THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND SOVEREIGN CAPABILITY
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH MARK LEVY, 2GB

Thursday 12 March 2026

Topics: Coalition; Farrer byelection; conflict in the Middle East; fuel security; ADF assistance to the Middle East; Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

E&OE……………………………………

MARK LEVY: Andrew Hastie joins us on the line from Parliament House. Andrew, good morning to you.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good morning, Mark. Great to be back on the program.

MARK LEVY: Mate, wonderful to catch up and I hope you had a great summer break. Since we last spoke, you're moving up in the world. You're back on the frontbench, where I think a lot of our listeners, including me, think you belong. You're going to play a very important role in turning things around for the Coalition. How does it feel?

ANDREW HASTIE: Mark, it's great. It's a privilege to serve both as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party in the House, but also importantly, as the Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability – two really important areas. This country has been de-industrialising for the last 30 - 40, years, and when events like the war in Iran take place, it really exposes some of our supply chain weaknesses. We've got a lot of work to do to make us a more resilient country during times of crisis, but also in peace. A lot of blue-collar workers have struggled as a result of that de-industrialisation, and I'd love to see the revival of advanced manufacturing in this country. Advanced manufacturing drives productivity and it drives higher real wages for blue collar Australians so we want more of those jobs back in this country.

MARK LEVY: I want to explore that a little bit more with you, if I can, Andrew in just a moment. But let's get the whole leadership changes out of the way. We've got Angus Taylor now in charge of the Liberal Party, and Matt Canavan has been elevated to the position as leader of the Nationals. I think they're going to make a pretty formidable team. What say you?

ANDREW HASTIE: They're a great team. Gus is a good mate. I think he's eminently qualified to lead the Liberal Party at the moment – great brain, good instincts, and he's a very hard-working leader. And Matt Canavan is very similar – whip smart and down to earth, and he's a patriot. We've got two good men at the helm, and I'm looking forward to working with them closely.

MARK LEVY: I did hear some comments from Barnaby Joyce. He says it doesn't matter who leads the Nationals, because they always will be undermined by your party. Is that how you see the Coalition relationship? One where the Liberals rule the roost?

ANDREW HASTIE: Not at all. I think the best relationships are always defined by a bit of tension – you get the best out of each other – and I think that's the way the libs and the Nats work. In the end, we've got to build a policy platform that looks after all Australians, and that includes regional and remote Australians, people in the outer metro and, of course, people in our cities. That's why we're a strong Coalition when we work closely together.

MARK LEVY: There's no escaping the fact that there's been this massive surge in support for One Nation, and I heard Mr Canavan yesterday at his press conference have a crack at One Nation. Is One Nation the enemy here, or is this Labor government where you really need to focus your attention to win back the voters you've lost over the last year or so since the last election?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well Mark, last Friday night, I gave a speech to CPAC in Perth. It's their first event out in the west – the Conservative Political Action Conference. And I spoke to a lot of One Nation voters who feel disaffected at the moment. I said: the uniparty – Labor and Liberal – have got it wrong in many areas. I mentioned the way housing prices have skyrocketed, immigration has been too high. I mentioned the pandemic, the way a lot of people felt brutalised by governments across the country during that period. We've got to do better and I think we need to unite the centre right. If we stay divided, Labor is going to keep winning government, and that would be terrible for our country. So One Nation isn't the enemy. There are certainly people that we need to work more closely with, we need to communicate our ideas, and I think the Coalition is going in the right direction. We've abandoned Net Zero, for example. We believe in energy security and lots of cheap, affordable baseload power for our country – for homes, families, small businesses, and importantly, for industry in this country. So there's a number of areas where I think people will start to see a very clear and bold policy platform going forward.

MARK LEVY: I suppose the first real test, Andrew, will be this Farrer byelection coming up on the ninth of May. The Liberals haven't yet announced their candidate. Is it winnable? Can you hold on to it, given Sussan Ley has pulled the pin?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think it's going to be very tough for us. Our national polling is about 20 per cent at the moment, and Sussan Ley was a 25-year incumbent Member of Parliament. This will be the last byelection in our history under the current donation rules so there's going to be a lot of money sloshing around in that seat, for the Teals, One Nation, for a whole lot of other people running. So it's going to be very, very tough. I hope that we can at least improve on our national polling numbers, but it's going to be a very tough fight.

MARK LEVY: Alright, let's focus in on a few issues happening at the moment. There's no escaping what's happening in the Middle East right now and, you touched on it briefly there, our fuel supply. I reported, Andrew, yesterday on this show that in places like Armidale, people are paying over $3 a litre for petrol and diesel. Yet we've got Chris Bowen standing up in the Parliament of this country saying, "oh no. we don't have a fuel supply issue." What would you say to the people of Australia at the moment, who are already feeling it in their hip pocket as far as cost-of-living pressures go, and they're now being told by this Labor government that we don't have a fuel supply problem?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right, Mark, people are already doing it really tough. Our standard of living has been smashed under Labor. Inflation stays at 3.8 per cent, productivity has flat-lined, and real wages have flat-lined in this country. Now, we've had the war since the 28th of February and we're starting to feel the pinch with fuel. Fuel is a big driver of costs - it's one of the biggest input costs for business and for households, frankly, with power bills and gas bills up almost 40 per cent across the board. So when people go to the bowser and they see the price above $2.50 or $3 out at Armidale, as you said, they should trust what they see, not what they hear in the Parliament. Chris Bowen is trying to smooth things over, but this government needs to take responsibility for supply and making sure that petrol and diesel gets to the right parts of the country, particularly where there's heavy lifting done in the economy – and that's generally in the outer metro and regional areas where we have what's left of our advanced manufacturing, our agricultural sector and our mining sector.

