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 CHRIS KENNY, SKY NEWS

WEDNESDAY 26 FEBRUARY 2025

Topics: Labor’s misleading comments about Chinese warships off Australia’s coast, Defence spending, energy security.

CHRIS KENNY: Let's go straight to Canberra now and catch up with Shadow Defence Minister, Andrew Hastie, live. Thanks for joining us. Andrew.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good to be with you, Chris.

CHRIS KENNY: We now know clearly that Australia was not notified of the live-firing exercises conducted by China in the Tasman Sea until after that begun, and only because a Virgin Airlines pilot had picked up on the warnings when flying over the area. What's your reaction to this reality?

ANDREW HASTIE: There's a couple of things going on here. Number one, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, last week both said that we had been notified, which is false. They're either misleading the public or they're not across their brief. But either way, it's a very bad look for the Prime Minister who's meant to be leading this country, and his primary job is to keep us safe. That's the first thing. But number two, it also reveals a significant surveillance gap and a command and control gap within the ADF – the fact that we didn't detect this, that it was passed on by Virgin Airlines, through Airservices Australia and then into Defence. So there's some worrying things happening here, but the thing I want to underline the most is that the Prime Minister has shown very weak leadership. He's been at pains to explain this behaviour from the Chinese warships away as within international law, which is completely missing the point. This is a signal from the Chinese military that they have a blue-water navy, and they're prepared to flex their muscles in our region. This is gunboat diplomacy.

CHRIS KENNY: Well, this is extraordinary. This is the key point. I was talking about this yesterday and the day before, just how weak Anthony Albanese had been. Why wasn't he outraged about this? Instead, he was explaining away the Chinese action. Have a look again.
*EXCERPT PLAYS*

CHRIS KENNY: There he was last Friday. Now the two points about that, Andrew Hastie, is one, he's saying exactly what China would want him to say, not what perhaps Australian voters would want him to say. And secondly, he's flat out wrong. There was no prior warning.

ANDREW HASTIE: He's totally wrong. He's not across his brief, or he's misleading the Australian public. And number two, he should be standing up for the national interest. He should be insisting on mutual respect. Instead, it looks like he's going for stability through weakness rather than stability through strength. Let's not forget that Anthony Albanese criticised Scott Morrison as Prime Minister for the relationship with China back in 2021/2022. He claims to have fixed it but instead, we've gone from wolf warrior diplomacy under the Coalition government, where the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs put out mean tweets, to gunboat diplomacy under Anthony Albanese. This is a very, very worrying signal.

CHRIS KENNY: What is China playing at here? At the very least, it's shown total disrespect towards a nation it's supposed to be friendly with, but are they threatening us?

ANDREW HASTIE: China is undergoing the biggest peacetime military build-up since 1945. They've built a blue-water navy, and they are now projecting it through the globe. They've sent it all the way down under, through Philippine waters, through the Coral Sea, down past Sydney, and they've done two live-fire exercises, disrupting our commercial flight paths. If we'd done that in the South China Sea, or if we'd done that near China and disrupted their commercial flight paths, there would be hell to pay for us. And so the fact that the Prime Minister hasn't called this out is completely keeping with the pattern of behaviour he's shown over the last two years, which is weak leadership. We've had ADF personnel who serve us in the Air Force and the Navy harassed, effectively, by the Chinese military, whether it's the P-8 Poseidon, which had chaff fired at it by a Chinese fighter, or our Navy divers who had a Chinese destroyer use its sonar to pulse them, he has never stood up for them. He's never raised this politically. And so our criticism of Anthony Albanese is political. He's not standing up for our country, and he's showing weak political leadership when he should be insisting on mutual respect from the Chinese government.

CHRIS KENNY: It's a deep worry and it underscores why we need to modernise and expand our Defence Forces, improve our Defence Forces. The UK Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, has now pledged a massive Defence spending, and he's going to increase spending to two and a half per cent of GDP. This is seen as something that's urged along by Donald Trump. Is this what Australia needs to do this? Does Trump in the White House mean that we're going to have to lift our game in order to carry our weight as a key ally?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think the message from President Trump is very clear – you've got to stand on your own two feet, and you've got to lift your own weight. The US isn't going to do security deals with other countries where they underwrite their security. They've got to see some evidence of investment from the countries who are meant to be allies and partners. The UK has got the message. Keir Starmer is going to 2.5 per cent next year, and he's going up to three per cent by the end of the decade. Today, in estimates, Defence officials confirmed that we're not even going to hit our 2.4 per cent of GDP spend by the end of this decade. Now, Richard Marles committed to that last year. We're only going to hit 2.33 per cent by the end of the decade. I think the message is very clear – we need to invest in our Defence Force. But importantly, Chris, we need to invest in our industrial base because we need to be able to make things, we need to be able to be self-sufficient in a time of crisis or war, and the de-industrialisation of Australia over the last 30-years has left us very vulnerable and weak. All the other countries around the world are re-industrialising.

CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, I wanted to get your thoughts on this quickly because we're nearly out of time. But you know, national security is intrinsically linked then to energy security, isn't it? We can't actually protect ourselves and have that industrial base unless we have reliable and plentiful energy, and we seem to be undermining ourselves on that front.

ANDREW HASTIE: Exactly right. So the Labor Government is rushing towards a target of 83 per cent renewables by 2030 That's just insane because most of those renewables will be made in China. The wind and solar will be made in China. This is at the same time they're conducting gunboat diplomacy off our shores. So we'll become very dependent, very reliable on China, and very vulnerable to coercion. The only way we're going to re-industrialise this country is investing in reliable base load power, which will come primarily through gas, which we have an abundance of. We are the world's leading exporter of LNG. We send it to everyone else, along with our coal, but we deny it to our own Australian families and businesses, and we're denying us the ability to re industrialise, which is really important.

CHRIS KENNY: It sure is. Thanks so much for joining us. Andrew, I appreciate it.

[ENDS]