Transcript | Sky News Sharri | 05 June 2025

Senator James Paterson
Shadow Minister for Finance
Shadow Minister for Government Services
Shadow Minister for the Public Service
Liberal Senator for Victoria

TRANSCRIPT

Thursday 05 June 2025

Interview on Sky News Sharri

Topics: PM childish comments on defence spending, Labor’s super tax will affect all Australians, weak GDP figures show economy on life support, Samantha Maiden disinvited by Sydney University, 

E&OE………………………………………………………………………………………………….

SHARRI MARKSON: The Prime Minister is under pressure from the United States to lift defence spending to three and a half percent of GDP, with both Pete Hegseth and Sebastian Gorka urging him to do more to protect Australians. So far, Albanese has rejected these calls. All to discuss this and more, joining me now is Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson. Great to see you and new introduction there, first time I've had you on the show in your new portfolio. So the Prime Minister is set to meet with President Trump at the G7 summit later this month. Is this going to be adequate for him to just fob off the President, saying that the defence spending at just under 2%, as it is now, is enough?

JAMES PATERSON: Well, Sharri, any respected national security expert will tell you Australia is not spending enough to defend ourselves in the era that we live in. But what I thought was most remarkable about the Prime Minister's refusal to even entertain this idea of increasing defence spending is he said that it's a matter of "sovereignty." We're going to under-invest in our national security and defence because we want to uphold our sovereignty. I mean, that's an extraordinary thing to say. It's like refusing to eat your vegetables because your parents told you to. You know that it's good for you, you know you should do it, but because your parents told you to do it you're going to refuse to do it. But the Prime Minister is coming across as really childish here and in an uncertain strategic environment we need grown up leadership and he needs to step up to the plate and deliver the defence spending that we all know we need.

SHARRI MARKSON: What level do you think it should be?

JAMES PATERSON: We took a commitment to the last election to get to 2.5% of GDP within five years and to get to 3% of GDP within 10 years. I'm very proud of that commitment that we took, which required a lot of heavy lifting and a lot of hard work. But it took seriously the advice of people like Kim Beazley, Sir Angus Houston, Mike Pezullo, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and many of our other most eminent defence experts who tell us that because of China's rapid acquisition of military capability, we are living in an extremely precarious time that could turn south very quickly. And that right now we don't have the military capability to prevent that conflict from happening through deterrence, let alone respond to it should it happen. So really the Prime Minister must move more quickly, he must address this and we would provide bipartisan support for him to do so.

SHARRI MARKSON: Yeah, good point. The Coalition was in a mess this week over its position on the super tax. The Shadow Treasurer, Ted O'Brien, came out on Monday in favour of doing a deal with Labor. He was even on my programme. He then changed his position today. James, are you now worried? And, you know, we all agree that the Coalition shouldn't be supporting higher taxes. But are you now worried that the final legislation will be worse because Labor's going to arrive at their position through a negotiation with the Greens?

JAMES PATERSON: I'm very comfortable where we landed on this issue, Sharri, because it goes to a core Liberal principle as you say. The Liberal Party is the party of lower taxes and we should never make Labor's task of raising taxes any easier, nor should we provide them with a fig leaf of economic responsibility by engaging in negotiations with them to raise taxes. The truth is that we can't stop Labor doing this because with their coalition partners in the Greens they do have a majority in the Senate. But that won't stop us fighting it and we're going to fight it as hard as we can. And we can only hope that sense prevails within the Labor Party and they realise the harm that they're going to do to our economy right now. When business investment is at record lows, the last thing our economy needs is a tax on investment and that's effectively what Jim Chalmers is doing with this tax.

SHARRI MARKSON: He seems pretty adamant that he is going to stick with it, he's given press conferences and media interviews in the past couple of days where he has defended it, saying in effect that he needs higher tax revenue to deal with all the spending. And another idea of course would be to cut spending, but of course the Albanese government's not going to do that. I want to turn to this story that's just broken this evening. News.com.au's political editor Samantha Maiden has been disinvited by a Sydney University student-run newspaper, Honi Soit, to speak at a student conference. Now Honi Soit wrote to her after initially inviting her, begging her to come, they then wrote to her and said, we've received community concerns about your political coverage and reporting on the Palestinian genocide. As a left-wing newspaper, Honi Soit recognises that Israel is committing an ongoing genocide in Palestine and we do not feel that our values align or that we can platform your work as a result. Now, James, Sam Maiden, as far as I'm aware, and I read most of her stories, she hasn't written anything about this issue at all, but that's beside the point. I mean, this is serious discrimination, isn't it? Because if they won't have Sam Maiden speak, they'd never have a Jew speak.

JAMES PATERSON: Sharri, you're right, it's absolutely bizarre that she's been de-platformed for something that she herself has no memory of having written about. But as you say, it doesn't matter, even if she'd been a prolific writer on Israel-Palestine issues and even if she'd taken a stance that the paper disagreed with, one of the tests of journalism is being able to engage with ideas that you disagree with. And one of the things you would hope would be happening on university campuses of all places is engagement with ideas that you disagree with, some that you might even find offensive or troubling or that you disagree with profoundly. But of course, we know that in the modern school of journalism and on modern university campuses, that is increasingly rare. And what I want to do is actually pay tribute to David Marr here, who has himself decided to withdraw from the conference because of their decision to deplatform Sam Maiden. Now, David Marr is a man of the left, but he's from a generation of people on the left when they did support freedom of speech and who understands how critical and important that is to journalism. And so I think he's demonstrated himself to be a person of principle. It deserves to be, you know, praised here. But really these editors of the student newspaper should look themselves in the mirror and ask themselves, are they really fit to engage in the world of ideas? Are they really fit to graduate from university to write big stories, to engage in the battle of ideas, if they are so threatened by someone speaking at their conference who may theoretically, possibly have a different view to them on an issue?

SHARRI MARKSON: I want to echo your congratulations to David Marr for out of principle pulling out of the event. Now, I'm not going to name them, but I do understand there are other high-profile journalists who are still speaking and I hope they withdraw as well because this is truly discriminatory. All right, James Paterson, thank you so much as always.

ENDS

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