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

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH NADIA MITSOPOULOS, ABC RADIO WA MORNINGS

Thursday 8 October 2026

Topics: The Coalition’s immigration policy; Land Forces; artificial intelligence.

E&OE……………………………………

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Now Andrew Hastie is the Federal Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability. He is here in the studio, and I'm pleased to say he is very happy to take your calls this morning. So, if you want to have a chat to him direct and ask him your own question, please do – 1300 22 1025. Lovely to see you in the studio, Andrew Hastie. Good morning.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good morning, Nadia. Good to be with you.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Now, a year ago, you warned that immigration was a hot button issue – probably the number one issue in Australia – and now your party is committed to the biggest cut to immigration in Australian history, reducing it by two thirds in two years, and then slight increases to net overseas migration after that. Has your party neglected to consider the impact this may have on the economy?

ANDREW HASTIE: No. The reason why we've taken so long to get our immigration policy out to the public is because we've done extensive work on it. There are fiscal, economic, and human impacts to immigration policy, and we want to get all those things right. Now, there are always trade-offs when you do policy, and we wanted to make sure that our policy was balanced. It cut numbers, it also raised the standards for entry into our country. But in the end, it's got to work for the Australian people, and we're responding to what we're hearing every single day that the numbers have been too high and the standards have been too low, and that's why I resigned from the front bench last year because I felt very strongly about this on immigration, and I think this policy has landed in the right spot. We're not chasing one nation down the rabbit hole, and we're certainly taking people more seriously than Labor have. Our cuts are going to work for our economy and for our people.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: When you look at your policy, though, there's no mention of the impact on the labour market. What would the impact be?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, we've worked very closely with the Parliamentary Budgetary Office in modelling this and we are yet to get the government's Mid-Year Economic Fiscal Outlook. So, in terms of the detailed economic cost, we can't actually model that because we don't have the government's figures. But this is about reducing historically high numbers under Labor. After the pandemic, the net overseas migration figure got as high as 550,000. It's around 300,000 now. We want to get year one down to 100,000, year two: 100,000, year three: 130,000, and then year four: 160,000, reducing the overall stock of temporary visas by about 650,000 over four years.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: But then, if you cut net overseas migration, as you promised to do every year for those two years, what happens if the labour market remains at its current state, where you've got 325,000 job vacancies and unemployment rate sitting at 4.6 per cent?

ANDREW HASTIE: We're investing in skilled migration, so we want more skilled migrants in our country. What we're going to do is we're going to abolish Temporary Graduate Visas. Now, Temporary Graduate Visa holders pay about a third less tax than a skilled migrant, and so we want to allow more people to apply offshore to bring the skills that we need, whether it's aged care, construction, we've got a new AUKUS visa that we're introducing. There's a whole number of areas in our economy – tourism, hospitality, particularly in the regions –

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: You've got to go find these people, don't you?

ANDREW HASTIE: – Well, they've been finding us. Our numbers are huge under this Labor government. It's about getting the balance right. We want to allow the housing market to catch up – we're 400,000 homes short at present. I've got homeless people living in my electorate down in Mandurah, living on the beach in their car. Kids in caravan parks, in tents. It's not good enough. Our hospitals have historically high ramping hours, and it's very hard to see a GP. So, this is about letting the country and the infrastructure catch up but it's also about standards as well. And I think it's entirely fair, if Australia is our home, then we have standards for entry. It's not a hotel; it's a home, and that's fundamentally what is underpinning our migration policy.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And there is a lot of concern, because you are targeting overseas students, that that could kill the international education industry, which is our fourth biggest industry. You know, threats that universities would close and that overseas students will go somewhere else.

ANDREW HASTIE: That is ridiculous from the universities if people are saying that. They get $21 billion of taxpayer investment every single year. What we do know is over the last 10 years, we've seen an increase in foreign students by about 62 per cent and an increase in domestic students by about four per cent. Universities have become visa mills, and they're making big, big dollars. So, this is big business – not so much the universities or the academics talking – it's big business protecting their own book. We think that the universities should be educating the next generation of Australians and doing national research in the interests of our country - that's the whole purpose of the university sector. And it's about reminding them that in the end, they serve the Australian people too. They enjoy a lot of support from the taxpayer, $21 billion dollars per year, and they're not a business model for visas.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: My guest is Andrew Hastie, he is the Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability. He's also happy to take your calls. A really good opportunity. It's rare that we get him in the studio, and we'll try to make sure we get him in a little bit more often.

