Media
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Transcripts
December 17, 2025
PETER STEFANOVIC: Well, we will start off there with James Paterson, I mean, he's in Geelong, he's not even here at Bondi, and he's getting heckled, not just him, but you know the top brass of the Albanese government, Marles, Wong, etc, for inaction failing the Jewish community. What do you make of that?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, obviously, the Jewish community feels deeply disappointed and let down by governments, state and federal, not having done enough and not heeded the warnings. But it's much broader than that. I mean, in my encounters with the community over the last couple of days, Australians of no faith at all or non-Jewish backgrounds have expressed their anger, that how is this allowed to happen in our country? How did we get to this? This is not the Australia that most of us recognise that we grew up in or that we want to live in.
PETER STEFANOVIC: So, what do we do from here? What do we do to make this the place that we recognise and that we want to continue living in?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think one of the first steps is to stop tolerating the intolerable. There are people in our society who are extremists, who do not love our society, do not love its culture, do not love its values, and they want to tear it down, they don't want to build it up. When I read the news in The Australian yesterday that Naveed Akram was associated with the Al Madina Dawah Centre here in Sydney, I was completely unsurprised. This is an organisation I've been concerned about for years and it is long past time it was shut down. It is a factory of hate, it produces nothing but extremists and it shouldn't be allowed to continue. It shouldn't be shut down next week, or next month, or next year, it should be shut down today.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Well, I mean, Nazis are getting kicked out of the country at the moment. Should that be extended?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Absolutely, I mean, anyone who is here on a visa, who's engaged in any sort of incitement or vilification of the Jewish community should have their visa cancelled, and they should be deported. But an organisation like the Al Madina Dawah Centre, I've been talking about it for years because it is the principal source of some of the worst hate preaching we've seen in this country since October 7. If you ever read about a hate preacher saying that Jews are monkeys or pigs or should be spat on and drowned, inevitably, it's come from the Al Madina Dawah Centre. It's got a long association with some of our worst terrorists. You know, people who went to fight for Islamic State, like Khalid Sharrouf and Mohammed Elomar, some of the worst convicted terrorists, like Abdul Benbrika. And Wissam Haddad, who is the principal preacher at the Al Madina Dawah Centre, was this year successfully sued by the Jewish community for vilification under the Racial Discrimination Act. Why do we let an organisation like that continue to operate and exist in our community? It produces nothing good.
PETER STEFANOVIC: So if you can't kick them out of the country because they're born here, what do you do then? Do you just shut it down? I mean, they'll continue to preach, you know, through other channels, would they not?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, we have to use every lawful means available to state and federal governments, whether it's using the Charities and Not-for-Properties Commission, whether it's using the ATO, whether it's using vilification laws, incitement to violence laws. The full weight of the state should be thrown at extremists like this because they use our freedoms against us, they weaponise our freedoms against us, they don't want to uphold our freedoms, they want to use them to undermine and change Australia. And we've got to stop tolerating this, it will end in disaster for our country if this continues.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Given your experience and your investigations in it. I mean, how prevalent is it that the younger folks are getting indoctrinated out there?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, everyone has their own radicalisation pathway if they ultimately go and do a horrific atrocity like this. Some people are radicalised solely online, they get their content from overseas. But some people are radicalised here in our community, they're radicalised by extreme preachers. People like Wassim Haddad have been on the watch lists of our intelligence and security agencies, and police for a long time. And yet he's been able to behave with impunity and get away with frankly this kind of behaviour at a massive cost.
PETER STEFANOVIC: I did put your demand to Richard Marles today, and he kind of squibbed the answer. I mean, they're obviously under the pump at the moment, trying to work out what's the go-to from here. He says everything will be looked at, I mean, only a few days after a terror attack. Is that fair enough? Do they need time to be able to work out how to stop this from happening again?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think Australians are over the platitudes. I think they are over the talking points. I think they are over the rhetoric. I think that they want action, and they expect it from their governments. And it's a reasonable expectation, three days after our worst ever terror attack, that the government is ready with action that they could take. I mean, they've had recommendations like Jillian Segal's sitting on their desk for five months. They should have been implemented months ago. It shouldn't have taken this. I thought the bombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue, which we now know was an act of state-sponsored terror by the Islamic Republic of Iran, should have been enough for the Prime Minister and the federal government to realise just how serious this is. But if that wasn't enough, well, surely this is enough, surely this tells them what needs to be done.
PETER STEFANOVIC: So, I mean, their answer to that is, well, we've made changes. We've done more than any other government, you know, toughened laws, etc. I mean, is that a worthy excuse?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: It's not enough. It's clearly not enough and the question is not have they done something, but have they've done everything? Did they do everything in their power to prevent things like this happening? And the answer is clearly no. Even the things they have done, they typically had to be dragged to that, kicking and screaming, by the Jewish community, by the opposition, by the media. They didn't have their own proactive initiatives to deal with this issue. They've been on the back foot from the beginning, and that's why people are so frustrated and angry. They've been warning about this, the Jewish community could not have been clearer that they feared that something like this would happen, and they feel so outraged that they've been proven right.
PETER STEFANOVIC: What are your thoughts on the Philippines at the moment, and if red flags should have been raised, you know, if ASIO or the relevant authorities are aware of these two, not necessarily watching them, but they're aware of them, they go to the Philippines, which is a known hotspot for extremism, as I mentioned it, particularly in the southern part of the region. Should there have been a red flag raised, should there have been some intervention on their return, or are there too many people they're watching so they just fell down the priority list?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, I don't want to speculate about our intelligence agencies and our police. They're in the middle of this investigation, and they do amazing work. But there will be, no doubt, a coronial inquest and inquiries that will get to the bottom of this. And there'll no doubt be lessons learned. On the Philippines, I mean, it's a beautiful country. I've been there, I was married there, in fact. But Mindanao is not a safe place. It's a troubled part of the world, and honestly, there are not many good reasons for an Australian to be travelling to Mindanao unless they have an immediate family or friends there they're visiting. And for someone who's previously been a person of interest for ASIO to travel and spend a month, as media reports suggest this morning in Mindanao, I think it's a pretty good data point that we have a problem here. And for somebody who's got a firearms licence who's a non-citizen, but a resident here, to be in Mindanao for a month. I mean, that should have raised some alarm bells, I would have thought.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Final one here, do you think this push for gun reform is a distraction from those bigger issues, Islamic extremism in this country?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: We're happy to look at gun reform and I think there probably are some sensible changes that could be made there but it's not going to be enough on its own because even if these people did not have guns, even if they only had the improvised explosive device that was found in their car, or knives, or anything, they could have done horrific harm and so we have to address the root cause here which is antisemitism, which is Islamic extremism, which is the corrosive ideology that leads people to think it's okay to come to a Hanukkah event and murder people indiscriminately. Unless we solve that problem, then we will find ourselves back here at another tragedy.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, that's James Paterson joining us live here in Bondi. Appreciate that, James.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thank you.
ENDS