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Transcripts
April 23, 2026
PETER STEFANOVIC: For more on this from the opposition, now joining us is the Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson. For this and more, James, good to see you this morning. So with more time to consider what Mark Butler had to say yesterday, is the Opposition going to support the legislation?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Good morning, Pete. Well, as you know, the Coalition has been warning for years now that the NDIS is on an unsustainable trajectory and that if we don't fix it, that ultimately it threatens the needs of the people who need it most. And when we were in government, we tried to introduce reforms quite similar to what Mark Butler has now announced, and the Labor Party blocked those reforms. And went to the '22 election, saying that there were no sustainability issues at all with the NDIS. Well, four years later they have finally woken up, they have realised that there is a problem, but as my colleague Melissa McIntosh has said, the real problem in the NDIS is massive fraud, which the Labor Party seems not as interested in dealing with. Rather than participants who genuinely need this service and are now wondering about whether or not their plans are going to be cut or whether they're going to be booted off it altogether. So, we will be constructive, we will be bipartisan, we'll act in the national interest, of course, this needs to be reined in, and we'll look for the details.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Just on that last point though, was that not a major part of Mark Butler's address yesterday to focus more on registered providers rather than unregistered?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Yes it is welcome that the government is saying that more providers need to be registered. People have been calling for that for years and the government has done nothing to do that. They have allowed organised crime to systematically rort a taxpayer funded social welfare scheme and walk away with billions of dollars of taxpayers money. It's probably by the way why this government is contemplating increasing taxes on Australians through housing and other means because they have allowed this fraud to go on and on for years after they were warned to deal with it.
PETER STEFANOVIC: But I mean, it all happened under your watch as well, though, didn't it? So I mean, you know how difficult it is to tackle.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Some of this did happen on our watch, we recognised it, and we tried to fix it, but we did not have bipartisan support from the Opposition, they shamelessly politicised this issue, they said that we were going to take away support for people with disabilities, they said there was no problems with the NDIS and sustainability. Now I think what Mark Butler showed yesterday was that Labor is the author of this disaster, they set up the NDIS in a way that didn't have proper controls and protections against fraud. They prevented us from fixing those problems, and now all of a sudden they're saying they need the Coalition's help to fix it. As I said, we will act in a constructive, bipartisan way in the national interest, but we will remind Australians of how much fraud the Labor Party has allowed to happen.
PETER STEFANOVIC: So even if these targets are reached, can we still afford a $55 billion bill on this, a total, or should there be further cuts?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well this is a scheme that was on track to reach $100 billion, and I have to say this is not the first time the Labor Party has promised to bring the growth trajectory down. They've done actually very little to ensure the growth trajectory does come down so we will have to see in practice whether or not, even if these reforms do pass, whether they achieve the growth targets. A 2% growth target is incredibly ambitious and will have to involve kicking tens if not hundreds of thousands of people off the scheme.
PETER STEFANOVIC: And that leads me to my next point. So a key part of it is going to be this assessment tool that will be used on the program to decide basically who's in and who's out. Do you have any early ideas on how that assessment tool should be or what it should be?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, based on what Mark Butler said at the National Press Club yesterday, it sounds remarkably similar to the independent assessments that Linda Reynolds proposed when she was NDIS Minister under the Morrison government, which the Labor Party said were outrageous. So we will wait and see the detail. It's up to the government to outline the detail, but really this is pretty gross hypocrisy from Labor.
PETER STEFANOVIC: All right, let's move on to some other issues, James. The ceasefire remains in place. There's no fixed timeframe on talks now. Do you think from where we are that we've reached a stalemate in the conflict?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, that's possible, Pete, but let's see how it evolves over the next few days and weeks. I think it is welcome that there is a ceasefire, but ultimately what we want to see, what is most in Australia's national interest, is the Strait of Hormuz is reopened, and we are waiting very keenly to see whether Iran will stop their attacks on commercial shipping in the strait, whether they will stop seeking to toll ships that pass through the strait.
PETER STEFANOVIC: And now there's a push to sort of guard against future supply shocks when it comes to oil here. There was an interesting piece in The Australian this morning, James, about Anthony Albanese sounding out interest in a third refinery. Would you be open to that? I mean, I guess the trouble is there hasn't been a strong business case for one in the past. The times have obviously changed.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, the short answer is yes. That's right, Pete, times have changed, and the short answer is yes. The reason why we have two refineries open today is because of action that Angus Taylor took as Energy Minister under the Morrison Government to step into the market and support their continued operation, and we are open to all reasonable means to increase our refining capacity, but also to increase our capacity to drill for crude oil in Australia. We need to be getting out of the way, removing the regulatory blockages to getting more drilling happening in Australia, so we have more sovereign crude oil supply as well.
PETER STEFANOVIC: How heavily would a third refinery need to be subsidised, though?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, that's impossible for me to know, Pete, and I shouldn't speculate. Let's wait and see the details of what the Prime Minister is alluding to.
PETER STEFANOVIC: Okay, well, yeah, we'll wait to see those details perhaps later on today. James, it's good to see you this morning. Thank you so much.
ENDS