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 OLIVIA CAISLEY, ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING

FRIDAY 28 FEBRUARY 2025

Topics: AUKUS, President Trump, Chinese warships off Australia’s coast, the Albanese Government’s weak leadership in national security, Defence spending.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Andrew Hastie, welcome to Afternoon Briefing. Just before we get to other issues today, we've seen US President Donald Trump seemingly questioning what AUKUS is. Should Australians be worried about the fact that we've invested billions in a deal with the Americans that the President can't actually remember?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think President Trump has a lot on his mind. The US President is the busiest person in the world with the amount on their plate. But I think there's an absence of leadership from the Labor Government. The Albanese Government has not been advocating well into this new Trump Administration, and AUKUS should be front and centre of the President's mind. And so we've seen a failure of leadership from Anthony Albanese and his Defence Minister, Richard Marles. They need to be advocating for AUKUS. It's such a critical part of our national security strategy going forward, and we don't have a day to lose because, in fact, we've fallen behind over the last two years.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Would you say that Labor hasn't sort of been advocating for AUKUS? What do you mean by that? By all intents and purposes, the phone call between Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese appeared to have gone pretty well. The US President had some nice things to say about Anthony Albanese. Can you elaborate on this for us?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, I think Anthony Albanese himself should have made a visit to the United States. This is how important AUKUS is. This is an absence of political leadership that we're talking about here. I don't think that Richard Marles and Anthony Albanese have done a good job over the last two years of getting the nation ready for what is possibly the biggest nation building endeavour we've undertaken since the Second World War. This is huge – it's multi-generational. It involves education, it involves technology, it involves our Defence Force, it involves industry. And at the moment, we're not seeing good leadership from this government, and that's why I'm saying that it should be front and centre for President Trump. But it's not. And that's a failure of leadership from the Albanese government.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: So how would a Coalition government bring the issue of AUKUS more front of mind for the US President?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, we're a believer in the house call. Right now, President Trump is resetting relationships in Europe – we've seen that with NATO partners – and I think at the heart of AUKUS is a deepening of our relationship with the United States. And of course, we're getting submarines in the early 2030s but let's not forget, the US is also getting what is effectively a base out on the west coast of Australia at HMAS Stirling in Perth from 2027, as part of Submarine Rotational Force-West. We're going to have a squadron of US submarines operating out of Perth with potentially a footprint of up to three to 9,000 Americans. So the Americans are doing very well. President Trump is about deals, and I think it's time this government emphasised what exactly is in it for the US, and then making our case clear that we need these submarines. We need them quickly. And there's other things that we can do together, particularly in Pillar II of AUKUS with advanced technology.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Okay. Well, I will get to this, the issue of submarines, in a second. But over the past fortnight, we've seen a flotilla of Chinese navy ships, possibly a nuclear submarine, operating in waters close to Australia. Where do you think they're going next?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think it's fairly obvious now that they're going to circumnavigate the Australian continent. They've come down our east coast, they've been around Tasmania, they're apparently 500 kilometres off Adelaide, just outside our Exclusive Economic Zone. And I think it's a reasonable assumption they'll continue and then track north up our west coast, past HMAS Stirling. At what distance, we don't know. But certainly, this is China's signal to the rest of the world, but particularly to Australia they have a blue-water navy they can project globally, and they're doing it with three ships that pack a lot of punch. That's why this has been such an important development in our national security.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: On that point, you used the phrase 'gunboat diplomacy' this week. Is China threatening us via these actions?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think China is demonstrating that it's a strong military power. They're undergoing the biggest peacetime military buildup since 1945, they have a blue water navy now, and they want us to know they have sea power. They can project deep into our waters, and that's effectively why I call this gunboat diplomacy. Under the former Coalition government, they used wolf warrior diplomacy with mean tweets. Now they're sending a flotilla of three warships into our waters. It's a very obvious point, and I think they're testing us as US allies. They're testing the Prime Minister, and he has not been across his brief. I think that's been very clear over the last few days. He's been unclear, he's been at odds with other advice out of government, and he's looking very flustered.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: We've seen some commentary from China's Ambassador to Australia this morning describing these kinds of naval exercises as normal. As you'd know, Australia does conduct similar military exercises in the South China Sea. On that description of normal, is it?

