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

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS KENNY, SKY NEWS

Tuesday 26 August 2025

Topics: Iranian Attacks on Australia.

E&OE……………………………………

CHRIS KENNY: Let's go to Canberra now and catch up with the Shadow Home Affairs Minister Andrew Hastie. Andrew, thanks for joining us on this day of dramatic news. Firstly, were you surprised when we heard these revelations today that Iran has been behind at least two of these fire-bombings, these antisemitic fire-bombings?

ANDREW HASTIE: Good evening, Chris. I wasn't surprised. I was surprised the government had taken so long to decide to list the Iranian Republican Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation – the Coalition has called upon the government since 2023 at least 10 times to do so. But it is good news, and we back the government in this decision to remove the Iranian Ambassador from our country, to expel him and three other people in the Embassy who have been made persona non grata, as well as the listing. We'll be working very closely with the government to expedite the process of listing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation.

CHRIS KENNY: Let me just walk this through, though, because Iran doesn't just do this for the hell of it. Why would Iran want to exacerbate the antisemitic stresses in this country? Would Iran be looking to divide our country so that it might put more pressure on our own government, so that our Labor government might do something like, you know, promise to recognise a Palestinian state?

ANDREW HASTIE: What we've seen over the last decade is a rise in underhanded tactics used by authoritarian regimes – whether it's China, Russia, Iran, North Korea – and one of the ways they go head-to-head with democracies is by attacking our social cohesion. Which is why using a proxy or a cut out to effectively attack Jewish Australians, or Australians who are Jewish – I want to make that very clear Australians who are Jewish – by attacking the bakery in Bondi and the Adass Synagogue in Melbourne, that's a way of sowing discord, disagreement and creating fear. So it's a very powerful tactic in places like Australia and other democracies around the world. Iran is very sophisticated with the way they do this. This is state sponsored terrorism. The Iranian Republican Guard Corps had operational control of this. They used cryptocurrency, encrypted communications to run a series of proxies and deliver this violent extremism on our shores, and that's why a red line has been established by the government. We support it wholeheartedly. We just think this should have been done at least the listing of the IR GC at least two years ago.

CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right in what you said there about the Iranian aims. Now, as you know, I've got a background in this. I served for many years for Australia's Foreign Minister dealing in issues of espionage, of Islamist extremist motivations and events. And you're absolutely right, they want to undermine any democracy, create social discord in any democracies, weaken them, especially if they happen to be a strong ally of the United States and of Israel. But is it not also the case that they would hope for a political dividend, and they would love to see, they would see the proposed recognition of a Palestinian state by the Albanese Government as being some sort of fruit from their Machiavellian labours.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right, the political dividend would be a geopolitical outcome, such as the one that we've seen over the last few weeks, which we vehemently disagree with the government on. And that is the recognition of a two-state solution without conditions, which basically emboldens and empowers Hamas and that's very problematic. But I also want to make the point, Chris, that can you imagine if people had been killed in these attacks? That would have been targeted assassination of Australians of a Jewish heritage or background. So I want to underscore how serious this is. This wasn't just a firebombing of the Adass synagogue, this could have been deadly and lethal, and I think it's a very strong move and an important message to send that we will not tolerate foreign interference. We will not tolerate espionage, sabotage, or any other underhanded tactics that authoritarian regimes might conduct or think about conducting on our soil.

CHRIS KENNY: Exactly, and thank goodness ASIO and the authorities are onto this. But at the same time, of course, we've had these so called pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests, including a former Foreign Minister of Australia joining the one in Sydney, where the poster of the supreme ruler of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was bandied about. There's been other hate preachers there. There's been the pictures of Yahya Sinwar bandied about, symbols and flags of Hamas, of Hezbollah, of ISIS. Yet we've seen our authorities not intervene in any direct way. Are we confident that ASIO and our other authorities are watching these protests carefully enough and following up with these people or should we be arresting some of these people in public for blandishing these symbols?

ANDREW HASTIE: I had a briefing today from the Director General of ASIO, Mike Burgess. I've got a lot of confidence in Mike. I've known him for at least five or six years during my time as the chair of the PJCIS. I know he's working very hard to make sure that he keeps Australians safe. But the challenge we have now is that this is becoming so widespread. We have people coming out of school effectively chanting the Hamas lines "from the river to the sea.” Now they might not know what that actually means, but that is to effectively extinguish not just the Jewish state, but the Jewish people from what is now Israel. So this is the challenge when it comes to contesting some of these ideas. And this is the challenge, in fact, in the West Bank and Gaza. You can remove Hamas, but as we've seen from polling out of the Palestinian Authority – their own polling arm – what we're seeing with the polling is that Hamas still enjoys widespread support in Gaza and the West Bank. October 7, the attacks, are still supported across both areas. And armed struggle is still considered a legitimate means of realising a Palestinian state. And as long as those ideas are out there, we're going to have to really be mindful of the threat to our cohesion here, the threat of violence to the Australian people, and that's why our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are going to have a big workload, not just in the next year, but over the next half decade I think.

CHRIS KENNY: Thanks so much for joining us, Andrew Hastie, I appreciate it greatly.

[ENDS]