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Transcripts
August 19, 2025
ANDREW CLENNELL: Joining me live from Melbourne is the Shadow Finance and Government Services Minister, James Paterson. And James Paterson, let me ask first about Ukraine before I get onto the roundtable. What's your read in terms of the hope of peace being achieved now? Donald Trump seems kind of confident. Are you as confident as him?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, if President Trump can broker a peace between Russia and Ukraine, that will be a historic achievement and a very welcome one. But how that peace is achieved and the terms on which it is achieved are very important. Because if all it is is a pause in fighting, which allows Vladimir Putin to rebuild his strength and then re-invade Ukraine at some point in the future, then we will have gained nothing at all. And so durable security guarantees for Ukraine are essential as part of this process. And Vladimir Putin can't be seen to have gained a victory here because otherwise it will send a very bad message to others around the world.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think they should be prepared to give up some territory, Ukraine?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, that's really not for me to advise 10,000 kilometres away. We want this to end on terms that are acceptable to Ukraine. Ukraine should not be forced to accept terms which are unacceptable to them or which can be painted as a win for President Putin, because otherwise I fear that we will be back having this conversation again in six months, or a year, or two years' time, and it will have been for nothing.
ANDREW CLENNELL: You and Sussan Ley confirmed this morning that you would back Australian peacekeepers in Ukraine. What's brought about this change of heart from the Coalition?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, we've said that we should consider a request if it comes, and there are two things that need to happen there. First, a request needs to come from our NATO partners, and then we need to consider it. And we would have to very carefully examine the ADF's capability to assist, because, frankly, we're in a dangerous part of the world, and the ADF is stretched already, in part because this government is not investing adequately in the ADF. But if there is a contribution that we can make, then we should be open to making that contribution because we have a strong interest in preventing this war from breaking out again. And you're right, that is a change of position to what we took to the election. We lost that election. It was the worst election defeat for the Liberal Party in 80 years. And all of our policies are up for review, including this one.
ANDREW CLENNELL: What do you make of the tit-for-tat visa war between the Australian and Israeli governments at the moment, with diplomats having their visas revoked from the Palestinian Authority?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think Tony Burke has a very serious problem here because Tony Burke has blocked this member of the Knesset on the basis, apparently, that he is in favour of the destruction of Hamas. And yet Tony Burke has allowed people to visit this country on his watch as Home Affairs Minister, who have advocated for terrorist organisations and for terrorism. Sami Hamdi, who came to Australia last year, praised October 7, saying it should be celebrated and that it was a victory. And Mohammed Ghuloom also came to Australia last year. He praised Hassan Nasrallah, the slain former Hezbollah terrorist leader. So it seems like under Tony Burke, you get a green light if you support terrorism, but you get a red light if you oppose terrorism. And that's a terrible act of hypocrisy and not one that makes Australians safer.
ANDREW CLENNELL: What do you make of Daniel Mookhey's comments before, particularly on the skill shortage and even on tobacco excise, he wants a reduction in that.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, I thought that was a very thoughtful interview from Daniel Mookhey. I don't know him personally, but I thought he engaged, you know, very constructively with those questions. And I hope that's the spirit of the roundtable in Canberra today. Ted O'Brien can't take his phone in there, so he hasn't been texting me under the table. But I look forward to hearing about how it went today. I think there are big challenges for our country. Clearly, tobacco control has not succeeded over the last couple of years. We've seen an explosion of the black market, and we do need to look at how we can fix that problem. And we do not have adequately skilled workers in this country to build the houses and infrastructure that we need.
ANDREW CLENNELL: So, how do you get around that skills problem? Do you need more skilled migrants, even as perhaps the argument is that we need less migration? Do we need more construction workers coming from overseas? Because that to me seems a key thing in terms of productivity, a really key stumbling block.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, even as we took a policy to the last election to reduce migration overall, we did say that we thought that construction workers should be a priority among the skilled workers that were coming to this country, because although it's critically important to train more workers in Australia, and I appreciate the points that Daniel Mookhey was making about occupational recognition and licencing, which does prevent people from moving between states and having their qualifications recognised, the truth is neither of those two things are going to solve this problem overnight, and some component of skilled migration is going to be an important contributor to that. I agree with you. I don't think there's any bigger problem facing our country than the housing market. There are tens of thousands of young Australians turning up to auctions every weekend who would agree with you as well. We urgently need to increase the supply of housing, but we have no hope of reaching the government's very ambitious targets unless we have those workers.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Should the government cut tobacco excise?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, I'm not advocating for that for obvious reasons. We'll go through our policy process, and we'll consider options. What we took to the last election was a very significant investment and increased investment in enforcement because it seems like there are criminal gangs who are getting away with, you know, high crimes here. They are importing both illegal vapes and illegal tobacco into this country. There seem to be very few consequences for them, even if they are caught. And there are shop fronts popping up all around Australia that seem to have no obligation or no desire to comply with the law. So I think that's the first part of the problem we need to tackle. Other questions about excise are for another day.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Would you consider it, though? I mean, it's costing the budget billions. That's what the budget paper said, that cigarettes are so expensive. So this illegal market's cropped up. Would you consider it as part of a policy for the Opposition?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Look, we're not looking at anything in this space right now, Andrew. We will consider a more comprehensive tax policy as we approach the next election. My ambition is to have a tax policy that inspires Australians to vote Liberal because they think they're going to be paying lower taxes, and our economy is going to be stronger and better after the next election. And high on my list of priorities is reducing the tax that Australians pay on their take-home income before we start looking at any other areas of possible tax reform.
ANDREW CLENNELL: It does seem, in terms of the agenda of day 3, budget sustainability, the NDIS needs to be tackled. How willing are you to work with the government on cutting back on eligibility for this scheme?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, we will work constructively with the government on any further reforms to the NDIS to get that growth rate under control because it is clearly unsustainable, and it does jeopardise the future of the program for the people who genuinely need it. We worked with the government in the previous term of parliament on an initial round of reforms, which is aimed at getting that spending down to 8% a year. I'm not sure that their target of 8% a year will be achieved on those reforms alone, and 8% a year is still a very fast rate of growth for what is already the third largest line item in the budget, approaching $50 billion a year. And so if there are sensible further changes to make the scheme sustainable and to protect it for the participants who really need it, then we're up for that conversation.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Now, you said earlier in the year, James Paterson, you would be happy to work with the government on tax reform. What sort of reform were you envisaging there? Was the GST in your mind, or what else?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I've personally been sceptical about some of the changes advocated to GST. I joke, Andrew, that if I had a dollar for every time someone advocated broadening the base of GST without specifying to what it should be broadened, then we would solve Australia's revenue problems overnight. It gets very tricky when you get into the particular. For example, I'm not in support of putting the GST on private school fees or private health insurance. I think that would be a step backwards. The kind of tax reform that we're interested in is tax reform that lowers the burden on the Australian people. We don't think the problem in our economy right now is that Australians don't pay enough tax, that they should be paying higher tax. We think they pay plenty of tax already, but the way we collect tax in this country is not as efficient as it could be. And if the government is willing to lead on that, they will have a partner in us. What we're not up for, though, is providing them any blank checks to increase taxes because that's not what they took to the last election.
ANDREW CLENNELL: Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson, thanks so much for your time.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thank you.
ENDS