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 GREENE, ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING

FRIDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2024

Topics: President-elect Trump, nomination of Pete Hegseth as U.S. Defense Secretary, AUKUS, trilateral Defence Ministers’ meeting with Japan and the U.S., Kevin Rudd.

ANDREW GREENE: Andrew Hastie, welcome back to Afternoon Briefing. It's been a big week in terms of the names coming out of Washington for President Donald Trump's next Cabinet. I particularly want to discuss the suggestion of the Defense Secretary – the nomination Pete Hegseth – have you had a bit of time to get across his past and as another former soldier, do you think he would be a good fit?

ANDREW HASTIE: Good afternoon, Andrew. Sure. I've seen the nomination of Pete Hegseth, and it looks like a good one. Pete Hegseth has a great educational background – Princeton, Harvard – but more importantly, he's also been at the pointy end of U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's seen the cost of war, he's also advocated for veterans over the last decade, and so I think he's a great pick. He's obviously an outsider, he's there to shake things up. As always, my mission will be to establish a good working relationship with whoever is in that position, and I'm pretty confident I can do so with Pete Hegseth.

ANDREW GREENE: Already, people have pointed out the dangers to do with his apparent links to Christian Nationalist extremism. They've pointed to the Crusader symbols that he has tattooed. Should that present any concerns?

ANDREW HASTIE: I'm not at all worried about Pete Hegseth's tattoos. I think there's a lot of hyperventilating around the choices that President-elect Trump has made. Our task as Australians is self-examination. We have an important alliance with the United States, and we should be thinking about how we can make the best contribution to peace and security in the region as an alliance partner. There are a lot of soldiers overseas, including some of my own, who have tattoos that are similar – each to their own. I'm more than happy to establish a good working relationship with Pete Hegseth if he is indeed successfully confirmed as Secretary of Defense of the United States.

ANDREW GREENE: Under the former Chief of Defence in Australia, Angus Campbell, those so called "death symbols" were moved against. Is that something that you think has now been addressed sufficiently in Australia?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think we need to focus on the core task of war fighting. That's the ADF's mission is to defend Australia and to be the best war fighting enterprise it can possibly be. I don't want to get involved in all this political correctness, which I think has done great damage to morale over the last 10 years or so. And to understand Pete Hegseth—I've actually read his book, ‘The War on Warriors’. If we want to understand where the next Secretary of Defense of the United States is going—it's certainly not going down the path of political correctness. He wants America to be stronger, he wants to shake up the defense force, and of course, we have a critical relationship through AUKUS and so we need to do our bit. I think the task for us here is self-examination, not hyperventilation, about who President-elect Trump picks to be part of his Cabinet.

ANDREW GREENE: We'll get to AUKUS shortly, but just finally on this point, President-elect Trump has criticised the diversity and inclusion policies at the Pentagon. Is that something that you're also advocating be looked at in Australia?

ANDREW HASTIE: Again, when you put on the Australian Defence Force uniform, you commit yourself to a larger mission and a larger team, and everyone in that uniform serves the one flag – the Australian National Flag. You subsume your identity to the greater cause and mission. That's the beauty of the Defence Force, you can come from whatever background, whatever ethnicity, whatever religion, whatever gender or sexuality – you put on that uniform, you're part of the team. That's what I'm focused on if we win government, which we may well do in six months, that's certainly our intent. My job is to build a coherent, unified ADF focused on the one mission of defending Australia.

ANDREW GREENE: Now, if we get to AUKUS, which is, of course, the primary focus for Australia as it looks to what the next Trump Administration will do. Are you confident it survives in its current form? Are there any concerns that you have going forward?

ANDREW HASTIE: It's no secret that President-elect Trump is transactional, and I've said this a couple of times, now there will be no free lunch under a Trump Presidency. One thing we've always done, since the Second World War and onwards, has been to provide strategic depth to our allies. Certainly, during the Second World War, the United States operated the largest submarine base in the Indo-Pacific out of Fremantle and Albany. We're obviously coming to the table with AUKUS with the use of HMAS Stirling, or Fleet Base West, to effectively base a squadron of U.S. submarines there as part of the AUKUS deal. I think we just need to demonstrate that we do the heavy lifting, we are providing key real estate for the United States, and the quid pro quo, of course, is that we have access to nuclear-powered Virginia class submarines. I think if we make the case, we'll be fine, it's just about having good leadership, good advocacy from the Australian Government and that's where the Albanese Government is letting us down.

ANDREW GREENE: Well, under AUKUS, Australia is also contributing $5 billion almost to the U.S. submarine industrial base. Both submarine manufacturers in the U.S. have talked about further delays recently because of supply chain constraints. Do you think Australia might be asked to provide even more money to fix that?

ANDREW HASTIE: It's a great point. The U.S. has undergone a period of de-industrialisation since the end of the Cold War, and President-elect Trump has got the backing of the people to re-industrialise America. Right now, the delivery cadence for submarines in America is 1.2 per year, it needs to get up to 2.3 and so that's why we've made a contribution to the U.S. industrial base to lift the speed and the cadence delivery of those submarines. I think we're seeing the results out of the United States and we, of course, need to do our bit. We need to re-industrialise Australia. Now, we can never compete with the United States in terms of our size, but certainly we need to be able to make things here, and that's something that the Albanese Government, again, is failing to do.

ANDREW GREENE: Now, Andrew Hastie, the U.S. Embassy has announced that the U.S. Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, will be visiting Darwin this weekend for what it calls "multilateral meetings". What would you like to see the Australian Government committing to in what could be the last meeting, face to face, with the outgoing Biden Administration?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think we need to consolidate the gains that we've made. It's really important that we meet with the Japanese and the United States as well. These are important strategic partnerships. But of course, strategic partnerships aren't much good if you can't actually realise them at the operational and tactical levels, which is why it's really important that we talk about including a Japanese brigade in future exercises with the U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force in Darwin. So, I think it's great that we're having the U.S. Secretary of Defense come to Darwin, as well as the Japanese counterpart, and I think this is an important step in the right direction.

ANDREW GREENE: Would you like to see Japanese forces more regularly in Australia, perhaps in a rotation?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think there's a lot of potential and opportunity for us to work more closely with the Japanese. The Japanese are facing similar challenges. Only back in August they had several incursions from the Chinese into their territorial waters, both by air and sea, and of course, we're committed to a free and prosperous region for all. And because we're committed to the same things we certainly need to exercise more regularly as a military force.

ANDREW GREENE: All week, Andrew Hastie, and finally on this topic, there's been a bit more criticism from your side towards Australia's Ambassador, Kevin Rudd. What do you think the future holds for him in Washington? Would you like him to stay in that job?

ANDREW HASTIE: Kevin Rudd has made some injudicious comments about President-elect Trump over the last few years. I would have expressed more caution myself, but he's not the only Labor figure who has done that. Of course, Clare O'Neil attacked Donald Trump Jr on Twitter, which was a bad move and not in the national interest, particularly given that she was a member of the Cabinet at the time. But the question really for Kevin Rudd is, can he do the job as Ambassador? Can he strike a relationship with President-elect Trump? That's something that we'll find out over coming days and weeks, and something that the Prime Minister will have to consider. Certainly, there's other talent out there, and I think given that President Trump is such an avid golfer, Richard Marles, I think, would be someone well-equipped and suited to the task of building a relationship on a round of 18.

ANDREW GREENE: On that point, Shadow Defence Minister, Andrew Hastie, I wonder if his golf handicap is better than Joe Hockey's? We'll leave it there. Thank you very much for your time.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thank you, Andrew.

[ENDS]