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

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH MICAEL McLAREN, 2GB

Friday 14 August 2026

Topics: Tomago bailout; the Coalition’s Plan.

E&OE……………………………………

MICHAEL McLAREN: Andrew, always a pleasure to speak. Thank you for your time.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good afternoon, Michael. Great to chat to you.

MICHAEL McLAREN: Angus Taylor yesterday was pretty blunt about all of this, basically making the point that this is a direct reflection of the net zero policy. Do you agree with that?

ANDREW HASTIE: I do. Labor is driving an accelerated collapse of the Australian industrial base, and the Tomago bailout is just a symptom. Labor thinks they can take credit for bailing out the Tomago smelter, but that's a bit like a doctor treating a patient they've made sick. And what's making the Australian industrial base sick, is Labor's commitment to radical climate targets under their net zero energy policy. It's not just Tomago – this is happening across the country. I've got to tell you, Michael, I've spoken to a lot of industrial stakeholders over the last few weeks, and energy is the biggest driver of cost for them, and that's the reason why we are no longer internationally competitive as a nation.

MICHAEL McLAREN: See, Tomago is the biggest headline, but it's only a headline in a very big tome that keeps having chapters every week, it seems. Andrew, as you know, we've got Port Pirie, Bell Bay, we've had the situation up at Mount Isa, there's obviously Whyalla, now Tomago. I mean, the list goes on and on – big energy users, big old industrial facilities. The emphasis is old – lot of them are old – but nonetheless, they are all being propped up by taxpayers because the private owners say we can't go on. Are taxpayer is getting value for money, putting $2.5 billion into Tomago?

ANDREW HASTIE: They're not getting value for money now. I want to make it very clear that we need the Tomago smelter. It's absolutely critical. It's sovereign capability, and I'm also very glad for those 1,000 workers and their families who depend upon the jobs there. But in the end, if we're going to get this country going in the right direction, we've got to get out of net zero, and we've got to deliver cheaper base load power. We've got to use the coal, the gas, the uranium that we have an abundance of, and become an energy superpower – that's the only way we revive Australia's economy because energy is central to it. At the moment, the great irony is that if these smelters head overseas, they normally end up in places like China and elsewhere, who don't follow net zero targets, who actually burn our coal, burn our gas, and they're the ones getting richer while we get poorer. So this is radical ideology driving the Labor government, and it's killing our industry, and it's got to stop.

MICHAEL McLAREN: Some people would know, the Tomago smelter was built basically adjacent to the old – I say old, it's about to shut down – Bayswater coal-fired power station. So there was a symbiosis there – the Hunter Valley, some of the best rich coal steam in the world, Bayswater burning it, you've got Tomago, you used to have BHP at Newcastle – all supplied by the original source of energy. But as I said, Bayswater shutting down. Around the nation, all the coal-fired power stations are shutting down. They either can't get additional capital to continue their maintenance, or the Australian banks won't lend to anyone new who wants to invest in coal, even if it's a Healy facility. And you've got government, obviously, with net zero, which basically sends the signal to the market not to bother investing in the first place anyway. They were worried - Rio Tinto and the bosses were worried – that they simply couldn't get a power deal that, in any way, went close to matching what they were paying for energy under Bayswater. So, is that an admission that the renewable energy is not as cheap as we're being told?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right. The Albanese Government has created a massive distortion with our energy market by preferencing renewables, by subsidising renewables, and a lot of these wind and solar projects that are being financed – they're not economical. The only reason why they're being financed is because they're being backed by the Australian taxpayer. Now, if we were energy agnostic, if we had a level playing field, then the cheapest source of energy in this country would be coal and gas, followed quickly by nuclear power, if we actually used our uranium to get it going. Chris Bowen admitted as much yesterday when he agreed with Tomago that renewable energy was not coming online with sufficient speed and reliability to power the smelter. So, we've even had it out of the energy minister's mouth himself. This is basic economics – you don't need a PhD in energy to understand this stuff. We have an abundance of coal, we have an abundance of gas. We ship it to China, we ship it to Korea, we ship it to Japan – they burn it off – and we're denying it to the Australian people. Instead, we're importing solar and wind from China at scale, and we're paying through the nose for it. What that means is that Labor's industrial policy is not a future made in Australia, as they like to say – it's actually a future made in China, and that makes us weaker as a country.

MICHAEL McLAREN: When it comes to Whyalla and now Tomago, there's this obsession that it has to be green, and that's ideological – there's no doubt about it, that's ideological. But what we saw with the nickel industry before government really got involved, we had big private players think that there's this voracious appetite apparently out there for green nickel. Let's go in your state of WA and elsewhere, let's go and flip these facilities to become green nickel producers at great expense, great investment. Big plants were developed, and then they took the product to market, only to realise that no one was willing to pay the premium for it. They were still more than happy to talk about climate change and saving the planet out of the right-hand side of their mouth, but when it came to getting contracts and deals over the line, they'd go and buy it from filthy facilities in Indonesia, owned by often the Chinese, burning Indonesian inferior quality coal. And so all of these facilities, and all the jobs that we're going to go with green nickel, are gone – they don't exist. We're talking now about green aluminium and green steel. I'd love to have green aluminium and green steel – that'd be a beautiful thing – but do you think in the real world there is that voracious appetite and the capital out there willing to pay the premium for it?

