19m agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 9:27pm
Labor must provide details on return of Australians who travelled to Islamic State
A small group of Australian women who travelled or were taken to Syria as partners of Islamic State members, and their children, have managed to return to Australia.
James Paterson says Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke must address the public with basic facts about what has happened.
“How will they be monitored? Where will they live? What involvement did the government have in bringing them home? None of these have been answered,” Paterson says.
Asked if these citizens have a right to return, Paterson says they do, but the government has the power to temporarily exclude the return of Australian citizens if they’ve been associated with terrorism.
“If the government hasn’t used those powers, then they should explain why not,” he says.
25m agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 9:21pm
Immigration ‘unquestionably’ too high, James Paterson says
James Paterson has stepped in as interim shadow home affairs minister following Andrew Hastie’s exit from the Coalition frontbench.
Speaking to ABC Radio National Breakfast, Paterson says immigration is “unquestionably” too high at the moment, and is producing concerns among Australians.
Asked if he’s prepared to put a number on what Australia’s migrant intake should be, Paterson says he won’t today.
“We’ve got to go through a proper policy process, and unilaterally announcing a number as an acting shadow minister wouldn’t be conducive to that,” Paterson says.
26m agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 9:20pm
Sussan Ley has the support of the Liberal party room, Paterson says
Is Opposition Leader Sussan Ley struggling to keep her party united? Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson says anyone leading the Liberal party at this stage has a difficult task ahead.
“We have just come off with the worst loss in 80 years of the history of the Liberal Party, and we’re going through a period of introspection and debate, and part of that has to be public,” Paterson says.
“Whether it was Susan Ley or anyone else, it was going to be a difficult time,” he says.
Paterson says he believes Ley has put the appropriate processes in place to deliver policies ahead of the next federal election.
Asked if he thinks its inevitable Ley will face a leadership challenge this term, Patersons says he doesn’t think so and that she enjoys the support of the party room.
31m agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 9:15pm
Paterson warns Liberal party MPs, staff against ‘playing games’ with election review
Former Liberal opposition leader Peter Dutton has reportedly made a highly critical submission to the Liberal election campaign review about Andrew Hastie.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Dutton accused Hastie of going “on strike” and fumbling key policies.
James Paterson has told ABC Radio National Breakfast the campaign review hasn’t been completed or released, and appears to be based off third-party sources.
Nevertheless, the shadow finance minister says he doesn’t agree with the characterisation of Hastie’s contribution.
“He was a key voice in our national security and defence team, which was one of the strongest areas that we put forward during the last term and I don’t agree that he was in any way responsible for our election loss,” Paterson says.
And Paterson has issued a warning to current Liberal party members and their staff, saying they should stop “playing games” with the campaign review process for “internal positioning or advancement”.
Asked if he knows who leaked the submission from Dutton, Paterson says he has “no idea”.
36m agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 9:10pm
Paterson says Andrew Hastie has been ‘honest’ about departure from frontbench
Shadow Finance Minister James Paterson says Andrew Hastie has done the right and honourable thing and resigned from the Coalition frontbench.
The conservative WA MP quit Opposition Leader Sussan Ley’s shadow ministry on Friday over a disagreement on immigration policy.
His resignation happened days after Ley sent shadow cabinet ministers “charter letters” laying out her expectations of frontbenchers.
Speaking to ABC Radio National Breakfast, Paterson, a fellow conservative, says it was responsible for him to step down from the frontbench.
“I haven’t seen the charter letter that Andrew Hastie received, and I don’t know the details of the arrangements that she proposed and so I’m not in a position to adjudicate that or commentate on that,” Paterson says.
“But I think Andrew’s been upfront and honest about his motivations. This isn’t about the leadership. This is about his fundamental convictions on issues of policy,” he says.
47m agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 8:59pm
Communications Minister Anika Wells will be ‘laying down the law’ to telco bosses
Communication Minister Anika Wells says she’ll be “laying down the law” to heads of Australia’s three largest telecommunication companies.
As we brought you earlier, the communications minister has penned a letter to telecommunications bosses, summoning them to a meeting.
Speaking to Channel Seven, Wells says the telco bosses will be meeting her in Canberra tomorrow at the start of the sitting week.
“Australians must have confidence in the reliability of our triple-0 system. They must do that and telcos need to do need to do better,” Wells says.
She says the system must not fail, and that she understands that some Australians will be “white-hot angry” with Optus.
But asked about anger towards the Labor government, which hasn’t fully implemented the recommendations of a 2023 review into the triple-0 system, Wells has sidestepped the question.
When pressed why the government didn’t take action immediately after the first triple-0 outage in 2023, Wells says there’s nothing the regulator could have done to stop the outages.
“What happened here was failure by Optus to comply existing laws,” Wells says.
“The laws that are coming this week would not have stopped what happened at Optus a couple of weeks ago, because that was a catastrophic failure,” she says.
Wells says legislation introduced to parliament this week will enshrine the triple-0 guardian’s work into law.
58m agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 8:48pm
Landmark PNG defence treaty expected to be signed today
A landmark defence treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea is expected to be signed today.
The agreement to establish Australia’s third military alliance was signed off by PNG’s cabinet last week, nearly two weeks after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited our closest neighbour in the hopes of finalising the agreement.
The formal signing of the treaty was delayed by PNG’s celebrations of its 50th anniversary of independence from Australia, which meant its cabinet could not reach a quorum to give its approval.
With that hurdle now cleared, Albanese and PNG Prime Minister James Marape are expected to put pen to paper today before the agreement is scrutinised by each nation’s parliament.
The pact is expected to commit the two nations to defending each other in the event of a military attack and allow as many as 10,000 Papua New Guineans to serve in the Australian Defence Force.
Currently, Australia has only two formal defence alliances, with the United States and New Zealand.
1h agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 8:41pm
Optus, Telstra and TPG summoned to Canberra
Anika Wells has written to the chief executives of the three major Australian telcos summoning them to a meeting.
The stated purpose is to give an update on “the system you have in place already” to meet legal obligations for operating the triple-0 system.
Emphasis on the responsibility of telcos has been central to the comms minister’s comms since the deadly Optus triple-0 outage.
But the government is under pressure of its own to legislate a “triple-0 guardian”, with more on that expected this week.
A note for the unacquainted: TPG is the owner of Vodafone.
The meeting will be tomorrow — or at least, I think so. While two of the letters said October 7, one of them said September 7. So it’s possible that TPG has been invited to a meeting in the past.
1h agoSun 5 Oct 2025 at 8:33pm
Good morning 👋
Hello and welcome to a new week and today’s federal politics live blog! It’s great to have you join us.
A day before the sitting week begins, Communications Minister Anika Wells has sent a letter to three of Australia’s largest telcos summoning them to a meeting following that deadly Optus outage.
Australia and Papua New Guinea are today expected to sign a landmark defence treaty.
And we’ll be keeping an eye out for any reaction to Andrew Hastie’s departure from the Coalition frontbench on Friday. If you missed that news, you can read more about that here.
Let’s get straight into it!
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