ANDREW HASTIE: I'd love to be back more.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: We'll absolutely invite you back. But if you want to have a chat to him, a really good opportunity – 1300 22 1025. A couple of text messages coming in. This one from Rusty in Wagin, who says, “The backpacker visa. Who's going to work on the farms, picking fruit, seeding, and harvesting? These workers pretty much spend what they earn. It's going to cripple the agriculture sector.”

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, we're actually upholding the working holiday visa. We're getting rid of Labor's ballot, and we're also increasing the cost for having a working holiday visa and staying in the cities. We're actually exempting the regions. We want those Working Holiday Maker visa holders to go out into the regions, pick fruit. I was at Williams Hotel on the way back from Bluff Knoll last week. Everyone who served me in that place were Irish, and they were here on working holiday visas, and they were great. So, we absolutely need these people in our regions.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: We just won't have as many of them under your policy.

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, no. Actually, we're abolishing the Temporary Graduate Visas, and we're clearing the backlog of Bridging Visas. We're stopping visa hopping; we're not actually attacking the regional programs. We're very mindful of the tourism and the hospitality and the aged care and the health care impacts. We're getting it right, that's why we've actually done the work. Not like One Nation who just popped off on social media and then disappeared. We've done the work. This is a very comprehensive body of policy work.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Have you got an apology from One Nation yet for calling you a traitor?

ANDREW HASTIE: No. Well, Barnaby Joyce did. But no, not from Pauline Hanson.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: You don't expect one?

ANDREW HASTIE: I'm not waiting. I'm in the business of winning.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Land Forces. You'll be heading out to that expo. What are the biggest challenges for the Army – an Army you used to be a member of?

ANDREW HASTIE: I love the Army, and I'm actually thinking about the soldier who died in Darwin a couple of days ago, and his partner and his young family. Look, the challenge for the Australian Army is to adapt to a world that has changed very much so over the last five years. We've had the war in Ukraine, we've had the war in Gaza, we've had the war in Iran, we've seen the rise of autonomous drones, and everything has changed. Afghanistan from 10 years ago, back in 2013 – if we'd had drones back then, it would have been a totally different war –

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: A quicker war?

ANDREW HASTIE: – Well, most of the missions I flew on in 2013 were on a helicopter. If you had drones attacking the base and destroy your helicopter fleet, you wouldn't be able to fly cargo planes in. It would have been very, very different. And so, the challenge for the Australian Army is to adapt to autonomous warfare and work out what that means for the way we design our future force, the equipment that we have, the sort of people that we're selecting. There's the classic view of the Anzac being a tough soldier who can carry large amounts of equipment over long distances, which is what you have to do in the SAS. But we also need people who are very good at artificial intelligence, drone warfare, quantum computing. There's a lot of specialist skills now that I think the ADF has to look very closely at.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Recruitment's been difficult, though, hasn't it? Because there's been confidence eroded. We have the case of Ben Robert Smith – he's up on war crimes charges. There's been very serious allegations that the army is taking seriously, but do you think confidence has been eroded, trust has been eroded?

ANDREW HASTIE: They're important issues, but I don't think that's why confidence has been eroded. I think under the Labor government, we've seen massive cuts to Defence, and now you've got the Defence Minister, Richard Marles, wanting to sell off prize Defence real estate across the country, including Irwin Barracks here at Karrakatta. Now, one of the things historically Australia has always done, whether it was World War One or World War Two, is that we've been able to recruit from our cities. Our capital cities stepped up, and people joined up to protect Australia during those wars.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: He reckons we don't need those; they'll go to Guildford.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's crazy. We've got a beautiful base, a lot of land at Karrakatta, right next to the SAS. We need a presence from the Army in the urban areas of our country, whether it's Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane. We need Reserves, and I think one of the ways that we can restore confidence and increase recruitment is to invest in our Reserve Force. We've got the 10th Light Horse here in Perth – amazing. I was the Assistant Minister for Defence back in 2021 when we re-raised that regiment. Historic. I was down at the Anzac Centre in Albany, reading about the Nek and the 10th Light Horse. It's incredible history, and that's open to young Australians to join. It should stay where it is at Irwin Barracks.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: There is concern, and there's been a lot of talk about Land Forces, and not everyone agrees with it, and showcasing weapons of war. But it is –