ANDREW HASTIE: It's not normal to conduct a live-fire exercise without notice in the waters of your trading partners, disrupting commercial flight paths, in fact, causing up to 50 flights to be diverted, as we saw last Friday. This is not normal behaviour. This was designed to send a strong signal to Australia of military strength. When we operate up in the South China Sea, we do so always under international law, as part of a broader coalition. And if we were ever to live-fire, we'd always do it in a very controlled, coordinated manner and give all our partners notice as part of an exercise. So this is a very different approach from the Chinese navy in the Tasman Sea.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Coming back to your assessment of Anthony Albanese's leadership on this issue, what would you do faced with the same set of circumstances?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I think if Peter Dutton was Prime Minister, he'd be across his brief first and foremost. He wouldn't be flustered, and he wouldn't be contradicting his Defence Minister. What the Prime Minister has said was that there was notification. We know there wasn't notification because the first notification was through a Virgin pilot from the Chinese government. The second thing is, he's rattled, and that's clear. What we need the Prime Minister to do is to stand up for Australia's national interest and insist on mutual respect. With this pattern of provocative behaviour from the Chinese military over the last few years, that's impacted ADF personnel undergoing operations in the Indo-Pacific, the Prime Minister has not stood up for us. He's not stood up for the ADF, and that's why this keeps happening. So we're just calling on the Prime Minister to do his basic job as our national leader, draw a line in the sand with the Chinese government, say enough is enough. If we're going to be partners, there has to be mutual respect.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Labor would argue that the Coalition is politicising this issue, but I do need to move on. Chinese Australian voters, they were a key demographic that deserted the Coalition at the last election. Are you concerned at all that your rhetoric on the Chinese warships could again cost the Coalition in seats who need to win back, whether that be, say, a Tangney, or Chisholm, Bennelong, for example?

ANDREW HASTIE: No, not at all. I think Australians who have a Chinese background are well informed, mature voters. And to treat them somehow as if they had an allegiance to mainland China is insulting to Chinese Australians. I think that's Labor's position. All Australians are equal before the law, and all Australians will make an informed decision about their future, which is what they do when they go to the ballot box and vote. We believe that Australia needs to get back on track. We want to look after families, we want to get this country moving, and that involves people from all backgrounds. So for Labor to make this political, as Penny Wong did yesterday – that was one of the most partisan opening statements in Estimates we've seen in years – is pretty shameful, in fact. This is our national security we're talking about.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: If we could just turn to capability quickly. The Hunter class frigates program, they're not going to produce a ship until the early 2030s. AUKUS itself may or may not deliver a nuclear-powered submarine until the next decade. How vulnerable are we?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, we're going to get weaker before we get stronger. We have seven frigates, and those frigates are getting old, and they need a lot of upkeep. And we're not going to get our first general purpose frigate until 2030 or so. That's if everything stays on time, and it's already sliding under this Labor Government. So we're going to get weaker before we get stronger. I think the answer lies with Australian industry. We have some amazing defence businesses in this country developing very unique world leading capabilities, and I think it's about unlocking the potential of Australian business to develop solutions in the near term – over the next two or three years – to put us in a better position strategically. Of course, the mega projects like AUKUS and the general purpose frigates need to happen, but there are other ways that we can secure ourselves with Australian businesses building asymmetric capabilities.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Boosting capabilities of course, though, comes with a big price tag. We've seen US President Donald Trump this week calling on its NATO partners to essentially boost spending on Defence. Do you think the kind of activities we've seen from China, this naval flotilla, for example, over the past week from Beijing, makes it easier to mount the case to voters that we do need to spend more on Defence?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think it does. I think the Prime Minister should stand up and lead and invest in our Defence Force. Under Labor, Defence spending has gone backwards when you factor in inflation, and over the next four years, they're only committing $5.7 billion – most of that in the final fourth year. We've seen Sir Keir Starmer, the UK Prime Minister, commit to increase Defence spending to 2.5 per cent. They're headed to three per cent by the end of the decade, and they're responding to Russia's aggression in Europe. So I think the lesson is that under President Trump, he's going to look for allies to do the heavy lifting, to be reciprocal, and that means we're going to have to invest further, and that's the commitment from the Coalition. We'll announce our policy and costings in due course.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: So you won't say what you'd like to see that spending get to?

ANDREW HASTIE: We're going to increase our Defence spending, but what that figure looks like will be announced in due course.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Can you give me a bit of an indication? The election is just around the corner, it's an important question.

ANDREW HASTIE: It is an important question, Olivia. The only way is up, in our view. But for the exact figure, that's something that will be announced by Peter Dutton and his national security team in due course.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Okay, and just when it comes to Trump as an ally, do you think Australia will need to increase that spending to stay on Donald Trump's good side?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think we're going to have to use every bit of leverage with President Trump. He likes a good deal, and I think that's why Peter Dutton is uniquely qualified to be Prime Minister instead of Anthony Albanese. I think he'll be able to strike a good deal, emphasising what we bring to the relationship. We've got critical minerals, rare earths, we're also bringing strategic depth to the United States through facilities in Darwin, Alice Springs and soon, Perth. And increasing our Defence expenditure as well is an important signal that we need to send to the US Administration.

OLIVIA CAISLEY: Andrew Hastie, thanks so much for your time.

ANDREW HASTIE: Pleasure, Olivia. Thank you.

[ENDS]