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May 20, 2026
SHARRI MARKSON: And for more on this, Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson joins me now live in studio. Great to have you here in person, James.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Good to be here, thank you, Sharri.
SHARRI MARKSON: Now, we've just been speaking about the impact on small business, but there's also the taxation on trusts, which amount to an inheritance tax.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Budgets often oxidise once they're released publicly, and there's scrutiny of what's in them, and nasty things emerge. But I've never seen a budget oxidise so quickly and so badly as this Budget has. On Budget Night, I thought there was a risk that they would be subject to accusations of a death tax. I didn't realise they had already introduced a death tax, at least for some Australians who have a trust, who want to protect their assets, who want to direct where it goes after they die. It's actually a very common family planning tool, estate planning tool. It's not about tax avoidance, and yet these people are going to be hit with a 30% death tax. If Labor's willing to do that in a Budget, then why wouldn't they be willing to do a full-on death tax for all Australians? Why wouldn't they be willing to contemplate taxes on the family home? You can't believe any denial they make now, given the denials that they made about negative gearing, capital gains tax and trusts.
SHARRI MARKSON: And I just want to get your view on the ideological nature of this, as Paul Kelly points out. This is a massive shift to the left, this Budget. Before that, you know, perhaps they tried to stay somewhat centrist, although that's arguable. But this is really a big radical shift.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: This is the mask-off moment. This is where the Albanese government shows the Australian people who they really are. There were some debates in the lead-up to this Budget about changes in the tax mix, where we would increase taxes on capital and decrease taxes on workers. And that might have been defensible, as Chris Minns and others have argued. But what they've actually done is they have taken those tax increases and returned almost none of it to working people, almost no tax cuts at all. This is about an agenda for bigger government, for higher taxes, for more spending, because that's fundamentally what this government believes. They just weren't transparent with the Australian people about that before the election.
SHARRI MARKSON: All right, we will come back to the Budget with the panel and with Adam Creighton a bit later. But I'm keen to ask you about this snub by Emmanuel Macron. So Latika Bourke in the Nightly reports that Albanese has not been invited on the official invite list to the G7, which is held in mid-June. The invite list is done by the French President, Emmanuel Macron, to add to the humiliation, the leaders of Kenya, Brazil, and South Korea have been invited. This is a snub, isn't it?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: This is a really important story from Latika Bourke that deserves wider attention. Imagine if this had happened to a previous government, the Morrison government, imagine if they were overlooked. I think people would set their hair on fire with panic about that. It's actually a really disappointing decision because, for the best part of the last decade, Australia has been invited to participate in the G7, and I think we have things to contribute. No disrespect to those other countries that are being invited, but the Indo-Pacific is such a critical region. This has become such a key forum for democracies to coordinate internationally. And if we're not even in the room, we won't have an opportunity to shape that. So it is a really disappointing decision. And I'd like to know what the Albanese government is doing to try and overturn it, to get an invite.
SHARRI MARKSON: What do you think they should do?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, the Prime Minister has boasted about his relationship with France, and particularly with President Macron. He's made quite something of the fact that he has "restored" that relationship. Well, obviously, it's not as strong or as healthy as he's claimed it is. And he's got an opportunity to demonstrate that now by reaching out directly to the President and asking for an invitation.
SHARRI MARKSON: We're learning that the ISIS brides, the next cohort of seven women and another group of children, are set to arrive within days. Now, we haven't heard, again, any information, no transparency from the Albanese government about this. You know, the last cohort, we didn't really know. Well, I reported, but they didn't tell Australians that at least two, and there were three, were going to be subject to charges, as it turned out. So we know nothing about this group either.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: All we need to know is that they have been in a terrorist-controlled hotspot for a significant amount of time. They voluntarily left a liberal democracy like Australia, one of the best countries in the world, one of the freest countries in world, one of the most prosperous countries in the world. They went to join a death cult. And that's enough information for me to know that we don't want them back. If they are also charged with crimes like the other cohort has been, well, then that's an additional reason to be wary. And the Albanese government is up to this to their eyeballs. They know all about this, but as you say, they're not taking the Australian people into their confidence and being honest and transparent about it.
SHARRI MARKSON: I mean, we've spoken about the fact that the passports were issued in bulk to someone who then brought them over to the ISIS cohort. It's kind of like, you know, the Teflon man, they haven't been held accountable for the issuing of these passports and other travel documentation. That is the responsibility of the government.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: It's very clearly within the control of the government to prevent these people from returning, if they want. They have grounds under the Passport Act to refuse to issue them passports or cancel them. They have grounds to use temporary exclusion orders to keep them offshore, to apply for them. Penny Wong hasn't cancelled the passports or refused to issue to them. Tony Burke hasn't issued the temporary exclusion orders, so they own the return of these people to our country.