ANDREW HASTIE: Wars happen. You've got to be able to fight and win.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And on that point, there are concerns about the regional security threats and if they are overplayed, particularly when we talk about China.

ANDREW HASTIE: China is undergoing the biggest peacetime military build-up since the end of the Second World War, they are growing. But it's not just China. It's Iran. It's Russia. I think what we've enjoyed over the last 80 years is the peace dividend post-World War II, where we've had the United States pretty much underwriting world peace. They've got I think it's 11 carrier groups, they've had that presence, and now they're getting challenged. And what we're seeing is a move from strategic order to a strategic disorder, which is why we've seen war in the Middle East, whether it's in Gaza or Iran; we've seen war in Europe with the invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin and Russia. And then, of course, there's this big question mark around Taiwan. What will President Xi Jinping do about Taiwan?

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And we're vulnerable.

ANDREW HASTIE: We are vulnerable. The best way to preserve peace is actually to be strong. Weakness is provocative. If you allow people to push you around, they'll push you around. I mean, it's basic schoolyard stuff. You don't have to have a PhD in strategy to understand this. And so my view is that we need a strong Defence Force. We need to be ready. And by being strong and by being ready, people will think twice about taking us on.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: I've got quite a few people that want to talk to you, so let's go to some questions from listeners – 1300 22 1025. Herb, good morning. What's your question?

CALLER: Oh, good morning. My question is about artificial intelligence and how do we make it human-friendly so that incorporated into its training and training of the trainers IS respect for life and looking after conservation matters? Because humans do best where the environment is properly cared for.

ANDREW HASTIE: Herb, great question. AI, in the end, is a tool, and we put a lot of our biases and prejudices into AI. I think it's really important that Australia builds its own sovereign capability, which is why I've been arguing the case for investment in Australia and having AI operate under our laws. At the moment, we're tethered to the United States by a submarine cable. We don't have a sovereign capability. And if we have a sovereign capability, we can incorporate some of those things that you've talked about - conservation, respect for life, and the values that define us as a nation.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Well, you're on a parliamentary committee that's inquiring into artificial intelligence. You had OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman admitting he wasn't aware that one of his models had actually managed to access a Medicare data portal. Did he adequately explain what happened here? And thank you for your question, Herb, it's very topical.

ANDREW HASTIE: It is very topical. I spent the last two days in Sydney with the Joint Select Committee for AI. I was able to ask OpenAI a couple of questions as well as Anthropic. In the end, I want investment from those companies in Australia. At the moment, they're operating in the United States, and if we have them here, if the Albanese government and this committee is able to kind of strike a settlement whereby the Australian national interest is served – we have AI companies operating under our laws and in our interests – that will be a benefit to all. In the end, AI is here, and it's not going anywhere. The question for us is: Do we become a price maker or a price taker? And I think it's always best to be a price maker. We have an abundance of land, an abundance of energy, an abundance of talent. After the war in the Middle East, OpenAI was going to set up a massive AI campus, I think it was in the UAE. They're now looking for somewhere else because guess what? We don't have a lot of wars down here – hopefully not in the future anyway. But rule of law, democratic accountability, and we have a close relationship with the United States through Five Eyes. So, I think we've got to make this work for us. We've got to have our own AI on our own red Earth.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Does it need to slow down?