ANDREW HASTIE: No, and the only reason why people do is because they're backed by government. There's a lot of green grift. There are people out there, particularly in the renewal sector, who are enjoying largesse from the Australian people via the Albanese Government – it's as simple as that. If we cut the green grift, if we get back to basics and we ask ourselves: what's our natural advantage as a country? We would see very clearly, it's in coal and gas. Why else would all these big economies in Asia be buying those two commodities from us? India, of course, gets a lot of our coal as well. Michael, as I said, this is pretty basic stuff, but we have politicians who are deeply ideological, they're distorting the energy market, and its costing mums and dads, workers, businesses, and now heavy industry a lot of money.

MICHAEL McLAREN: Can I just take it a little broader, Andrew? We're talking here about sovereign capability. This is your big thing, and I'm glad you're talking about it. As I think we've said before together, probably your military background helps inform your understanding of why this is an essential part. We don't just do free market economics because the textbook says it's done that way – occasionally, intervention is required, and we've got to be realistic. The Prime Minister yesterday was when he said, the Canadians and the Chinese and all these others, they're propping up their domestic aluminium facilities with government support, one way or the other – we're going to do the same, otherwise it'll be the car industry all over again. I think that's true. The question for the taxpayer, though, is: at what point do you stop propping it up? Are there industries that we can let go? Is aluminium the same as steel as far as sovereign capability is concerned, or could we import Canadian aluminium and say, we just can't compete with scale? It doesn't seem well defined. We seem to be throwing money at big industries – unionised industries – but whether we need to or not, there doesn't seem to be a very sensible codified textbook to follow here.

ANDREW HASTIE: Sure, and I think the lesson of the last decade, particularly with the war in Ukraine, is that you've got to be able to make things in your country. You don't have to make everything – that's when you have friends and trading partners – but you've got to be able to make stuff. We don't even make glass anymore – Oceania Glass closed down not long ago. We don't make glass anymore, so we're completely dependent upon China largely now for the importation of our glass. I think that's a vulnerability. The thing is, if we become a country that only imports complex manufactured goods, guess what happens in a strategic crisis or a war? We're at the mercy of other countries, and I just don't think that's where we want to be. So sovereign capability is critical. I think aluminium is really important, given it's everywhere you look, steel and there are other areas as well that we could probably identify and talk more about. But certainly, I'm a patriot – I love my country, I want it to be secure – and there's just a bare minimum level of advanced manufacturing capability and heavy industry that you need to be a secure and prosperous country. And so, these people who just think you can offshore it all and rely upon free trade, and pretend the Chinese Communist Party aren’t going to have some sort of impact are just fanciful – they're not living with the lessons of history at the front of their mind.

MICHAEL McLAREN: I agree with that. I think what we need is that list, as it were, though. We need either the Government or the Opposition, or both, to come up with this list of the industries and the players that are strategic. Now I know you put a list out like that, that does invite grift from the private operators – we know how the world works – but nonetheless, a list of the industries that the country can't survive without. And then, as a nation, we need to work out how we make them at least viable – that goes to energy. Just quickly, finally, on this broader issue. We've got the government again, through ideology, basically gifting the Australian domestic car market to Chinese manufacturers. We don't make cars, and I don't think we ever will again, but our allies do. But it seems they're not really making the cars that Chris Bowen wants us to drive. What sort of message are we sending out there when we've got all of these novated lease arrangements and tax arrangements in place, which is basically delivering the domestic market to BYD, Geely and these others, and taking share away from Toyota, from Honda, from General Motors, from Volkswagen, from Mercedes, from BMW, all from allied economies. I mean, what are we doing?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's a really good question, and I think the Prime Minister needs to answer that. The net zero economy that they've created and legislated includes a car and Ute tax. So SUVs and Utes have been hit with a carbon tax, and what that does is punish traditional makers like Toyota, Mitsubishi, Ford, and other cars that we've imported and enjoyed, and have in fact been the backbone of our diesel economy. We still run on diesel; that's not going to change any time soon. But what we've seen under the Labor government is giving preferential treatment to cars manufactured in China, particularly electric vehicles. There's a bigger geopolitical play here, and our government has some questions to answer around why they've made certain decisions. But I just want to let your listeners know that we do have a plan to put Australians first. I mean, that's the bottom line, right? It's to cut taxes – to kill off all Labor's toxic taxes. To get cheaper power, get out of net zero, and bring on that cheap baseload power – coal, gas, uranium, and give Australian families, businesses, and industry more of their money back. We're going to start a sovereign wealth fund. We're going to make sure that we can build infrastructure that's important to the nation: roads, ports, water assets, power plants, using profits from our gas and resources sector. So we've got a plan. Angus is selling that. People need to hear it, and we've got a lot more talking to do.

MICHAEL McLAREN: Does the plan just finally include $2.5 million dollars per worker at Tomago over 10 years? It's a lot of money per job.

ANDREW HASTIE: It doesn't. We're going to give cheap energy back to the Australian people. We're going to put them first. We're going to get out of this ideological straitjacket that is net zero, and we're going to bring on cheap coal, gas, and uranium, and power our economy. And I didn't even mention immigration, but we're cutting immigration, and we're going to peg it to housing completions. Again, people feel like we've lost control of our borders – we will restore control of our borders.

MICHAEL McLAREN: It's essential. Andrew, good to speak. Thank you. We'll speak again soon.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thank you, Michael.

[ENDS]