Interview: Andrew Clennell, Sky News

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 ANDREW CLENNELL, SKY NEWS

SUNDAY 4 AUGUST 2024

Topics: Peter Dutton’s visit to Israel, Middle East conflict, Palestinian visas, Tony Burke’s record, Labor’s ministry reshuffle, AUKUS.

E&OE…

ANDREW CLENNELL: Joining me live from Perth is Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie. Andrew Hastie, thanks for your time. Well, you heard Tony Burke there, the Home Affairs Minister. He says you've got weird arguments, you've got a lack of understanding of how government works, you've made these spurious claims about Defence assets being used for border control when of course you had Operation Sovereign Borders. I should start with your reaction to all that.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good morning, Andrew. It's not even 6:30am here in Perth and Tony Burke has already mentioned my name three or four times. It demonstrates that I think he hasn't even graduated from opposition to government yet. He's the Home Affairs Minister and should be focusing on his portfolio. Our job as Opposition is to hold him accountable and we'll do that because this government has been an absolute shambles on border protection. He's got a big job to do to secure our borders and to ensure that the government is doing everything it can to keep the Australian community safe.

ANDREW CLENNELL: I thought you were going to use the phrase living rent free for a minute there, Andrew Hastie, I won't let you do it! Now, Peter Dutton's visit to Israel. There seems a clear differential – I mean, there has been for some months but a really clear one now – between the Australian Government attitude to the Israel, Palestine conflict and the Opposition's. Is there any aspect of the way the Netanyahu administration has conducted this war that makes you uncomfortable?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, the first thing I'd say is it was very important that Peter Dutton go to Israel and have that meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and affirm our important bilateral relationship which isn't just political, it's also across trade, agriculture, tech and a number of other areas, never mind the people-to-people links that we have with Israel. So that's the first thing I'd like to say. The second thing is that war is very, very messy and costly and no one wants to see the death of innocents on both sides. We saw last week the death of 12 Israeli children in the Golan Heights after an attack by Hezbollah. No one wants to see children die. But the reality is that Hamas still holds Israeli hostages, they even hold US hostages as well, and Israel has its right to self-defence, and it's also got a right to pursue those hostages. As I said, war is incredibly messy, and a dirty business and Hamas has been using civilians and civilian infrastructure to protect itself and to make this war as costly as possible. Having said that, again, I want to repeat no one wants to see the death of innocents and that's why this tragedy could have been avoided if Hamas had not raised the sword on October 7 in the first place.

ANDREW CLENNELL: What do you make of the Mark Binskin's report on Zomi Frankcom's murder?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I'm going to speak from a point of personal experience. Ten or so years ago, I went through a similar process after a civilian casualty incident happened under my command over in Afghanistan. So again, I want to state very clearly that war is a terrible, messy business. Things always go wrong, information is always incomplete and imperfect. I do have questions around the way that the government sought to politicise this using Mark Binskin to put pressure on the Israeli Government. And I think what the report says is that the Israeli Government was accountable, has taken responsibility by being transparent with us, which is what the request was. But I think the government has politicised this and that is unfortunate, and it has been damaging to our relationship with Israel.

ANDREW CLENNELL: So I guess your point, in this instance, there were armed men they didn't know about with the aid convoy. If you don't mind me asking, because I think the viewer will be curious after your answer, what was the circumstances in relation to what happened under your command and what are the similarities?

ANDREW HASTIE: It's on the public record that there was a significant civilian casualty under my command in 2013. I took personal responsibility for it. I was investigated first by the Australian Defence Force and also by NATO. So I know the process and I don't want to go into this morning, but my point that I make there is that war is a very messy business, and it's easy to take cheap shots from the sidelines. There's always incomplete information on the battlefield and the reality is when people go to war, mistakes happen. It's a terrible tragedy that we lost Zomi Frankcom, an Australian aid worker. I can't imagine how her family feels, it would be terrible. But again, mistakes happen and in the end, if Hamas hadn't raised the sword on October 7, we wouldn't be in this situation. If they didn't continue to use civilians as shields to protect itself and also make the recovery of hostages very, very difficult, we wouldn't be seeing as many civilian casualties. So I just want to make that very clear – war is a very costly business and mistakes happen.

