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

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH GARY HARDGRAVE, 4BC

Wednesday 6 August 2025

Topics: Sydney Harbour Bridge protest, burning of the Australian flag at Melbourne protests, Gaza conflict.

E&OE……………………………………

GARY HARDGRAVE: Andrew Hastie is the Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, he's the Federal Member for Canning in WA, and he joins us now. I mean, Andrew Hastie, I feel a great sense of distaste. You've served Australia in uniform, I just shudder to think what you must think.

ANDREW HASTIE: G'day Gary. Yeah, it pains me, it angers me, to see our flag burned. A lot of people – more than 100,000 Australians – have died serving under that flag. The flag means a lot as well. It symbolises our commitment to parliamentary democracy, rule of law, ordered liberty. It symbolises that we are a federated country, and it symbolises that we have wonderful geography. We're in the southern hemisphere; we're at a distance from a lot of these ancient hatreds. So to see our flag burned in Melbourne, and then to see the terrorist flags from ISIS, Hamas and the PLO, and to see the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's face on the bridge, it's just a disgrace. And sure, there's a right to protest, but you know, I didn't go to fight for these guys. I didn't go to fight for the ideology of these organisations. In fact, my last deployment in the ADF was taking on ISIS, not directly in combat operations, but certainly I was part of a taskforce that was trying to stop ISIS and their murder, raping and pillaging of the Middle East. So I think we're reaching a point where the Australian people are tired of this stuff, and they're sick of it. If people want to go and litigate these issues, well do it in the Middle East, but not here.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah, I think try get 90,000 people marching over – if there's any infrastructure left – in Gaza. Get them to march on something. We saw 'queers for Palestine' flags flying. How would that work in Iran? Ali Khamenei, the Ayatollah there, wouldn't really actually deal with that very well. I mean, everywhere you turn, you saw an outrageous liberty taken in Australia's name on the weekend. This burning of the flag thing is really grating at me, but the Prime Minister has failed. There's no leadership here at all, Andrew Hastie.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right, Gary. Well, the democracy, we have absolute values. We believe in right and wrong. We believe in a number of things that ISIS and Hamas and these organisations are the complete antithesis of. And so we do need political leadership. We do need our Prime Minister and our premiers to take a stance and say: this is Australia, this is not what we stand for, this stuff is evil, including the ISIS flag, the other symbols that we've seen. You mentioned the treatment of minorities, including gay people. I had to watch a lot of these videos, beheadings, all sorts of stuff in my previous line of work in the ADF and I got to tell you, it's really ugly. I mean, by a fruit, a tree shall be known – this is bad fruit, and it's a bad tree, and that's why we don't want this stuff in our country.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Well, look, I think so. And of course, the protests on the weekend were not just simply the right of free speech being exercised by people who actually don't like our country. I mean, these are people who have political narratives in their past and indeed in their present, and they're proud of it, that are about supporting suppressive regimes - Trotskyists and Marxists and people who are promoting terrorism as some sort of an answer. That's one thing. But I've watched, as I know you would have as a Federal Member of Parliament, I've watched people kiss our flag because they've come to this country, they've become citizens, and they know they now belong. Our flag is our number one national symbol. So when somebody burns it, they're defiling and defaming not just those good people like you who've served in the ADF, but people who've come here to seek refuge in our country, to seek a future. I mean, this is a really serious issue that needs to be dealt with.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right. Our flag is for all Australians. The beauty of our flag is that it's such a big flag. It's colour blind. It doesn't represent just one race or someone of one background, it represents all Australians and all of our common aspirations. And so to see it denigrated and burned like that, again, we keep coming back to the same point. You need political leadership, and you need the Prime Minister and state premiers saying it's not okay and enforcing the law if necessary. 

GARY HARDGRAVE: Andrew Hastie, I've just told the story about how in India, it has been an offense since 1971 to publicly destroy or deface the Indian national flag because of that whole social cohesion message. It's seen as a slight against every citizen of that great democratic republic. Now you know, India is the biggest democracy in the world, as you know. So Tony Burke, the Home Affairs Minister, has talked to his department about prioritising social cohesion. If our symbols are being attacked, how can we have social cohesion? Surely, we need to look at the Indian legislation and promote something similar here.

