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April 28, 2026
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SHARRI MARKSON: Well, Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson gave an important speech today where he sounded the alarm over Australia's security environment. It was his first-ever speech to the National Press Club, and he said the Albanese government should consider buying a fleet of B-21 stealth bombers. You know, the type that carried those bunker-busting bombs. He said this was just in case anything was to happen to AUKUS.
[CLIP START]
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I'm not here banging the lectern, demanding the government place an order tomorrow. I'm not even saying that a future Coalition government would buy them. But I am asking the government to take a careful second look at this. Only the government can know whether the RAAF is well placed to acquire these planes and to put them into service. Perhaps there are good reasons why a B-21 does not work for Australia.
[CLIP END]
SHARRI MARKSON: And James joins me now, James, great to see you. Look, this was a fascinating speech today. I'll come back to the bunker-busting bombs in a second, but in your speech, you made the really important point that if Australians knew how likely conflict is in our region and how ill-prepared we are, you say they'd be marching in the streets. So how likely do you think conflict is in our region and how dire are our strategic and defence circumstances?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Sharri, I'd like to be able to put a precise number on it, a percentage, a fraction, and tell people with certainty what is going to happen. But I can't. All I can point to is the information that is out there in the public domain, which the government knows and which they should be much more frank and honest about, instead of trying to perversely reassure people that everything is ok. And that public information is that the People's Republic of China is engaged in the largest peacetime build-up of military capability since the end of World War II. They've accompanied that build-up with menacing military training exercises around Taiwan, and they also engage in bellicose rhetoric about how the reunification of Taiwan with China is a core objective of the Chinese Communist Party and that they are willing to use force if necessary to achieve it. Now that information alone should be enough to focus the minds of the government and to get them to spend more as our best defence and national security experts tell us we must. But they haven't. And the reason why they haven't is because they haven't been candid about that threat. And they haven't been candid about how ill-prepared we currently are.
SHARRI MARKSON: I mean, we often hear the Prime Minister say when it comes to China, you know, we disagree where we must and agree where we can or some phrase like it. Do you think the Prime Minister is guilty of downplaying the threat from China and other enemies as well on the axis of evil, and instead putting it in these simplistic terms?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: I think Australians deserve more than just rote-learned anodyne talking points like those. I think they deserve a Prime Minister who levels with them, who explains that while we don't choose conflict and we would never initiate conflict, conflict still may occur in the future, and it may occur at an unexpected time and an unexpected place, and right now we're not ready. We're not spending enough to make sure that we could, for example, resupply ourselves with precision-guided weapons and other munitions. We're not spending enough so that we have adequate integrated air and missile defence of our northern bases, of our major cities, of our critical infrastructure. And we're not spending enough to make sure that a potential future adversary is deterred from engaging in conflict because they fear the consequences of doing so. All of those things are solvable problems, but not at the current pace and not with the current expenditure.
SHARRI MARKSON: All right. Well, that brings us to some of the types of military infrastructure and weapons that you're putting on the table. You know, you're not prescribing the government, but you're saying they need to consider. Talk us through that, including the B-21 aircraft with their bunker-busting bombs.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: So, Sharri, I'm a true believer in AUKUS, but it's a very ambitious undertaking, and there are risks. And there is risks of slippage, particularly as we undergo a life-of-type extension to the Collins-class submarine, which is now a 30-year-old platform. And there's a risk that between that life-of-type-extension for Collins and the arrival of Virginia-class submarines, there is a gap. And we need to have a plan to fill that gap if it arises. One idea to fill the gap is a B-21 stealth bomber. It is similar to a nuclear-propelled submarine in that it delivers a long-range stealth strike. It can't do everything a nuclear submarine does, but it can do that. And the US are putting it into service next year with the US Air Force. So we've previously considered it and thought it wasn't appropriate for Australia, but the world has changed. And I think we need to take a second look at this and see if this would fill that gap if it arises, or if there's another capability that could perform a similar function.
SHARRI MARKSON: I also thought it was interesting that you're putting forward this idea of, you know, similar to ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess' annual threat assessment, having the defence force do something similar just so that Australians understand the risks we're facing because we usually don't hear about them. We just hear, as you put it, those rote talking points from the Defence Minister, the Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Australians have a much better understanding today of the risks of foreign interference and espionage than they did five years ago because of the annual threat assessment that the DG of ASIO, Mike Burgess, delivers. Imagine if the CDF of our Australian Defence Force also delivered a similar annual lecture that talked about the threat environment, talked about ADF's preparedness and what else they needed to do to meet that moment. That would lift public literacy and understanding of these issues, and it would help earn the social licence for defence spending so that next time Richard Marles fronts up to the Expenditure Review Committee, he has an easier time asking for more money to invest instead of losing out to other priorities around that table.
SHARRI MARKSON: I have to say, James, when you said you wanted to do the shadow defence ministry role, I didn't understand why, because it's been such a low profile job, but reading your speech today, the ideas you're putting on the table, the way you're framing Australia, I mean, it is a really important position and you're going to be holding the government to account on it clearly. I'm just keen to ask you about the ISIS brides issue, which is one that you've been leading for a long time. I'm not sure if you heard, but at the start of the show, I broke the news that at least two of the ISIS brides are expected to be arrested when they land in Australia. Now, the question is, if police clearly have information about them that would lead them to think they should be arrested, then why are they coming here?
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Well, Sharri, this is another significant scoop of yours. It is extraordinarily important that we now know this information because what that suggests is that, contrary to the rhetoric of some of the supporters of this, and sometimes the government, these people do represent a possible security risk to Australia because they may have committed offences while they're overseas sufficient that they should be charged when they arrive home. But it also means they are probably eligible for the threshold for a Temporary Exclusion Order, which is a power that the government has to keep people offshore, not indefinitely, but for up to two years, if they are likely to have committed a terrorism offence. So the government has only applied for one temporary exclusion order for this cohort. We don't know if it's one of these two people. But at the very least, there's at least one other person they probably could apply for that, along with denying these people passports because they've effectively repudiated their loyalty to Australia, and they present a security risk to our country.
SHARRI MARKSON: You did a sensational job, James, leading the way in this issue and raising it at Senate estimates, that, you know, extraordinary story of Tony Burke calling or having a meeting with some of the groups, Save the Children members who were representing this ISIS cohort, you know, making sure the official from Home Affairs was out of the room. So there's been a far from a transparent flow of information when it comes to this, a lot of hiding from the government. So we'll see what happens in the coming days and the next week. James, I appreciate your time.
Thank you.
ENDS