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

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH MARK LEVY, 2GB

Thursday 28 August 2025

Topics: Iranian Attacks on Australia, Marles’ US visit, AUKUS, Net Zero. 

E&OE……………………………………

MARK LEVY: Andrew Hastie, good morning to you. 

ANDREW HASTIE: Good morning, Mark, great to be with you and your listeners. 

MARK LEVY: Well, mate, I'm looking forward to our chats on the morning show. But look, I think it's important we set some ground rules from day one. Now this won't be a walk in the park for you every fortnight. It's important for me to ask you the tough questions when need be.

ANDREW HASTIE: Absolutely.

MARK LEVY: So can we agree to that from day one?

ANDREW HASTIE: Absolutely. Happy to take all your questions. 

MARK LEVY: Good on you, mate. Well, look, prior to entering politics, you fought to protect the freedoms we enjoy in this country as a member of our Defence Force and as an SAS soldier. My first question relates to the news this week, and I want to know how it makes you feel knowing that you fought against these terror regimes like the IRGC. ASIO has now confirmed the terrorists have orchestrated attacks on our home soil. How does that make you feel, Andrew?

ANDREW HASTIE: Very angry. It's an attack on our sovereignty. It's an attack on the Australian people. But it's particularly worrying in the way that they are targeting Australians of Jewish faith and heritage. We've seen authoritarian regimes over the last decade use all sorts of underhanded tactics to undermine other countries. We saw in the UK, for example, the Russians attacking – indeed assassinating – people on UK soil. And now we have the Iranians targeting Jewish Australians – the synagogue in Melbourne, the cafe in Bondi. It's very worrying, and there's a high probability that they're also behind other attacks over the last two years, including an attack on Sydneysider, Alex Ryvchin.

MARK LEVY: Were you briefed on this before the government went public with the news this week? 

ANDREW HASTIE: No, I wasn't. I was briefed immediately after, but not before. 

MARK LEVY: Right. Because the Jewish groups and the Coalition have been warning about this for years. Yet the Albanese Government has refused to list the IRGC as a terrorist group. Why the refusal from Labor and why the reluctance when the evidence was already there, Andrew?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, Julian Leeser, the Member for Berowra in Sydney – great friend, also an Australian of Jewish faith and heritage – he was pushing for it for more than two years, and we called upon the government to list it 10 times in the last two years. But for some reason, they didn't want to, and it took ASIO, with a painstakingly detailed and forensic investigation, to stack it all up before they acted. Whereas I think it's very clear that Iran is no friend of Australia. They haven't been a friend for a long time. You remember that poor Australian, Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was taken prisoner by the Iranians, treated very poorly. These people aren't our friends at all. 

MARK LEVY: No, they're not. It is worth pointing out though, I mean, when you were the Chair of the Intelligence Committee, you had discussions while the Coalition was in government with other members, including Labor members, who were supportive of listing the Iranian regime as a terror group. Did you do enough personally, Andrew, back then to protect Australia from these terror regimes?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's a really good question, Mark. Yes, there were calls to list the IRGC back when I was the Chair of the Intelligence Committee, which was from 2017 through to late 2020. The government makes those decisions. The government makes the decision to amend the Criminal Code and then list the terrorist organisation and for whatever reason, the government did not want to, and in fact, we had briefs as to reason why, which I can't discuss here. But I do want to say things have changed a lot in the last 10 years. I mean, it was only 10 years ago – less than 10 years ago – that Julie Bishop, as Foreign Minister, did a joint press conference with the Iranian Foreign Minister on our soil. So things have come a long way in the last nine years, and I think this is a good decision by the Australian Government. I stand with the government, as does the rest of the Coalition, because we've got to put a line in the sand. If you conduct foreign interference, espionage or terror related activities, as the Iranian government has done, using the IRGC to sponsor criminal gangs here to do that, then you're out of the country. We'll frogmarch you out of the country, and that's why we've punted the ambassador.

MARK LEVY: It's important to get some clarity around this, because I know the government seized on it in question time yesterday. Did you take your concerns and your suggestion straight to the top to the Prime Minister?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I remember the discussions within the committee, and there's a process for all these sorts of things. We take briefings from intelligence agencies as well. So look, I'd have to go back through the record, but I was very, very much for listing the IRGC as a terrorist organisation, as were other Labor members as well at the time.