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I think you're making a really good point there, Gary. I think we should explore legal options to protect our symbols in a world that is increasingly becoming more and more contested. If you're an Australian, you have certain obligations – you have an allegiance to this country – and if you're burning the very flag, which symbolises those freedoms, there's something deeply wrong. So look, there's a whole range of things that we need to really think about. I think education is critical. Democracy only works when citizens are taught civics and our history, and they're taught it in such a way that it engenders pride and makes them want to be stewards of the traditions, and the customs, and the heritage. And in our education system now I don't think we're doing a good enough job of that. But we've also got to insist on the obligations of all Australians to uphold those things in their daily lives, and burning a flag is just such an affront to our country. You make a great point, Gary.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Well, I mean, in India, it's up to five years jail. You can be fined, you can be put in jail for this sort of thing for a deliberate action like that. In Australia, there's an up to $5,000 fine if you deface our paper currency or our polymer bills, if you like, you know, if you write all over a bank note. If somebody wants to take you on, that could happen. So we're protecting our currency, but we're not protecting our key symbols. The whole thing is delinquent, Andrew Hastie. I mean, it wasn't until 1996 – and I was proud to vote for the legislation – that the Howard Government actually put some safeguards around the Australian flag so it could never be changed by some political decision. It had to be put to the Australian people. It's our flag. These people are terrorising our key symbol.

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, that's right, Gary. Hard to argue with your point there. You're making it quite eloquently. I do worry about the future, and I think there's a lot of Australians out there who are concerned about the future of our country. We're undergoing massive change at the moment. I made the point earlier today that when you look at net overseas migration from the years 2000 to 2019, we had about, on average, 190,000 people move to Australia. Over the last two years, it's been more than a million, almost half a million each year, 207,000 foreign students last year alone. And people just feel like their country is changing so rapidly. The government is just opening up migration so rapidly that we're having all sorts of issues. We've got a housing demand crisis. Our infrastructure is not holding up. Our hospitals are overwhelmed. Something's got to give. So there's that, and then we've got to be selective about who comes here. They've got to actually support our values. And if people want to import these ancient hatreds, if they want to carry on the fights that have been going on in the Middle East for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, we're not interested. That's the beauty of living down under. We're away from all that stuff.

GARY HARDGRAVE: And we want to stay away from all of that stuff. And while we're talking, three flights have left our shores. So if you don't like Australia, leave. It's written in the Quran. And I'm not picking on Muslims, because this is not a Muslim Jew thing or a Muslim Christian thing. This is terrorists who just hate us, hate the West. Hate what you stand for, hate what our country stands for. We are at a war sort of footing now with people who just want to take us on, have a go at us, burn our symbols, take over our bridge, say they're coming back to have another crack at it in a couple of weeks’ time. I mean, they hate Australia. They shouldn't be here. Leave, would be my response.

ANDREW HASTIE: Exactly, right. If you don't like it, see you later. Go carry on the fight elsewhere, but not here. And I think there's a lot of silent Australians out there who have had a gut full of this stuff, Gary.

GARY HARDGRAVE: So Andrew, you've been in the military. You've served us in very difficult places, and we're grateful for that. You're still serving Australia now as a Member of Parliament, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, how do we look at this whole Gaza situation, where Gaza is just getting destroyed, it's getting pulverised. I see the Israelis are now, and rightly so, telling us that they're getting aid in where people have been starving because Hamas has been pilfering the supplies. And that happens. That happens in lots of these theatres of war and human torment in other places, I know the story. So how do we actually solve this? Will there ever be a resolution? Because I don't see one anytime soon.

ANDREW HASTIE: I think we've got to look at a compromise somehow. Now the Prime Minister and President Macron and others are talking about recognising Palestine as a state, but my concern is that would reward and enfranchise Hamas, which is the only possible governing party at the moment – in Gaza, at least. So I think people are rushing to that, and they're driven by domestic political concerns, and that's never a good reason to do public policy, foreign policy like this. The other thing I'd say is Gaza, when you look at it on Google Earth, has just been reduced to rubble. You can see it. You just pull out your phone, go into Google Maps, look at Gaza, and you can see it from the satellite imagery. So the question I have is, where does this end? I think it was absolutely right for Israel to go after Hamas, after the murderous acts on October 7. They were right to pursue hostages, and I want to note there are still hostages being held by Hamas. But I've got to say, what's the end game here? When are we going to get peace? Israel has gone after Hamas leadership, they've gone after Hezbollah with the pager attacks, they've had success in Iran hopefully setting back their nuclear ambitions for at least a decade. The question is with Gaza is where does this end? And I think that's a really important question, because we can't continue the suffering. There are a lot of innocents who have been hurt on all sides, but particularly kids in in Gaza. No one wants to see them starving. No one wants to see them being killed either. And so I think we need to find out, what is the end state and where's this all headed? 

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah, well, I don't know if anybody's got the answer for that, but it's the proper question. I mean, in the end, the whole thing would end tomorrow if Hamas would surrender the hostages and would actually let them go home. And as Golda Meir said years ago, they've got to learn to love their children more than they hate us. But they are the ones that have to stop this because they started it, pretty simple.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right, Gary. I mean, just release the hostages. It's not hard. But like I said, you get on radio, get on TV, there's no easy solution here. This is deeply historical, and if there was an easy solution, we would have found it by now. 

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah, the Prime Minister would have rushed to it, I'm sure. Good to talk to you, Andrew Hastie. Thanks for your time. 

ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks Gary.

[ENDS]