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

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH MARK LEVY, 2GB

Thursday 13 August 2026

Topics: Tomago; drone incursions at RAAF bases; Coalition policies; One Nation. 

E&OE……………………………………

MARK LEVY: Andrew, good morning to you.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good morning, Mark.

MARK LEVY: Mate, nice to be back into it, I'm sure, after the winter break. I wanted to start with the Tomago Aluminium smelter. Firstly, $2.5 billion of taxpayers' money is being spent to bailout the Rio Tinto owned facility. Great news for workers, but I would have thought a concession from the federal and state governments that their energy policy is not working. Do you agree?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, Labor's energy policy is failing, and Anthony Albanese and his Industry Minister, Tim Ayres, are presiding over the collapse of Australian industry. The fact that we've had to spend $2.5 billion bailing out Tomago is ridiculous. We've got to get our energy prices down to make us internationally competitive. It's not just smelters that are at risk – I've met with industry across the board, across our economy – industry is struggling. And the one input to their costs that's killing them is energy. We've got to get out of Net Zero. We've got to get our coal, our gas, and our uranium working for the Australian people and delivering cheap power prices.

MARK LEVY: Andrew, I've got people writing to me this morning about this, saying, it's all well and good for the federal government to come to the party here – $2.5 billion of our money to bail out Tomago. But when are they going to start helping all the people that are opening their power bills, or getting the email from their electricity provider, thinking to themselves, "well, hang on, wasn't it the Prime Minister himself who promised to reduce our power bills by $275?" It's just another lie, isn't it?

ANDREW HASTIE: It was a lie. Two-hundred and seventy-five dollars is nothing when you consider the cost of inflation on the Australian people. But that's why our energy policy is so clear. We're going to unashamedly pursue cheap energy – we're not going to focus on targets – we're going to focus on cheap energy, and that means using Aussie coal, gas, uranium to deliver cheap baseload power to the Australian people. Because we want relief for households, we want relief for small businesses, and we want to keep heavy industry. We can't afford to let our sovereign capability collapse here in Australia and go offshore, which is exactly what's happening. All the smelters, our refineries and other really important parts of our sovereign capability – they've been closing and moving offshore because the cost of energy is too high. That's why the government has had to bail out Whyalla, Boyne, Nyrstar in South Australia and Tasmania, Glencore, Bell Bay – we used to make glass in this country, but Oceania Glass has closed down. We are going to be very vulnerable if we don't keep heavy industry in this country.

MARK LEVY: I use the analogy that we've spent 30 - 40 years creating a modern Australia, and now we've spent the last 10 years destroying it. That's what it feels like anyway because, as you rightly point out, Andrew, it's just impossible to get anything done in this country anymore.

ANDREW HASTIE: Exactly. Since Labor legislated Net Zero – put it on our statute books – we've seen an increased speed in the collapse of Australian industry. Labor is completely responsible for this, and we're working on a Bill to put a broom through this whole Net Zero enterprise that they've forced on the Australian people. Like I said, we're going to focus on cheap energy. Targets are great, but targets for Australia don't really mean anything when China, America, India, and other Asian countries have much bigger carbon footprints than us. We could switch off our whole electricity sector here, we could kill our carbon footprint completely, go to zero, and it wouldn't change what China is doing, what India is doing, what America is doing, what all these other countries are doing. So, it's time we started looking after Australia, our national interest, and putting our people first.

MARK LEVY: We've got Chris Bowen running the whole thing, and what's his presidency office costing us – $150 million or something? Hey, I wanted to talk to you as well, something you and I have spoken about at length in recent months: defence and our defence capabilities. What do you make of this revelation today and this week by the Telegraph that damning Department of Defence figures have revealed 147 drone incursions were detected in restricted airspace surrounding Australia's most significant military facilities at Williamtown Air Base. Those personnel on base were told, "just close the blinds to protect the classified information." What?!

ANDREW HASTIE: That is ridiculous, and even more so because this Labor government has had more than four years to get across the changing nature of warfare. With the invasion of Ukraine by Russia back in early 2022, we've seen the proliferation of drone warfare. It's absolutely changed the modern battlefield. We know that drones are going to play a huge part in the next war, and the speed at which the Russians and the Ukrainians have been adapting has been incredible – there's lots of lessons learned. So, the fact that our bases are still unprotected – that you can just fly a drone over the top of a of an ADF base probably anywhere in this country – I think says everything about Albanese Government's priorities when it comes to defence. It's not acceptable.

MARK LEVY: You understand this better than I do, obviously, Andrew, with your defence background and being a former soldier yourself. Should we not be shooting these things out of the sky?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think we should have all sorts of countermeasures. It depends on what sort of a drone it is, what sort of threat it is, and I'd always leave that decision to the ground force commander or whoever's there charged with defending the base. You can use lasers now – there's a great company in Melbourne that's producing counter drone measures using directed energy or lasers. I've seen it at work, it's incredible. There's a whole bunch of ways you can do this, but certainly if we want to protect HMAS Stirling, where the AUKUS submarines are going to be housed, we need better drone technology. We need to be able to defeat these drones as well, and we need to be looking around the bases of critical importance and having hard questions for businesses that are potentially housing DJI drones. We need to be alert to some of the ways that our adversaries could be setting up next to our bases.