MARK LEVY: You can see, though, why the government is seizing on this. And you know, when you're in a position as the Chair of an intelligence committee and you've got evidence or intel to suggest that you really are forcefully behind the idea of listing this group as a terror organisation, you can understand why they're saying, well, why weren't you forceful in the way you sort of prosecuted that case to your then boss?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, look, again, these discussions were had more than five years ago. There were other equities at play there. Obviously, we had an Australian citizen who was being held captive by the Iranian regime. There are all sorts of things that governments have to consider. But it's very, very clear now that we have the Iranian regime conducting state sponsored terrorism in this country. It's a very fine line between firebombing a synagogue and actually killing people so they could have assassinated Jewish Australians. 

MARK LEVY: Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough, too. You touched on there the fact that, you know, there's speculation that the Iranians were potentially behind the attack on Alex Ryvchin's former home in Sydney. We've got New South Wales Police now reassessing the caravan of explosives in Dural. I've got a lot of my listeners writing to me, Andrew, saying, should we be looking over our shoulders? What's your view on the position we currently find ourselves in, and do you think that everyday Australians in their everyday lives need to be vigilant?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yes. We've heard for more than half a decade now that foreign interference and espionage is at an all-time high in this country at unprecedented levels, to quote the director general of ASIO, that exceeds that of the Cold War. So we have foreign intelligence agencies conducting foreign interference amongst our numerous diaspora groups here, including Iranian Australians. They're conducting espionage. They're stealing our state secrets, our commercial secrets. And as we've seen now with Iran, they're using violence to achieve geopolitical ends. So this is a new era in Australian history. That's why ASIO is so important. That's why it's so important to back in our law enforcement, the AFP, and our state police as well. And that's why my goal has always been, as a parliamentarian, having come from a position where I had to risk my life along with other Australians, I always want to make sure that our legislative framework backs in the operators on the ground to make the best calls to protect Australians.

MARK LEVY: You know what else is important, Andrew, is the relationships we have with Israel and the United States. They are crucial when you factor in the threat of, not only Iran and what's happening in the Middle East, the potential interference of the Chinese. So I guess my question to you, Andrew, is has this government allowed us to be vulnerable to these attacks, both domestically and internationally?

ANDREW HASTIE: I don't think our government is strong on national security. We're seeing that with the way they're running our Defence budget down. They haven't accounted for AUKUS, so we're cannibalising combat power in the Army, Navy and Air Force to fund AUKUS, and we're not seeing any good results on AUKUS. And then, of course, they've taken our relationship with Israel to an all-time low, the only functioning democracy in the Middle East, and we're considered a fair-weather friend. And I think this is because of the lack of moral leadership from the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. So these have these things have consequences, absolutely.

MARK LEVY: I sort of tend to fly off the handle from time to time, Andrew, in case you haven't heard me on this program, I want to turn to Richard Marles. Now, he's over in the United States at the moment. He was supposed to meet with his counterpart, Pete Hegseth. But it wasn't a meeting, it was a quick g'day in the corridors of the White House. Do the Americans have any time for this government we have at the moment? Because when we've got Richard Marles trying to sell us a story that he's going to meet with his counterpart in the United States, and the Pentagon comes out and says, well, no, there wasn't a meeting, it was just a chance encounter in the corridors of the White House, I think Australians are entitled to ask questions, are they not?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, I don't think this was planned. I don't think any of the legwork was done. I think it looks desperate. I'm glad that he was able to have some face time with Vice President, JD Vance, the Secretary of State, Rubio, and others. Those two men are contenders to replace Donald Trump in a couple of years as the next President of the United States. So I think that was important. But if you look at the photographs, particularly the one where he is in a photograph with Pete Hegseth, who's the Secretary of Defense, Richard Marles looks very much in the inferior position and Pete Hegseth looks in the dominant position. And I think this signals how desperate this government is. They're not willing to invest in AUKUS. Things are on the rocks. AUKUS could well be cancelled by the Americans – we don't know, there's a review on. And then to fly over suddenly, desperately, I think it signals that there is deep concern within Labor ranks about the future of the program.

MARK LEVY: What's your view on AUKUS, do you hold those same fears?

ANDREW HASTIE: I do hold those same fears. My view is that the government has wasted three years. They should have invested more in our Defence Force. Our Defence expenditure is not high enough. We committed to three per cent within the decade. The Americans have called upon Europe to go to five per cent, they called on us to go to 3.5 per cent. If we're serious about this big defence project, which is AUKUS – it's a multi-generational, nation building project – we need to spend the money. Otherwise, the Americans are just going to think, well, you're not serious, and we're not going to hand over the crown jewels of the US Navy to someone who isn't serious. 

