THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND SOVEREIGN CAPABILITY
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS, AFTERNOON BRIEFING

Monday 1 June 2026

Topics: Polling; One Nation; housing; AUKUS.

E&OE……………………………………

PATRICIA KARVELAS: For more, I want to bring in Andrew Hastie, who's the Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability. Andrew Hastie, welcome back to the program.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good afternoon, PK.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Do you think Pauline Hanson can realistically become Prime Minister?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, she has to declare where she's going to run in the lower house if she is going to run to be Prime Minister. But I think it's right to ask a few questions about her drive, her commitment, and her energy – frankly – given that it was revealed today that she's been absent for 88 per cent of Estimates over the last decade, or a 12 per cent attendance record. Her job as a Senator is to hold the government to account. She was absent last week – she was having birthday cake with a billionaire in Brisbane when she should have been asking questions of the government on behalf of her battlers, who have just experienced one of the worst Budgets in the last three decades.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: She says that the Liberals and the Labor Party are just trying to destroy her by raising this, and that you don't achieve much in Senate Estimates. You disagree with that?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think Estimates is a really important part of holding the government to account and if I had a 12 per cent attendance record, my constituents would be rightly outraged. A 12 per cent attendance record for a student at school or university is not going to get you a pass mark. So, I think past performance is a good indicator of future performance, and I think Pauline Hanson has some explaining to do with her attendance record.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay, so let's accept those figures – they're not contested, as far as I can see. Why does it matter? I mean, it doesn't seem that voters seem to care so much, right?

ANDREW HASTIE: Up until this point, she's been running a political party, but she's now talking about being Prime Minister. For that, you need drive, you need commitment, and you need energy, and I think the attendance record shows otherwise. So, they're questions for her to answer. We're just going to work on building back trust for the Australian people – about 55 to 60 per cent of the Australian people, who are the forgotten people – and they're sending a very strong signal to all parties that they're not happy with the current arrangements out of Canberra.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Well, if you look at today's poll, not only is One Nation leading Labor, they're also putting your political party in the third spot. The polling for the Coalition has got to pretty low levels – 20 per cent. Why would it go backwards after an unpopular Budget that you've been campaigning against? Does that worry you?

ANDREW HASTIE: Polls take time to reflect changes out there, and I think people are still coming to terms with the Budget. This is the other issue: Australians have never worked so hard in their lives only to feel like they're going backwards. When I went home and talked to people about the Budget, many of the tradies I spoke to, many of the small business owners hadn't yet had a chance to catch up on the Budget and what it actually means for them – that's going to take some time. We've also got to sell the Budget in Reply, which our leader, Angus Taylor, gave two weeks ago – cutting immigration, indexing income tax, building more homes, and restoring our standard of living. These are all very important things, but we've got to sell that, and that's what we've got to do over the next two years.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay, so there's going to be a lot of scrutiny. I can hear that from the attendance record point you were making on Pauline Hanson. Are the gloves off? Is that the approach you think that the Coalition should be taking now that she seems to be a real chance?

ANDREW HASTIE: My singular mission is to defeat the Albanese Labor government and have a good, centre-right, competent Coalition as the next government – Angus Taylor as the Prime Minister – and that's my mission. But Pauline Hanson has not been clear on what her mission is. She's talking about targeting me and other Coalition members, which makes that task harder. I'm focused on Labor, but I've also got to deal with the One Nation challenge as well. Like I said, they're more interested in tearing it down rather than building a stronger Australia.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay, Bridget McKenzie said she'd campaign with Pauline Hanson in seats to defeat Labor. Is that something you do?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I can't. I've got to defend myself from Pauline Hanson – both her and James Ashby have said they're coming for me. I'm trying to defeat Labor, but I've also got to deal with One Nation. And I welcome the challenge, frankly, because if Pauline Hansen can only turn up to estimates 12 per cent of the time, I'm not sure how she's going to get out to Canning and engage with my local constituency on the issues that matter to them.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: She says she's 72 but she's got a lot of energy, she can run to the chamber in her heels, she's never had so much energy. Do you accept that, that she's got this drive and hunger?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, let's see it. Let's see her turn up. Let's see her turn up for the battlers, rather than having birthday cake with billionaires.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: I want to move to your political party, although I've kind of talked about it a little bit. But more specifically, obviously the Liberal Council happened this weekend. There's been a bit of a discussion today about Tony Abbott's role. Do you see it as purely administrative?

