THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE

TRANSCRIPT INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS KENNY, SKY NEWS

9 JUNE 2022

E&OE…

CHRIS KENNY: Let's cross to Perth now and catch up with the Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie. His first television interview since getting that appointment. Congratulations on the job, Andrew. Of course, you were Assistant Defence Minister in government, but even though you're in opposition, it must fulfill an ambition for you to actually be the leading spokesperson on defence for the Coalition?

ANDREW HASTIE: Good afternoon, Chris. Good to be with you and your viewers. Yes, it's a great honour to be the Shadow Defence Minister, working closely with the Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, and the rest of the shadow cabinet. And I'm looking forward to holding the Albanese Government to account in my role as opposition defence minister.

CHRIS KENNY: You know, a big part of what you were trying to do in government was to modernise and build up the hardware and the personnel in the Australian Defence Force. How can you help to do that? How can you make sure Labor does that now that they're in power?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, as I made clear with the statement I put out on Sunday, my job is to make sure that the government gives clear direction to the ADF, that it's well led and that it's properly resourced with new capabilities, and those capabilities have to be delivered in a timely manner. Now, under our time in government, we commenced the biggest rebuild of the ADF since the Second World War. Invested a lot of money into new capabilities. We're growing it by 20,000 people over the next decade. We're growing our cadet program. And of course, we're investing $270 billion over the next decade on new capabilities – strike capabilities, mainly. And who can forget, of course, the AUKUS agreement that was struck in September last year, the biggest single defence and foreign policy achievement since ANZUS 70 years ago.

CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, that's certainly a feather in your cap, a significant achievement. It's been in focus today, though, because Peter Dutton has taken the unusual liberty to put into print some details about, he was going to try and use that AUKUS agreement to purchase the first couple of nuclear-powered submarines to fill that gap, while we could gear up to build the rest of them. Why did Peter Dutton feel the need to put that information into the public arena?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, the Defence Minister Richard Marles gave a fairly meandering interview during the week to the ABC where he said that we left defence in a disgrace, which is so far from the truth. We struck the most significant defence agreement since ANZUS in AUKUS to deliver nuclear powered submarines for the ADF, which is part of our deterrence strategy. And Mr Dutton was well on the way. So Richard Marles came out and attacked us and said we'd left it in a bad way, which is far from the truth. In fact, Peter Dutton had a plan to deliver two of those nuclear boats, Virginia class submarines, by 2030. It's concerning because Mr Marles also said that he's open minded about a diesel-powered submarine to plug a gap between the submarines now and the nuclear class that will be delivered in 2040. So he's got some serious questions to answer, I think, as the new Minister for Defence. Does he have conviction about AUKUS? Is he committed to delivering them? We actually really need to get on with the job, because, as we've seen, the strategic environment around us is deteriorating. We need these submarines as soon as possible, and that's why Peter Dutton went out and corrected the record.

CHRIS KENNY: So as I speculated earlier in the program, you put this information, the opposition put this information, into the public arena because you want to keep the government's toes to the fire on this. You want to make sure that Marles follows that same plan?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right. We need these nuclear power submarines as soon as possible. The plan was to get two by 2030 direct from the factory or the production line in Connecticut in the United States, get them into the water and then get a subsequent eight out to 2040. And Richard Marles is now talking about doing it in 20 years’ time. We need these submarines as soon as possible. Like I said, we need a Minister for Defence who has conviction, is singularly focused on delivering these submarines, and he cannot waste a single day. So unhelpful comments about other options of diesel submarines really sends the wrong messages to both the US and the UK. We need to get on with the job and he needs to deliver.

CHRIS KENNY: Well, there was a pretty surprising response from Richard Marles today in the Australian where he attacked Peter Dutton for putting this information into the public arena. He said it was against the national interest, and said it was inconsistent with what he was saying in government. But if you have a look at this interview, part of this interview with Sky News' Andrew Clennell from September, it's exactly what Peter Dutton was talking about. Here it is.

*EXCERPT PLAYS*

Well, there it is in public. Yes, that's what the government wants to do, and there's a lot of negotiation to take place. So Richard Marles must be terribly badly informed if he wasn't aware of that, and surely, he would have been briefed on these developments immediately he was sworn in as Defence Minister.

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, he's either been briefed and he's not across it, or he's hedging his bets and talking about another option, the diesel powered submarine, which he speculated about. So he's got to commit to this, otherwise it looks like the Labor Government is crab walking away from AUKUS. And as I said, we need a Minister of Defence who has conviction, who is committed to delivering these nuclear-powered submarines and in a very quick amount of time. We need to get some boats in the water by the end of this decade. And that's what we're going to focus on as the opposition – holding this government to account on this very significant defence and foreign policy framework we've put in place – AUKUS – to deliver these nuclear submarines.

