THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND SOVEREIGN CAPABILITY
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH MARK LEVY, 2GB

Thursday 9 April 2026

Topics: Ben Roberts-Smith arrest, Afghanistan war, energy security, US-Iran ceasefire.

E&OE……………………………………

MARK LEVY: Andrew, good morning to you.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good morning, Mark, good to talk to you.

MARK LEVY: You got some fond memories of the Easter Show back in your younger days, great man?

ANDREW HASTIE: I do very much, my Aunty used to take me every year, and I'd always get the commando show bag and plenty of fairy floss. They're the two memories I have—lovely Sydney event—and miss it. I wish I could take my kids.

MARK LEVY: Yeah, it's always great. And you know, when the Bush comes to the city and to celebrate agriculture, and our farmers, who are the backbone of this country, it's been really fantastic catching up with them over the last few days. Well, Andrew, let's jump straight into it. I appreciate that we can't say too much on this front, but I do need to ask you about your reaction to the news that Ben Roberts-Smith has been arrested and has not pushed for bail in relation to war crimes. What did you think when you heard the news the other day?

ANDREW HASTIE: Mark, I think it was a very sad and sobering day for the country and for many Australians. I think Ben Roberts-Smith is entitled to the presumption of innocence. He's entitled to a fair trial, and that's why I'm very circumspect about making comment, because the last thing we want is for his trial to be prejudiced by political commentary.

MARK LEVY: I appreciate that. I do remember, though, at the time, you expressed your relief at Ben Roberts-Smith losing his defamation trial, saying the courage of former colleagues in giving evidence against the VC winner had rescued the elite regiment. Do you have a relationship with Ben Roberts-Smith? Do you have a problem with the former soldier?

ANDREW HASTIE: No, I don't have a problem with Ben Roberts-Smith. I don't have a relationship with Ben Roberts-Smith. As you'd be aware, I was subpoenaed to appear in the Federal Court for two and a half days as a witness to that trial. I was on one of the missions that was examined closely in that trial. And a subpoena, for your listeners, is a formal court order. If you don't obey the subpoena, you can be in contempt of court. So I gave evidence under oath, as did up to 30 other soldiers, 21 of them were SAS veterans, and here we are now. But to your point, the SAS regiment is Australia's special missions unit. It does the most important missions for the Australian Government and counter terrorism, recovery of Australians offshore or—if for example—potentially shot down over another country and in war. And we really need the regiment, so it's really important that we have that capability going forward. And the young men and women who serve there now are fantastic people. They work so hard to protect us, and they stand ready. They're on very short notice to move. They can get the call out anytime, and there's sacrifice for them and their families being so ready to defend us.

MARK LEVY: I started the show this morning, Andrew, by giving a very impassioned speech, if you like, to veterans who are writing to me at the moment and are saying, Mark, we don't know how to feel at the moment because it feels like our role is being questioned. It feels like, and I wouldn't say, that veterans are questioning their service to this country, because a lot of them are saying to me, Mark, it's the proudest day of my life when I signed on that dotted line to join the defence force. But I guess, Andrew, as a former soldier yourself, I'd ask you what your message is to those servicemen and women who feel let down by our government and are questioning the way in which this is all played out. Because there's people saying to me, Mark, was there any need for the police to walk onto that plane? Why couldn't they have just knocked on Ben Roberts-Smith's door and charged him with those very, very serious crimes, and he's entitled to the presumption of innocence. I guess my question to you is, what do you say to your colleagues in defence that are feeling helpless at the moment, they're feeling a whole mixture of emotions and sort of don't know how to feel. What would you say to them?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I imagine a lot of veterans would be feeling a sense of loss and frustration, and I want to say to them that we all had a mission to serve our country, and 99% of us did our job with honour, and we did it in a war that was incredibly frustrating. Anyone who was at the pointy end doing combat operations in Afghanistan knows that things never go right, and we often had to make very difficult decisions in difficult circumstances. I have first-hand experience myself. And that doesn't change, though, that we stand in this amazing tradition of ANZAC. I think one of the risks that we make over time is that we pretend that Anzacs in the past weren't humans. But we're all humans, we're all imperfect, and none of us are above the law. And that's why I just want to emphasise what John Howard said in his statement, that no Australian is above the law, and that's why Ben Roberts-Smith deserves a presumption of innocence. He deserves a fair trial, and the best thing we can do is uphold the rule of law in this process, and he'll have his day in court, and one way or another, there will be an outcome, but if this process is prejudiced, we're actually not doing Ben Roberts-Smith a service.

MARK LEVY: Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you, Andrew. I do want to move on to other things, but I just need to clarify one point you made, and you just said there that 99% of people did the right thing. Does that mean that there were wrong things done in places like Afghanistan?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, it's hard to avoid that reality when the Brereton report was handed down back in 2020 which found wrongdoing was done. As a former member of the regiment, I obviously was interviewed for that process. I've been through this whole process, is what I'm saying, Mark. No one is perfect, no one is above the law, and there was some wrongdoing—that was found to be credible in the Brereton report—so part of us moving forward as a country is acknowledging where we've done well and done right, and also acknowledging where we've gone wrong. And I think that's just a healthy part of the human experience, no one's perfect.