ANDREW HASTIE: That is the role of the President, but it's also an important leadership position to rally the lay party. Morale is important, and I think Tony Abbott will bring a boost to morale, given his stature as a former Prime Minister, but also as a leader in the centre-right movement. He was elected unanimously, he's got a big task ahead, but his role is largely with the lay party, and I think he knows that and respects that.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Because his speech was that of a leader over the weekend. Did you hear it that way? That's how I heard it.

ANDREW HASTIE: You can hear it however you want to hear it, but in the end, the function of the office is largely administrative, and it's to do with the lay party. The task for him is to rebuild the lay party and also raise money. We're in a very competitive environment right now – we've got Labor, we've got One Nation, we've got the Greens. We need leadership at the lay party level, and that's what Tony Abbott's going to bring.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Which brings me to a paper I obtained – and I wrote a piece on ABC News on it today – lots of ideas, including  really cheap memberships for people, 10 bucks to join Liberal Party for a digital membership, and a lower level of engagement for people who are busier. Are these the sorts of ideas that should be pursued?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I haven't read your piece today, PK. I regret not reading it before coming on the program.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: I will text it to you immediately!

ANDREW HASTIE: Excellent. But look, I'm open-minded about how we engage people. We can't just be a party of 65 and over – we've got to engage with working families, small business owners and young Australians, professionals in their 20s. We need to be the party of the forgotten people. As I said at the top of the show, there's 55 to 60 per cent of Australians who are completely sceptical about the whole political system. We need to draw them back in, we need to build a new coalition of voters and win the next election.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Do you think, though, ultimately that you might end up having to potentially govern with One Nation? If the numbers materialise, you can't govern without them, right?

ANDREW HASTIE: Sure, absolutely, and how that plays out in two years' time, who knows? But my mission is to beat the Albanese government – beat Labor. That's my opponent, and that's what I'm focused on.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: One more question on this – I can't help myself. Does it annoy you, given One Nation is targeting you – you're right, they've been pretty explicit about that – that some of your colleagues want to campaign with them?

ANDREW HASTIE: I don't have time to be annoyed. We're at 20 per cent and it's a tough gig out there. I'm just focused on my constituents and in my portfolio of industry and sovereign capability, building a stronger Australia – that's what we all want in a dangerous and more uncertain world.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Now, house prices and young people getting into housing has been one of your passions. So, is it a good thing that growth in Australia's housing market is stalling?

ANDREW HASTIE: It depends who you are. For a young Australian who's just managed to save up enough for a deposit, maybe that's a glimmer of hope, But for young Australians who've just gotten into a house, they're leveraged up to their eyeballs and they're looking down the barrel of negative equity, I don't think it would be all that encouraging. I think what we have to do is rebalance the market, and that's why we are going to cut immigration and peg it to housing completions. Because the way to fix this problem is to get Labor's uncontrolled migration back under control, so that young Australians have hope of buying a home.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: This is the tension, isn't it? I mean, some people own homes, others want cheaper homes, so they can own homes. So, you can't actually introduce a policy that doesn't have an impact that's negative for some people, even if it's positive for others.

ANDREW HASTIE: Confidence in the housing market has dropped since Labor's announcement of new taxes that they ruled out before the last election and have sneakily brought in. I think that has diminished confidence, but the larger geopolitical frame is also important. Inflation was already high before the Iran war, but it's higher and likely to get worse still. Just before I came here, I got an email from my bank saying that my mortgage rate will go up in July – I imagine a lot of Australians have got the same email. So, I think there's a lot of nervousness out there, and I think that's been reflected in the housing market.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Yeah, those emails are coming in thick and fast on this one. The Deputy Prime Minister has announced significant shift in the AUKUS deal. Australia is going to be purchasing three second-hand nuclear submarines now. Is that good enough?

ANDREW HASTIE: I don't think it's good enough at all. Richard Marles needs to lift his game. I think the US are getting a good deal out of AUKUS – I'm not sure about Australia under this Labor government. They're going to get prime real estate in Perth – they'll be able to operate a squadron of Virginia-class submarines out of HMAS Stirling next year. And now our submarines – which we've pumped billions of dollars into the US shipbuilding industry – are being downgraded from new to second-hand. What's going on under the Albanese government? I think the Americans just don't take us seriously, because our defence policy lacks seriousness.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: So, should we have said to the US: "no, we don't want your second-hand subs"?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's what I would be saying - absolutely. Richard Marles needs to read The Art of the Deal and up his game a little bit, because it looks like Australia is getting the rough end of the stick.

PATRICIA KARVELAS: Always great to have you on the show, Andrew Hastie. Thank you.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thank you.

[ENDS]