CHRIS KENNY: Now, when the AUKUS deal was announced, the government was very, very clear – Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison were very, very clear – about decoupling the idea of nuclear powered submarines from a domestic nuclear industry. We're in an energy crisis, though, at the moment. We need long term, dispatchable power. Would the nuclear submarine deal actually benefit from also having a domestic nuclear energy industry?

ANDREW HASTIE: Chris, I'm on the record. I have no issues with civil nuclear power. This is a discussion that we're going to have, obviously, within the shadow cabinet and within the Liberal Party and Coalition itself. But I'm very open minded. We need to deliver cheap, baseload power to Australian families, businesses, manufacturers, and we need to do it over the next decade if we're going to remain competitive in an increasingly uncertain and competitive world. And surely, we need coal, we need gas, we need some renewables, but I think we also need to consider nuclear, and it would be folly to rule it out like Labor did today.

CHRIS KENNY: Is there any overlap, though, with the defence needs? Would that expertise and capability in Australia help the nuclear submarine program and vice versa?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think there has to be some interplay between the two. We need to build an industry that can support nuclear submarines. Of course, that would have significant benefits for a civil industry as well. But like I said, this is something that we need to consider internally, and I'm looking forward to that debate.

CHRIS KENNY: Now I want to ask you about something that's very delicate, because it involves all sorts of angles, including legal action at the moment that you've been a witness to. But I want to talk generally about Defence Force morale. You're saying, apart from all the hardware you need to build up the personnel in Defence. We saw in recent years, the Chief of Defence and the Prime Minister apologise to Afghanistan for alleged war crimes before there's been any convictions. In fact, there's not been any charges. And we've seen a lot of reaction from some serving soldiers and Australian veterans about that, and there's this defamation case going on with Ben Roberts-Smith, where you were called as a witness. My question is about your concerns about morale. Have Australian soldiers, specifically Special Air Service soldiers where you served, have they been maligned by the government and the military top brass, and is that going to make it more difficult for you to recruit the people you need to recruit into Defence Force in coming years?

ANDREW HASTIE: Chris, that's a tough question to answer. Certainly, the Brereton process was very taxing, and it did damage morale, there's no doubt about it. It affected many people and their families. That process is finished, and we're now in a process established by the Morrison Government through the Office of the Special Investigator. I can't comment on that. I also can't comment on the defamation case, which Justice Besanko has yet to rule on. Suffice to say, I think the most important thing that the ADF needs to know and be reminded of is that they serve a very important role in protecting us. Their primary mission is to win our wars - that's why they exist - and we need to resource them, look after our veterans and focus on that mission. Of course, they help during flood, fire, they've helped during the pandemic, but their primary mission will always be war fighting, and we can't be squeamish about that. That's why, as I said, as Shadow Minister for Defence, I'll be focusing on strategic direction from the government, how well they lead our ADF, and, of course, resourcing, which was an issue last time Labor was in government. I served as a member of the ADF under the last Labor government. I was witness to cuts, I also saw morale go through the floor, and we don't want to go back to that, so I'll be working very hard to hold this government to account.

CHRIS KENNY: Do you accept those Brereton findings? Do you believe that Australian soldiers did commit war crimes in Afghanistan?

ANDREW HASTIE: The Brereton Report found credible information with regards to war crimes allegations. Now, if you look at the report closely, the rules of evidence are different to a court of law and to a criminal finding, but Justice Brereton, using the powers invested in him by the Inspector General of the ADF, handed down a finding, and it must be taken seriously, Chris – there's no two ways about it. But we need to look forward. We're in a new decade. It's a very uncertain and dangerous environment at the moment. The incident on May 26 involving our P-8 getting buzzed by a Chinese fighter illustrates that point. And so we need our men and women in uniform forward focused thinking about how they can defend us and being prepared for the most taxing and demanding war fighting scenarios. That's what they're paid to do, and we need to give them as much support so they can go out and do it.

CHRIS KENNY: There is so much more to talk about, including China in our region, but we are out of time. I appreciate you joining us, Andrew. And if it's a crucial and perilous time for a government and a Defence Minister to be working on these issues in power, then it's also a very important time to be a Shadow Defence Minister, so thanks for joining us, and best of luck in the role.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thank you, Chris. Always a pleasure.

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