MARK LEVY: Just one more on this, Andrew, and I know this is probably uncomfortable for you to talk about, but I think given your service, it's important for us to understand what it's like in places like Afghanistan. You'd be familiar with Sam Bamford, who hosts a very popular podcast called Two Worlds Collide. And he's pointed to Taliban soldiers infiltrating the Afghan army and Australian soldiers not knowing who they're fighting against. He's pointed to 14 year old boys strapped in explosives. He's pointed to IEDs and kids and women being used as human shields. Is that your experience from a place like Afghanistan?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, absolutely. There were green on blues—which is when we had Afghan soldiers, effectively murder Australian soldiers—that happened several times in fact. We had daily challenges—trust issues with our partner force—I mean, I was partnered up with, basically warlords in uniform. But the point is that when you go overseas and you wear that flag on your shoulder, you carry the values of the Australian people with you. That means we don't get a blank cheque to do whatever we want. We actually abide by our values and our laws. I'll be the first one to say things don't go right in war. I mean, until you've—like me—stood over the dead bodies of an eight year old and a six year old boy, who have just been torn up by 30mm cannon by a US Apache—I'm just not going to take a lecture from people about the reality of war. And often, Mark, the first casualty of war is the truth. Okay, so I'm just being brutally honest here. Do you guys want to go down that path? More than happy to talk about it.

MARK LEVY: No, I appreciate your honesty, Andrew, and it's the reason why, mate, I've been steadfast in my support for our veterans, and it makes me really angry and upset that we don't do enough as a country to support men like you and women who have been into the dark corners of the earth. I couldn't imagine walking a day in the shoes of our soldiers, which is why I have the utmost respect for people like yourself, for people like Ben Roberts-Smith, who took enemy fire to become a VC recipient. But again, as you pointed out, and as I'll continue to say, he's entitled to the presumption of innocence—

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right.

MARK LEVY: —and will need to be either not guilty or guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which is a much higher threshold than that civil case. Let's move on to other things. And again, I really appreciate your honesty. Let's talk about some good news, and that is that there seems to be this ceasefire for the next two weeks between the United States and Iran. It's going to be a little while, though, until we start seeing some relief at the petrol pump here in Australia. Overall, though, Andrew, this good news?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I'm a little more cautious. We don't actually know what the terms of the deal were, and I think first of all, I'd say I'm glad there's a ceasefire. It's a fragile ceasefire, and it's unclear as to what deal has been landed. You've still got Israel at war in Lebanon. The Iranians say that a ceasefire in Lebanon was part of the deal. The Americans say it wasn't. And at the moment, any ships that get through the Strait of Hormuz will have to do so with the assistance of the Iranians, because if it's been mined, for example, they're going to know where those mines are. So I think it's going to be a slow recovery. And I just want Australians to—I think—just to be cautious, not to rush into thinking that everything's going to be okay in the next couple of weeks. I think there's been a lot of oil and gas infrastructure in the Gulf that's been damaged, we're dependent upon that oil and gas infrastructure for our own diesel and petrol. There's a lot of fertiliser still caught in the Gulf. And if those ships start moving, they're going to move very slowly. And there's also potentially a toll that's going to be put on those ships. So we should just be prepared for prices to stay high. And if you look at the price of oil per barrel at the moment, it's still hovering close to $100 and if you look at the Singapore futures market, which prices in, a barrel of diesel from Singapore, which includes the shipping costs and the refining costs and everything else, that's at about $100 so for some time we're going to experience pain at the bowser and I think it's important that Australians realise that and they don't get their hopes up too soon.

MARK LEVY: Absolutely. And Andrew, I was talking to Angus Taylor out here at the show. I had him up on the stage with me the other day, and this war has been a real wake-up call for us. And I know you've been a driving force behind, you know, starting to manufacture here in Australia again and making it substantial and sustainable to do that. Angus Taylor did say to me that he wants to see more mining exploration and coal and gas projects. This comes at a time when the Queensland Premier is pushing for quick approvals to dig for oil in his state. Do we need to look more at using the resources we have here for our future energy security, Andrew?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yes, we do, Mark. Very simply, we can't be dependent on regions like the Persian Gulf or the Middle East—for our liquid fuel—that are exposed to geopolitical risk. I mean, we've seen war over the last 50 years in the Middle East, whether it was the Yom Kippur War in '73, the Iranian Revolution, the Persian Gulf War in 1990-91, invasion of Iraq in 2003, you can just go on. And here we are now in 2026, and again, we feel the pain at the bowser every time there's some sort of conflict in the Middle East. Now, even if we transition completely to somewhere like the US, we're still going to be exposed to the whims of another country and their political leadership. So I think what we need to do is build our own self-reliance, and that means we've got to dig, we've got to drill, and we've got to refine here. So I think we need to talk about recapitalising our existing refining assets, potentially building more. And I think we should look at unconventional technology, like turning our coal into diesel. We have this massive abundance of coal in this country. It's probably the most efficient way to get diesel, and something that you can scale as well, and that would give us a level of security as a country, and also we could potentially look after partners like New Zealand and other countries in the region who might also want to buy from us.

MARK LEVY: Andrew, fantastic, as always. Mate, wonderful to catch up. You made a lot of sense this morning. And again, I want to thank you for your honesty in relation to what happens in Afghanistan, and thank you for your service. And mate, we'll catch up again in a couple of weeks. I'll pick up a birdie beetle bag for you too, mate. All right.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks, Mark. Good on you, mate.

[ENDS]