“The most important thing is we demonstrate that we have listened to the Australian people, that we’ve heard them and that we will change,” he says. “We need to offer them a positive economic agenda for the future and give them hope that if they vote Liberal, their lives will get better. We didn’t do enough of that.”

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As for the party’s nuclear energy policy, Paterson is not likely to fight to retain it. Nuclear power would be “logistically challenging” and “self-evidently more difficult” to implement in three years given the looming retirement of coal-fired power stations, he says.

In a dumpster fire of a campaign, Paterson is arguably the only member of the shadow ministry who emerged with their reputation enhanced. He is widely praised for his indefatigable work ethic and ability to speak fluently across an array of policy areas beyond his home affairs portfolio.

He racked up 76 interviews and press conferences during the campaign, compared to 25 for the Coalition’s shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and 22 for finance spokeswoman Jane Hume. Even when added together, Labor campaign spokespeople Katy Gallagher and Jason Clare’s tally fell short of Paterson’s.

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“He was absolutely the standout of the campaign,” says John Roskam, executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs think tank, where Paterson worked in various roles before entering parliament. “As one MP said to me, ‘It’s a problem that we only have one James Paterson. We need four or five.’ The Coalition frontbench is thin. A lot you could not put on Q&A or in a debate with their Labor opponent. They wouldn’t have the confidence or expertise.”

While some conservative MPs rarely venture far from Sky News and conservative talkback radio, Paterson is a regular on the ABC.

Crucially, he was not just prolific but almost entirely error-free during the campaign. Describing Paterson as “incredibly hard-working”, former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger says: “He never seems to make a mistake.” That is a stark contrast to colleagues who made gaffes, including Hume’s reference to “Chinese spies” working for Labor, Jacinta Price’s call to “Make Australia Great Again”, and Bridget McKenzie’s quickly retracted claim that Russia and China were rooting for a Labor victory.

Paterson’s performance caught the attention of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who labelled him the Coalition’s “attack dog” in the third week of the campaign.

“Seriously, James Paterson, James Paterson will say anything,” Albanese said. “That’s his job.”

Privately, a Labor insider concedes Paterson is “a talented performer and one of the best they’ve got”.

A member of the party’s conservative wing, Paterson was an early opponent of an Indigenous Voice to parliament but supported marriage equality. “He’s not a classic Liberal blue-blood,” Roskam argues. “If anything his background is left-leaning. He went to a government high school and he’s agnostic.”

Raised by left-wing parents, he joined the Liberal Party at age 17 and was active in student politics at the University of Melbourne before joining the Institute of Public Affairs. He filled the Liberal Party’s vacant Senate spot in 2016 and entered parliament as a baby-faced 28-year-old. He has since grown a beard, giving him a more mature look.

After backing Dutton against Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison in the Liberal leadership spills, he was handed the junior shadow cybersecurity role after the 2022 election. Making the most of this unglamorous position, he used Senate estimates to conduct an audit of Chinese-made security cameras and forced the government to remove them from public buildings – earning a promotion to home affairs.

Paterson was sounded out to run for Josh Frydenberg’s former seat of Kooyong but decided to stay in the Senate.

Asked about his future, the prominent China hawk says: “National security remains my passion and focus.”

Roskam, however, would love to see him in a role like education. “He understands the culture wars and why they are important,” he says. “He’s comfortable in an intellectual milieu in a way many Liberal MPs are not. He is willing to disrupt the status quo.”