THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE INDUSTRY
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE PERSONNEL
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH CLINTON MAYNARD, 2GB

TUESDAY 18 FEBRUARY 2025

Topics: Defence forums, recruitment and retention, weak leadership in Defence under Labor, identity politics in the ADF.

CLINTON MAYNARD: The Shadow Defence Minister, and of course, former serviceman, Andrew Hastie, joins me in the program. Thank you for your time, Andrew.

ANDREW HASTIE: My pleasure. Clinton.

CLINTON MAYNARD: Tell me one thing. Under your leadership, if you become the defence minister, what is going to be different with the ADF?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, Clinton, for the last couple of weeks, I've been traveling across Australia, from Queensland to South Australia to New South Wales, and I've conducted a number of defence forums. And what I'm hearing from a lot of people is that we have a recruiting crisis, we have a retention crisis, and we have a readiness crisis. Now, over the last two and a half years, we've already identified those things, but it's always good to have that confirmed with personal experience with regular Australians who attend these forums. We've got to fix up recruiting, number one. We're not getting enough young Australians in the uniform. Retention is the second problem – we're not keeping enough Australians in uniform. And number three, we've got to be ready to fight, we've got to be ready for the challenges ahead. And we're not under this weak Labor leadership.

CLINTON MAYNARD: Recruitment is critical, and we've seen that the current government has decided to look to our overseas partners, whether they're the Kiwis or the Americans, Canadians, those in the UK. What would your number one policy be to encourage younger Australians – Aussies, who are already here in our country – to join the armed forces?

ANDREW HASTIE: Number one, I want them to be part of the great Anzac tradition in this country. Service in the ADF is a unique opportunity, and I want young Australians to be drawn to it because they love their country, and they want to defend it. It's a great start to life. You learn all sorts of life skills, you make lifelong friendships, and you do some really exciting things. But more importantly, it's about defending the things that we love.

CLINTON MAYNARD: But how do you do that, Andrew? The government talks a big talk as well – how do we actually do that in practice? Because it seems to me a lot of young people just aren't interested at the moment.

ANDREW HASTIE: It comes down to strong leadership, and we've seen nothing but weak leadership. If you go back to the 1980s there's an ad on YouTube – and I encourage your listeners to go and watch it – Bob Hawke actively recruiting for the Defence Force. He's in a helicopter flying over the horizon and he says, "the real threats come from within, it's apathy that we're up against." And I think that's true. There's a lot of apathy in our political leadership at the moment. They're not taking our national security challenges seriously, and they need to call on young Australians. Political leadership sends a strong signal that service in the ADF is a good thing, and that's what you'll get from me. Now, there's some other things that we need to fix. There's been a lot of administrative bungles at the coalface when young Australians go to get in uniform – it’s about 300 days from first contact to their oath of enlistment. We want to shorten that process and get them into uniform much more quickly. And then there's young Australians who get scrubbed out for the most ridiculous things. There's a real culture of risk aversion within recruiting. I'd like to see more uniformed personnel put on the job, because they're the ones who should be selecting who they fight with and I think as well, young Australians need contact with servicemen and women who've done the job, not with civilian contractors, which is how it's currently being run.

CLINTON MAYNARD: Do you think there's a lack of passion for Australian values amongst certainly not every young person, but there's a contingent of young people, and perhaps that is contributing just having a smaller pool to choose from?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think so. I think a lot of our kids these days are taught that Australia is illegitimate and that our founding was done wrongly and poorly, and it was immoral. So why should we be surprised when kids don't feel like they want to defend our country if they've been taught all through their schooling that it's a bad thing? I want to tell young Australians out there, hey, we live in one of the best countries in the world, if not the best country in the world, but it won't stay that way if we're not prepared to defend it, so do your bit. You don't have to make a lifelong career out of serving in Defence, but you can do your bit for four years and unlock other opportunities. For example, a lot of young Australians are struggling to get into a home. Well, through the Defence Force, maybe that's something that we look at – supercharging the housing incentives so that you serve your country, and we help to get into a home, or we help you with your next stage of life. It might be education at university or a vocation.

CLINTON MAYNARD: Do you think there's a lack of passion for Australian values amongst certainly not every young person, but there's a contingent of young people, and perhaps that is contributing just having a smaller pool to choose from. What about your overall commitment to spending? Donald Trump has said that NATO members should be spending five per cent of GDP on defence. I think our figures around two per cent. Are you committed to increasing spending above two per cent of GDP?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yes, we’ve signalled that we will spend more than the Labor Government. We will increase our Defence expenditure. We're going to feel that pressure as it is and as it stands, Labor is actually taking Defence backwards. If you calculate for inflation, we're actually going backwards in the Defence portfolio. Moreover, we've taken on a massive new nation building project, which is AUKUS, and that's going to cost a lot of money. And because Labor haven't increased the Defence spend, what's happening is other areas of Defence are being cannibalised – Army has taken a hit, Navy has taken a hit, and the Air Force has taken a hit. This is really problematic, and if you look at what Labor has committed to over the next four years, it doesn't even cover inflation. $5.7 billion over four years for a $52 billion year budget, it's not enough, and it's leaving our country weaker.

CLINTON MAYNARD: Just looking at other policies that Donald Trump, and with a lot of people now looking to the US and the US president for his policies, he has moved to ban transgender people from his armed forces. Would you do the same with the ADF?

ANDREW HASTIE: Clinton, what we want to do is have equal opportunity for all Australians. When you enter the Defence Force, you leave a part of yourself behind, so the ADF is not a place for identity politics. You put the flag on your left shoulder, you take an oath of enlistment, and you serve with your fellow Australians in one uniform, under one flag. The Prime Minister has tried to, in fact, shoehorn identity politics into our Constitution with his divisive Voice referendum, which cost us half a billion dollars and divided the country. Under Peter Dutton and under me as a future Minister for Defence, you'll see far less DEI, or identity politics, rammed down the throats of our serving men and women. Fairness and equality will be our mantra.

CLINTON MAYNARD: We need more passion. We need more passionate people who want to join the ADF. Thank you for your time. Andrew,

ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks, Clinton.

[ENDS]