MARK LEVY: Mind you, it's already cost us over a billion dollars, hasn't it? We've already handed over cash. 

ANDREW HASTIE: Oh, it's $10 billion. We've given $5 billion to the US industrial base, $4 billion, I think, to the UK industrial base, and we're behind. We're not hitting the objectives along the timeline. In two years’ time, we're going to have US submarines alongside at HMAS Stirling on the west coast of Australia, up to three to nine thousand Americans living in our community. I think it's really important that we get a good deal out of this. If the Americans are going to have a base on our west coast, then we need to have some guarantees about our future submarine program. But in order to get guarantees, we've got to show good faith, and we've got to invest too, and that's what this government's failing to do.

MARK LEVY: All the while, we've got Virgin Australia pilots reporting to Air Services of live fire drills happening off the coast. Anyway, we've discussed that at length in the past. Before you go, you've already made clear your ambitions to one day lead the Liberal Party, and my listeners honestly believe that you're a future prime minister of this country. But my question to you, though, relates to the rebuild of the Liberal Party. Now Sussan Ley is still mulling over a position on net zero, which apparently came to a head this week in the party room. How much longer, Andrew, can the Coalition wait to announce their position, and how do you argue against the government's plan when you've failed to reach an agreement within your own party? What's your response to that?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I think we need to come to some policy positions, and that'll happen over the next few months. 

MARK LEVY: Can you wait that long?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, we've got to go through a process, and the process is being overseen by our leader, Sussan Ley, and also the Energy Shadow Minister, Dan Tehan. My belief is there's a massive opportunity to go head-to-head with Labor on this. I think the Australian people are being fleeced. I think it's completely hypocritical of this government to talk about climate goals, and at the same time export 25 per cent of the world's coal and 20 per cent of the world's gas to China, India, Korea, Japan, who are growing in their emissions, and at the same time deny cheap baseload power to the Australian people. Seniors can't keep the heaters on during this winter, businesses are closing, and family budgets are being stretched. I think it's completely unfair. Our goal as a country should be to be sovereign, secure, competitive and prosperous, and you can only be those things if you have cheap, reliable energy.

MARK LEVY: You know how I said I was going to challenge you on a couple of things? I'm going to have to challenge you on something here, Andrew.

ANDREW HASTIE: Go for it. 

MARK LEVY: Is there a deadline on this? I keep hearing Sussan Ley and other members of the Coalition say, we're going through a process. What's the deadline on that process?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I said the other day that I hope it's resolved in the next couple of months, so that we go into Christmas time with a clear position on energy.

MARK LEVY: Alright, let me ask you this way. If Andrew Hastie was the leader of the Liberal Party, the leader of the Coalition, the Opposition Leader, would you have formed a position on net zero as of today, the 28th day of August, 2025?

ANDREW HASTIE: Mark, all I can say is that my position on net zero is very clear. I think it's a massive transfer of wealth from some of the poorest Australians to some of the richest Australians. I think we're looking after other countries with our fossil fuels and denying them to the Australian people. I think that energy is only going to get more expensive over the coming years, and I think our first priority should be to build a sovereign, secure, competitive and prosperous Australia. As long as we're accepting the terms put down by Labor, which is that all our energy goals should be about reducing emissions, we're going to go backwards. So I'm ready for the fight. I've made my position clear, but this is a process that's being overseen by Sussan Ley, and I've got to respect her leadership in that one.

MARK LEVY: Fair enough, too. Before you go, how was the Midwinter Ball last night? Any atrocities to report?

ANDREW HASTIE: It was pretty low key, actually.

MARK LEVY: Well, that's boring!

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, mate, I've got a dinner suit over here, which I got sized when I was still in the SAS. And last night, I was worried about the button on my trousers. I had to really suck in the old belly and get them on. But I got it on, but I was glad to get the pants off, because I tell you, it was a bit tight.

MARK LEVY: That could be misconstrued another way but we might leave it there. Andrew, mate, I'm already getting so much feedback coming through saying, how good's this bloke so keep up the good work in Canberra and looking forward to our chats every couple of weeks here on the 2GB morning show,

ANDREW HASTIE: A pleasure. Thanks Mark.

[ENDS]