MARK LEVY: Now, Andrew, I've really got to get a life because I've spent this week watching Question Time, and I find the arrogance from the Prime Minister quite breathtaking. But it seems to be coming the norm with Anthony Albanese. To be honest, I'm sick of talking about this melon story. I think it's distracting from some of the real issues facing Australia. But the refusal to apologise for that crude comment in relation to the melons. You're a young father, Andrew – if your kids do something wrong, you expect them to apologise, don't you?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, I do, and I just thought it was in the national interest earlier in the week for the Prime Minister to say, "for the avoidance of any doubt, I apologise," and just clear it off the decks. But we've spent the last couple of days talking about it, and I don't think it enhances our relationship with Japan. So, just take it on the chin, apologise. I do think the context is pretty clear. They were making a joke about anatomy, and I just think it's unbecoming and below the dignity of the office of the Prime Minister to make a joke about that but moreover, about a significant ally in Japan.

MARK LEVY: What did you make of your colleague, Senator Andrew Bragg, at the press conference yesterday, Andrew? I started the show by saying you guys need to be on the same page, right? I had Angus Taylor, your boss and leader, on the show yesterday, and I challenged him on a migration number. He said, "it'll be well below 200,000," I said, "okay, fair enough. It goes in with housing," and I challenged him on that. A couple of hours later, Senator Bragg stands at the National Press Club and outlines a figure of 180,000 and he talks about a whole range of different policy ideas. Did he run any of that past shadow cabinet or not?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, Andrew Bragg went out and gave his speech yesterday and his comments yesterday. It didn't go through a formal process, so they're his personal views, they're not reflecting the shadow cabinet nor the joint party room's views, and I think Angus Taylor made that pretty clear.

MARK LEVY: Do you agree with anything he said, or vehemently disagree?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think we absolutely need to cut immigration. Immigration is out of control under Labor, and your listeners would be feeling it every day. Housing is more scarce, our infrastructure is not keeping up with the pace of population growth, and our essential services are overstretched. We need to cut immigration, and that's why our policy is to peg immigration numbers to housing completions. We'll announce a figure closer to the election based on immigration, housing, and workforce data – you'd expect us to calibrate closer to the election – but certainly we're going to make some pretty big cuts, and I think it's really important that we do.

MARK LEVY: Just before we move on from Senator Bragg, though, I suggested off the top of the show that Angus Taylor needs to pull him in the line here because you guys need to appear united. You need to get out there and all be on the same page. And when a front bencher like Andrew Bragg goes to the press club and undermines his leader by making announcements or making suggestions without running it past the party room and shadow cabinet, do you think that there needs to be a conversation between Angus and Andrew Bragg, given it's unhelpful at the moment?

ANDREW HASTIE: I understand there has been a conversation between Angus Taylor and Andrew Bragg. I'm not privy to that, but certainly I think that conversation has been had. I do think when you when you step out into the media that if you're going to talk about someone else's portfolio, you don't make announcements. Senator Jonno Duniam, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, is working on the migration stuff, and he'll have more to say in due course.

MARK LEVY: One last one, Andrew, and I don't want to hold up too much of your time here, but you've got a direct attack from One Nation. They're setting up a branch in your electorate, so this is very real for you. You're in a fight with One Nation; you're also in a fight federally trying to oust this Labor government. Have you started thinking how you're going to attack this over the next 18 months, and how do you ensure that you hold on to your seat at the next election?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, One Nation opened up a branch in Canning on Saturday, and they've done that to the south in the seat of Forrest, to the north in the seat of Brand, which is a Labor seat – they've done it across the country, so there's nothing unusual about that. But look, they are targeting me. They've raised $5 million to get rid of Albanese with the "Fire the Liar" campaign, but they're probably spending a good amount of that money to take me out. I'll leave that up to James Ashby to explain why that would be the case. But suffice to say, I'm down for the fight. In the end, I actually want to win One Nation voters because I think ultimately, they share a lot of my views, but that doesn't mean I have to bend the knee to people like James Ashby.

MARK LEVY: You're not at all concerned?

ANDREW HASTIE: Every three years, I have to apply for my job. I've done it five times now, and I'll do it again at the next election. I know that there's always a risk that you might end up departing politics not on your own terms but that's not important to me – my focus is delivering for my constituents in Canning. I've done a lot over the years; I've got more to do. It's pretty local for a Sydney audience but we need more train stations. I've already delivered one, and I've spooked Labor into delivering a second one. That's two train stations in two years – I'm pretty proud of that, and I've got more to do.

MARK LEVY: Well, I think you've proven throughout your career, Andrew – not only in politics but in defence – you're a fighter, so we're not going to go down without a fight. Look forward to continuing our chats in the lead-up to the next election. Thanks for joining us from Canberra today.

ANDREW HASTIE: Pleasure, Mark. Thank you.

[ENDS]