SHARRI MARKSON: I imagine you'll be grilling them about this in Senate estimates in a couple of weeks' time.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: We certainly will.
SHARRI MARKSON: Alright, so in your shadow portfolio, now there are the plans to upgrade Australia's Collins class submarines which have been scaled back, and the Defence Minister Richard Marles effectively admitted that there is a gap here. Here's what he had to say.
[CLIP START]
THE HON RICHARD MARLES MP: No government demonstrated the cost to the nation of the Liberals' defence failure more than the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, for it must surely rank as the worst defence government in Australia's history. The Liberals had succeeded only in opening up a capability gap with Australia's most important military platform. The Liberal failed to prepare and implement a thoughtful plan for the life-of-type extension for the Collins fleet.
[CLIP END]
SHARRI MARKSON: I mean, James, there are some suggestions that we might still have the old submarines, you know, for another 20 years or so.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: That was one of the most partisan speeches ever delivered by a Defence Minister. It was incredibly defensive, and frankly, I think beneath the office of the Deputy Prime Minister. And its purpose was to try and obscure quite an embarrassing de-scoping of this upgrade of the Collins class submarines and the fact that they're now going to be in the water for longer than we previously thought they might need to be. The truth is under Labor Australia is going to be less well defended because they're not willing to spend what is necessary to spend to protect our country. We may be down to only two submarines in the water in the next few years. And for a maritime nation, that's not good enough. And Richard Marles can spend all the time and energy he likes attacking the previous government, but attacking the previous government doesn't make Australia safer. Only actually winning fights around the Expenditure Review Committee table and getting funding for defence is what makes us safer.
SHARRI MARKSON: I mean, at this point in time, Australia can't defend itself at all, should we need to. We are completely reliant on the United States, and given that's the situation, you think the Prime Minister would stop criticising the President of the United States?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I agree. I think the relationship with the United States is being mismanaged on Labor's watch. We've seen the President now publicly call out Australia on four separate occasions in relation to Iran. As far as we can tell, no attempt has been made to clarify between the Prime Minister and the President. This is our most important relationship, and whatever Australians might think about Donald Trump personally, he's democratically elected by our closest ally, and he makes decisions every day which affect our national security. And so it's a relationship that should be very carefully managed, and it is just not being.
SHARRI MARKSON: All right, just finally, James. Now, we've spoken about this on this program before, that the federal government is moving to sell off, privatise, a whole lot of Defence Force heritage sites. Now, you've taken this campaign to heart. You've started a petition to save some of these sites. Tell us about it.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: In just 24 hours 10,000 Australians have signed on to my petition to tell the Albanese government to not give away our military heritage, once it's gone it's gone forever and some of our most iconic military bases including Victoria Barracks here in Sydney which has been continuously operated by the ADF and its predecessors for over 150 years are going to be flogged off for a few dollars because Richard Marles can't get the funding he needs from the budget. And I just think it's incredibly short-sighted. I'm worried about the impact it has on our heritage and our morale. But I'm also worried about the impact it has on our capability. Former Chief of Army, Ken Gillespie, told my colleague Jess Collins this week in a Senate inquiry that Victoria Barracks Sydney has been a key staging ground for counter-terrorism functions in Sydney when there are major events on, when things like APEC or a G7 or a G20 are held. It's used for things like that. If you give that away, there's not a readily, easily available replacement, and I think that's irresponsible.
SHARRI MARKSON: And it's for such a small budget gain anyway, you wouldn't have thought it was worth it. Okay, so James, so people really care about this issue. How do they find your petition? Have we got the URL, putting it up now?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: If you just head to my website or even just Google my name, it'll come up, it's on the home page, and you can sign on and join that growing list of Australians to send a message to the government. We have to get them to back down here. They have to see sense. Not every single one of the 67 sites that they want to sell is a priceless piece of heritage, but there are many significant items of heritage that really should not be thrown away, whether it's the Queenscliff Fort in Victoria, whether it's Victoria Barracks here or in Brisbane, these are really iconic sites.
SHARRI MARKSON: Yep. All right. So head to your website, and we just showed that on the screen. James, great to see you in person. Thank you so much.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Thank you for having me.
ENDS