THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR HOME AFFAIRS
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH PETA CREDLIN, SKY NEWS

Monday 15 September 2025

Topics: Assassination of Charlie Kirk; Immigration.

E&OE……………………………………

PETA CREDLIN: Now, rarely have I found his contributions to be anything less than thought provoking, but what arrived on the weekend, as I later said in a text exchange with him, was one of his intellectual best. That author, Shadow Home Affairs Minister, Andrew Hastie, joins me now. Well, I thought you wrote a really powerful reflection, Andrew, on Charlie's death, and as I said, I stopped and read it on Saturday, and I sent you a message. And in it, you reference Raphael's painting of Paul Preaching at Athens, and you said it displays the very best of Western civilisation of faith, reason, inquiry, debate and persuasion. So what does this say about the broader state of western civilisation when it comes to our ability to hold civil debate if these five fundamentals are under attack?

ANDREW HASTIE: Good evening, Peta. Charlie Kirk's political assassination was designed to silence us all. It was a murder done in public with a political message. I wanted to reflect on the tradition that's at stake right now, and that is the great Christian Liberal tradition of faith, reason, inquiry, debate and persuasion. And I think Charlie Kirk really modelled that across the United States and across the world on university campuses. He was willing to step out into the arena in a spirit of openness and humility and engage with his opponents. And he was doing that very thing when he was cut down by a sniper's bullet last week. So I wanted to take people back to a really important painting done by Raphael, which I first saw in London in 2014. I found myself standing in front of it for quite a while. It's such a powerful picture because it's from the Book of Acts, chapter 17, and Paul there is in Athens, and it says that he reasoned with people. He reasoned in the synagogues - he was a Jew himself, but he reasoned in the synagogues. He reasoned in the marketplace. And then he went to basically the Greek high court in Athens and preached a sermon and all the responses to his sermon are captured in the faces of the people in the painting. I think that's what democracy is. You don't always persuade people, but it's about the contest of ideas, and that's what's at stake with Charlie Kirk's assassination last week.

PETA CREDLIN: What amazed me was Kirk fought on disgust and debated some really tough topics - topics that a lot of people find polarising or they shy away. They've got a view, but they shy away from expressing their view. But those who have criticised him and some of the hateful things have been said upon his death - reprehensible, repugnant - but they're not people I think that have ever watched a video of him reasoning and discussing these things on a student campus. Because, yes, they were tough conversations, but he was incredibly polite, he cautioned his supporters to stop to, to back their voices down, to listen, he took arguments head on. I mean, this is what it used to be like when I went when I went to university. This is what debate in the West used to be like, Andrew. So how have we gone from centuries of Western thought and civility to where we are now?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right. I think Charlie Kirk, his debate was moderated by his Christian faith. That's where a sense of humility came from. You've got to love your opponent, you've got to show respect to them, because, as Charlie said numerous times: everyone is made in the image of God, and so they have that innate sense of worth and dignity. And I think what we've seen over the last 40 years or so is – starting in our universities – a repudiation of Christian, Western values. And along with the repudiation of the West is a repudiation of faith, reason, debate, inquiry and persuasion. We've seen markers along the way, but now we're at a point where we can't even talk to each other in universities and in the public square without resorting to abuse. And there are plenty of examples over the last few days, which I think are just disgusting, the way people have celebrated Charlie Kirk's death. He was a human, he was a dad, he was a husband, and he was debating people. He wasn't using force to persuade people or coerce people. He was using his words and doing it very effectively.

PETA CREDLIN: Persuasion.

ANDREW HASTIE: Persuasion, that's right.

PETA CREDLIN: What about the warning you put in that email in relation to James Kurth, because you said James Kurth is another thinker. James Kurth said the future clash of civilisations won't be between the West and one or more of the rest, but it'll be a war within the West – that the West will tear itself apart. It feels like we're tearing ourselves apart in our own society, even here in Australia, Andrew.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right. James Kurth was a student of Samuel Huntington, so when Samuel Huntington came out with his clash of civilisations thesis in 1993, James Kurth responded. He said: no, the future is not going to be defined by a clash of civilisations – the West and the rest – it's actually going to happen within the West itself, as the forces of post modernism repudiate all the good things that we have in our great Western tradition. He said that the fight is taking place – this was in 1994 – he said the fight was taking place in the universities. Back then, it was intellectual, and I made the point 31 years later, it's now violent. The fact that we have people being shot on campus in the United States is troubling, and let's not pretend that we're somehow different. Yes, we have good gun laws here, but let's not pretend that we're different within ourselves. People are capable of all sorts of violence in our universities and on our streets, and this is something we've got to watch very carefully here in Australia.

PETA CREDLIN: Just before we go, I'm not going to traverse all the stuff last week with Jacinta Price and Sussan Ley, but there's a poll out today, a Reserve Political Monitor says basically half the country, 49 per cent, aren't happy with the way Labor is handling migration. Please tell me that after everything that's happened over the last week, the Libs are not going to be gun shy talking about immigration. That you're not going to shy away from the debate that Australians are absolutely desperate. They're having it at home, and they are desperate for this to be an orderly, adult, policy driven national debate. Please tell me, Andrew, that you're going to get up and have that debate.

ANDREW HASTIE: Of course. I already gave a speech about 53 days ago – it's almost had a million views on my Instagram – where I called for a cut to net overseas migration. I called for a cut to Labor's uncontrolled migration. And I called for us to put Australians first, so young Australians can get into a home, Australians aren't spending all this time on congested roads, so Australians can get into hospitals which are congested at the moment. So we're not going to shy away from having a tough conversation about immigration. It's a conversation that we need to have as a country. And I've got to tell you, the average person on the street, they see it, they feel it and they're very concerned, so we need to respond to that.

PETA CREDLIN: That is reassuring. Andrew Hastie, thank you.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks, Peta.

[ENDS]