting them with so many other taxes and regulations, including right now before the parliament, tax changes to trusts, which will really harm the small business sector. They need a small business minister in Australia fighting for them, but Anne Aly obviously has no interest in fighting for them.
STEFANOVIC: Well, what do you make of the New South Wales government now falling in behind Jim Chalmers, when it comes to trusts?
PATERSON: Well, it's a good thing that the New South Wales government is not going to tax people who have to change their affairs because Jim Chalmers is making these changes to trusts. But state governments shouldn't have to fall into line to accommodate these reckless changes that are going to harm small business, and they should stop. Let's remember that the government didn't take this to an election. The government didn't earn a mandate for this. This is something that they've done after an election that they failed to tell the Australian people about. Small business is undergoing some of the toughest conditions they have in decades, the last thing they need is for their tax affairs to be smashed apart by the Albanese government.
STEFANOVIC: Okay, we'll leave it there. James Paterson, good to see you on this Thursday morning, appreciate it.
ENDS