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Transcripts
March 16, 2026
TOM CONNELL: Joining me live now is Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson. So you've made this referral. This relates to the AFL actually having a tribute, a commemoration to the victims, but not using the word Jew. Why have you made this referral?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: One of the key tasks for the Royal Commission, Tom, is to get to the bottom of why so many institutions failed Jewish Australians in the lead up to Bondi. They failed to understand how serious antisemitism was. They allowed it to fester on their watch. They didn't address it. It's particularly shocking to me that even after Bondi, we see institutions like the AFL, which are incredibly influential in our society, seemingly failed again. From media reports, we understand that the Swans initiated this tribute to Bondi victims, and in the script that the CEO was to read at the start of the game, it included a reference to the Jewish Australians. Now reportedly that reference to Jewish Australians was removed by the AFL in order to "de-politicise" the statement. Now it is not a political statement to recognise that Jews were the targets and the overwhelming majority of the victims of the Bondi terrorist attack, which was an antisemitic terrorist attack. And the AFL certainly has not shown any reluctance at all in previously getting involved in political activities. Infamously, they backed the highly contentious voice referendum proposal, which was a highly political act. So really, we need to get to the bottom of this. We need to understand who was it that removed that reference to the Jewish community and why did they do so?
TOM CONNELL: So if it wasn't removed, if it's just a case of it wasn't in there, it would seem bizarre to me not to mention it's the Jewish community. But it's not antisemitic in itself to forget to put it in or just not put it in. Is that fair, do you think? Are you more interested in if there was an instruction? Would that be the smoking gun, if you like?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I'm not accusing anyone of antisemitism, Tom, but I think we do need to understand if there was a reference to the Jewish community, why it was taken out, and you are right, if there was no reference to the Jewish community to begin with, that's utterly bizarre. The overwhelming majority of the victims were Jewish. It was an attack on a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach. The alleged shooters knew what they were doing when they targeted the Jewish community. And so it would be ridiculous and weird to have any sort of acknowledgement that didn't recognise the fact that it was an attack on Jewish Australians, and that would be a problem in of itself, but as you say it's an even greater problem if someone saw the word Jewish in that statement and thought it was a good idea to take it out.
TOM CONNELL: All right, we'll await a response to all of that. Regarding the Iran war, the U.S. and Israel indicate it will be at least several more weeks. Is it clear, do you think, what the U.S. is trying to achieve and how?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think it's clear from the statements made by the President and his senior administration figures that there's a range of objectives from this initiation of conflict with Iran. Really, it's recognising that Iran has got away with bad behaviour on the international stage for too long. Both with their ballistic missile program, their nuclear weapons program, and their state sponsorship of terrorism, not just in the region, but as far as Australia, where our security agencies have assessed at least two of the antisemitic terror attacks in our country, including the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and Lewis' Continental Kitchen in Sydney, was sponsored by Iran, by the Iranian regime, and ultimately the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. So, Iran is a bad faith actor, and they are a menace to the world, and that's why, I think, the primary reason why the Americans and the Israelis have taken this action. They have also said, though, that if there were to be a change in the regime, that would be a very good thing, and I agree with them.
TOM CONNELL: But there doesn't appear to be any plan on doing that other than just decimating the regime and hoping something pops up. Isn't that a concern?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I've said from the very first days of this conflict, Tom, that regime change through the air alone is not something that I'm aware of ever having historically been delivered. It is a very difficult thing to do. Ultimately, only the Iranian people can decide their own destiny. And that's a very easy thing for me to say in the comfort of a television studio thousands of kilometres away.
TOM CONNELL: Can they, though?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, that's the question. That is the key question. I mean, it is a life or death decision, as we know from recent months. Tens of thousands of innocent Iranian citizens were murdered by the regime just for peacefully protesting. So it is an extraordinary thing to expect that they'll be able to change their own regime.
TOM CONNELL: The U.S. is calling for allies to help out, including deploying warships. No specific call to Australia, but is that something we should consider?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, I saw the Infrastructure Minister, Catherine King, has categorically ruled that out this morning. It's not usually the case that a domestic non-national security minister would make an announcement like that on behalf of the government. I wonder if, normally, that would be more appropriate for the Prime Minister or the Defence Minister to make an announcement like that. We should consider a request if it comes.
TOM CONNELL: Well they could've made the call and communicated it?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Yes, but slightly strange for it to be announced on Radio National by an infrastructure minister, but perhaps that's the way the Albanese government wants to make these announcements. We should consider a request, if it comes, very carefully against both our national interest and the availability of appropriate naval vessels for this conflict. It's a matter of public record that in 2023 the Biden administration asked the Albanese government to provide a surface combatant to help keep the Red Sea open against the Houthi terrorist organisation which was closing it in a similar means to what the IRGC is doing right now. And public reporting at the time indicated that we weren't able to because we didn't have sufficiently well equipped ships to deploy that could protect themselves against drone and missile attacks. So I hope since then significant improvements have been made to those vessels so that they would be able to be deployed, but it's up to the Albanese government to explain that if they have.
TOM CONNELL: On fuel supply, I just want to stick to the macro element of this and how many days of physical supply we have in reserve. Some within the Coalition, I spoke to Andrew Hastie, who said he'd been long calling for more. It's fair to say, though, isn't it, that the Coalition government could have, if it really wanted as a priority, increased, for example, our onshore capability to 90 days, and it did not. So the fact we're not there that's not just Labor's fault, is it?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, the former Coalition government did some very important things in this space, including when Angus Taylor was Energy Minister. Such as saving our last two oil refineries, which, without government intervention, would have closed, but the government took action to effectively subsidise their operations to keep them operating. We also passed the Fuel Security Act which gives the Minister for Energy extraordinary powers and visibility of supply and demand of fuel in our economy that allowed us to manage the AdBlue crisis and other crises as well as making an investment in that strategic offshore reserve in Texas. Now I know the Albanese government has made much light of that but actually something like that might be quite handy right now if we had access to it but they sold it when they came to office.
TOM CONNELL: Ok. And just finally, I wanted to ask you about AUKUS. You said it's cannibalising the defence budget. Have you yet got specific projects, whatever they might be, that you would either fast-track or bring back on, uncancel if you like, if you were the Coalition in Government or you were defence minister?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: To be clear Tom, I strongly support AUKUS, but if you, as Angus Houston has told us, try and deliver AUKUS without increasing the defence budget, then it does risk cannibalising other capability and we've seen the Australian Army particularly hard hit by the cancellation of self-propelled howitzers and infantry fighting vehicles, but military capability more broadly with military satellite communications like JP9102, also cancelled the 4th Squadron of F-35s. Even reservists have had their number of days of maximum service reduced from 200 a year to 150 a year. So I'm not specifying exactly which one of those we would have overturned, but it's very clear that you wouldn't need to make cuts like this if you're increasing defence spending. But as a percentage of GDP, defence spending remains at 2% a year, as it was under the previous government, and it hasn't stepped up in the way that our best informed experts have told us we need to.
TOM CONNELL: James Paterson, I appreciate your time. Thank you.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thanks, Tom.
ENDS