MARK LEVY: I noted in Question Time yesterday, the government was turning the attention on your side of politics, saying: well, Angus Taylor once held the portfolio, he's done nothing. And I think both sides of politics probably have a responsibility to front up and admit to the fact that we don't have enough fuel reserves when we're supposed to, according to this agreement, have 90-days where, at the moment, I think we got 32 days. Having said all of that, the warning signs were there leading up to this war that something was going to happen. I would have thought any responsible government would have said: we need to prepare for this; we need to increase our fuel reserves. But they did nothing, Andrew.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right. The bigger picture to this, of course, Mark, is that we once had eight refineries – the closures of two of those refineries were announced under the Gillard Government, four closed under the Coalition, we've got two left. My personal view is that we should have an integrated supply chain for our fuel. We should be extracting fuel from this country, we should be processing it here, and that should feed our economy. That's a decision that we need to make going forward and I think we should be forward focused and talk about how we can develop our fuel security resilience. But yes, this war looked like it was going to happen. We saw operation Midnight Hammer last year, where the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran, and then there was a massive build up in the Middle East. We knew that this could happen and also, when you look at the geography of Iran, they control the Strait of Hormuz - they can fire rockets into the Strait of Hormuz. Twenty per cent of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz, along with a lot of LNG, alumina, fertiliser. So the government should have thought about this, and they should have read the tea leaves and been better prepared.

MARK LEVY: I wanted to ask you about the war itself. and I ask you this as not only a federal politician now, Andrew, but as a veteran. I had Heston Russell on the show yesterday, and he put this war into perspective. He spoke about the brutal regime in Iran. Is this war something you wholeheartedly support because the first response from the Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, was to call for de-escalation. Is this a war the world needs to have?

ANDREW HASTIE: We didn't get a choice in the matter. Israel and the United States went to war against Iran and in this situation, Australia is a price taker, not a price maker. The challenge for the government is to respond as best as we can to world events as they unfold. I think that the Iranian regime was a evil, terrible regime – it still is, because it's still in place. They were seeking a nuclear weapon, which could have done all sorts of damage to the world. Iran has sponsored terror in this country, they've sponsored foreign interference in our country, and so I have no love for the Iranian regime. Now that the U.S. and Israel are engaged in war, I want it to conclude as quickly as possible and I hope the Iranian people take charge of the country, and that they get rid of these evil despots who have been running Iran for some time. But I do qualify all that with realism. Iran is a country of 90 million people, it's got a highly educated middle class, it's an advanced manufacturing country – it made one-million cars last year, for example, it's no slouch – and I think it's going to be difficult for regime change. Let's see what happens, but at the moment, the Strait of Hormuz still closed, and that means a lot of oil, gas and other commodities aren't making it out from the Middle East to the rest of the world.

MARK LEVY: The government has announced 85 Australians are being sent over as part of this now, as well as air-to-air missiles. Wedgetail aircraft is that the right move.

ANDREW HASTIE: It is the right move because if Iran is able to fire rockets and drones at the Gulf states like UAE, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the whole world economy can grind to a halt, particularly if they have strikes on oil infrastructure, gas terminals and important refineries and smelters. The world economy is hostage to what's happening in the Middle East right now, which is why we need a quick resolution. And I was glad to see President Emmanuel Macron and the French send a carrier group, the Greeks are sending frigates, the Spanish have sent frigates, along with the Dutch as well. This is a world effort now to get that Strait open, and the war concluded.

MARK LEVY: Just one last one, Andrew. We haven't spoken since what happened on December 14 at Bondi Beach. That was a night that shocked not only Sydney but the entire country. To think that terrorism arrived on our shores in response of the two gunmen that were allegedly down there – we have to use the words allegedly because one of them as before courts. I note the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, Dennis Richardson, has quit the investigation saying he doesn't think he'll have the scope to hand down the required recommendations. Can this Royal Commission really do what we're asking it to do, Andrew?

ANDREW HASTIE: We're all troubled by the announcement by Dennis Richardson that he's not going to continue on. I think that's very troubling because it delegitimises the Royal Commission process. This was one of the most barbaric, murderous acts in Australian history in full public view. Fifteen people were murdered on December 14. We need to get to the bottom of it, we need to have a talk about militant political Islam, we need to talk about the role that our intelligence agencies, our law enforcement agencies, played in all of this. Dennis Richardson is uniquely qualified to interrogate and examine those questions, and so his departure, I think, poses questions about the legitimacy of the findings of the Royal Commission, and Anthony Albanese as Prime Minister needs to get involved here and patch it all up. I think that's really important.

MARK LEVY: Hear, hear. Well, Andrew, you've got a big year ahead of you in the federal Parliament in your now elevated role within the Coalition. By the way, I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago for the start of the Rugby League season. Mate, the wheels are in motion for you to become the number one ticket holder of the Perth Bears, okay! My conversations, they're happening behind the scenes so watch this space, great man.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thank you, mate. It's great to see the North Sydney Bears resurrected as the Perth Bears and I did go to a game or two to the North Sydney Bears as a kid.

MARK LEVY: Good on you, mate. Well, it's great to catch up. I know our listeners love hearing from you and look forward to our fortnightly chats here on the 2GB morning show. Go well, mate, we'll talk soon.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thank you, Mark.

[ENDS]