ANDREW CLENNELL: I might ask now, you would have heard Tony Burke before on the handling of these Palestinian visitor visas. People have been allowed to come here on visitor visas, it now seems clear they'll be allowed to settle here pending a character check, the majority of them at least for a time. What do you think the government should do here? Do you have any concerns about people being let in on visitor visas in the first instance?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think this looks quite reflexive from the government, it looks hurried, and we know that from Estimates because the Home Affairs officials which gave evidence at Estimates said that visas were issued within 24 hours, some as quickly as one hour. Now I don't think that's sufficient time for proper security and identity vetting, particularly for people coming out of a war zone, and so the process, I think, needs a very close look. We know that they've had to cancel visas because it was so rushed in the first place. So this looks reflexive, but it looks political. I know that Tony Burke and some of his colleagues in South West Sydney are under immense pressure, potentially from a campaign run by pro-Gaza independents. They'd be watching what happened to UK Labour very closely where they lost seats in the UK election to pro-Gaza independents. They're very sensitive to that and so I think the Prime Minister reshuffled his ministry. We've got Andrew Giles and Clare O'Neil out – both very weak performers – he's put Tony Burke in, but I don't think to shore up our borders. We know Tony Burke's record as the immigration minister under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments – 83 boats in 80 days, 6,500 people. Tony Burke, I think has been reshuffled and put in the Home Affairs portfolio to empower him politically in his local electoral context because he is under a lot of pressure and he could have a pro-Gaza independent run against him, and so I think this is where this has come from. I think it's right that the Australian people have transparency, accountability on this issue, and we want to see as much detail as possible. We don't want to see hurried visas issued out of political expediency.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Wow, that's quite the claim there on why he's put Tony Burke in that job. You don't think competence plays a part at all?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, competence we'll judge when we see some action. So far, since the NZYQ decision was taken by the High Court last year, we've seen something like 139 people released into the community, 39 which have been charged with criminal offences. Seven months ago, we worked with the government to pass a preventative detention order regime – not one of those preventative detention orders have been issued to keep the Australian community safe. So Tony Burke says he's going to do something well, let's see him do something and let's see him act fast.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think the PM should have kept Richard Marles in Defence?

ANDREW HASTIE: The bench is so weak on the Labor side that I think Richard Marles is the best bet he's got in Defence. I want to see a strong Australia and so if you're asking me within the context of the Labor bench, I think Richard Marles is probably the best person for the job.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Quite a bit of discussion around the place about AUKUS for good reason I guess. South Australian Premier, Peter Malinauskas, was in The Australian yesterday saying it's a very complicated and difficult endeavour building these submarines in Australia. Do you agree? Do you have fears the project may never be realised? There's a report by Ross Babbage for the Lowy Institute last week also asking whether the US will sell Australia three nuclear subs initially. Do you have any fears about any of this?

ANDREW HASTIE: It's an excellent report by Ross Babbage and I commend your viewers to downloading it from the Lowy Institute, it covers all the big issues. I think Premier Malinauskas is spot on. This is a huge generational challenge for Australians. It can't just be left to South Australia or Western Australia, we need the whole country pulling behind this and there's opportunities economically for all the states and territories to get involved here. It's going to cost one-tenth of the cost of the NDIS over the 30-year period that it's budgeted for. Up to $368 billion over 30 years – one-tenth of the cost of the NDIS. We're also investing in the UK industrial base and the US industrial base and that's important because if we're going to get our Virginia-class submarines, we need the US industrial base producing more submarines and that's going to help them. The $3 billion that we've committed will help them get their delivery cadence of 1.3 – that's 1.3 Virginia-class submarines per year during the pandemic – to up to two by 2026 alongside one of their new submarines, a Columbia-class submarine. It's important that we increase the size of all three country's industrial bases and that'll set the conditions for delivering our nuclear submarines and also building SSN-AUKUS in the next decade.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Just a very brief answer here. The former Chief of Army, Peter Leahy, made comments the other day that Australia's become a strategic liability to the US. What do you make of those comments?

ANDREW HASTIE: Last week I spent time on HMAS Stirling, I spent time talking to people from US defence industry, particularly those who work on building submarines, and there are some concerns around AUKUS but we are moving in the right direction. I think we can move faster, I think the WA Government is asleep at the wheel, they could learn a lot from Premier Malinauskas. They could start by appointing, for example, a minister for AUKUS in the state government. You can't have someone running five or six portfolios and expect them to be on top of the biggest thing that's happening to Perth in the last 20-years. But one thing that we've always done in Australia is provide strategic depth to our allies and that's what we're doing through AUKUS. We have the Marines up north in Darwin, we're building a massive submarine base in Rockingham – HMAS Stirling – and so for Peter Leahy to suggest that we're becoming a liability, I think is to miss what's happening over in the West and I think you should have a look at what's happening out West. But certainly, this government needs to invest more money. Over the next four years the Albanese Government is only spending $5.7 billion – $3.8 billion that is in the last year of the forward estimates – not enough if we're going to get AUKUS done.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Got to go, Andrew Hastie. Thanks very much.

[ENDS]

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  • Andrew Hastie
    published this page in Latest News 2024-08-05 08:49:11 +0800