ANDREW HASTIE: If you read the CEO of Anthropic's latest essay called "We Must Pace the Frontier" – the frontier is the forward leading edge of AI development. There are only two frontier labs in the world – that's Anthropic and OpenAI. We talk about hyperscalers – Google, Meta, Amazon – but it's the frontier labs that are pushing the forward edge. I'd encourage your listeners to read that essay; they can get it online. He basically makes the argument that these big AI frontier labs need third parties to make sure that they're doing the right thing, and where there are risks identified that they slow down. But in the end, we are in a global race. China is the other competitor, and I think I'd like to see the US maintain the edge here.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Let's go to Lindsay, who's been waiting patiently. What's your question?

CALLER: Good morning. Yes, I was wondering what the policy is in your party regarding Net Zero and trying to rein that the stupidity of it, and on the same token, the hypocrisy that we've got at the moment of trying to get to Net Zero when we're selling coal overseas?

ANDREW HASTIE: Lindsay, great question. In November last year, the Coalition committed to dumping Net Zero, and we think that energy security should be our primary objective, along with delivering the cheapest possible power to families, to businesses, and to industry. It's in the national interest. You're absolutely right, we sell coal and gas to the world's biggest and fastest growing emitters in China, in India, in Japan, in Korea, and other countries in between, and I think that the Australian people should also have the option to use our own resources.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: But the environment matters too.

ANDREW HASTIE: It does, and we produce about one-point-one per cent of the world's emissions. So, really, those who are campaigning for Net Zero, they should be on the phone to China, to the United States – although the US's emissions are coming down since they've invested in gas – Russia. There's a lot of other countries which are burning off our coal and gas and contributing to global emissions. So, those who are really committed to Net Zero, I say to them: Okay, are you also calling for the abolition of Australian heavy industry? Are you calling for the abolition of coal and gas exports, iron ore exports? Because if you're really committed to Zet Zero, you'll be basically saying let's go back to the Stone Age and shut down a lot of those things which underwrite our healthcare and our aged care with the revenue generated from tax receipts.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Well, Tony's got a question. I think it's about a High Court ruling yesterday. G'day, Tony.

CALLER: Yeah, hello. Hello, Andrew. Well, being a senior Liberal, I suppose I'm a little bit frightened of the last answer that you just gave. That you know we just keep charging ahead exporting. We're the second greatest exporter of coal in the world, and the High Court decision said that we should accept some responsibility for the consequence of that. How do you see the Liberal Party's perception of that decision, or would you just sweep it under the carpet?

ANDREW HASTIE: Tony, I got back late last night from Sydney, I haven't had a chance to read the High Court's decision, and out of respect for the judiciary, I'm not going to comment without knowing the full facts and their ruling. Suffice to say, my general view is that the rest of the world is investing in oil, gas, coal, and nuclear because there is a technological and an artificial intelligence race. Australia is falling behind, and Australians are becoming poorer as well, which is why we've got to get out of Net Zero, repeal all this green grift that Labor has put on our statute books, and start delivering cheaper power bills for Australians.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Just on that – thank you – that High Court ruling found that planning authorities are required to consider local climate change effects when approving fossil fuel projects, and that was over the expansion of a coal mine.

ANDREW HASTIE: Sure, and fair enough.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: And there's a lot of debate as to what precedent that will set, I think so we'll have to wait and see.

ANDREW HASTIE: And look, Tony, I'm not an ideologue. In the end, I love my country. I want it to be prosperous. I want it to be secure. There are always trade-offs in policy. My issue with a lot of the Net Zero climate zealotry is that they deal completely in ideological terms. And in the end, we need to power our grid. We need to power our economy. I don't want seniors to have to turn off their heaters during winter or their air conditioners during summer because they can't afford their power bills. It's unacceptable where we're at as a country, right now.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Thank you very much for your question, Tony. I'm going to finish for now. I've got to say, for those that are going to miss out – I can see there's a lot of calls coming through – we'll get Andrew back in before the end of the year, I promise you.

ANDREW HASTIE: Do you have someone who's got a real issue with me?

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: What do you mean a real issue?

ANDREW HASTIE: As in, who wants to have a go?

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Well, I don't know. They're asking you legitimate questions. Andy has got a question about immigration. Hello, Andy.

CALLER: G'day. Thank you for taking my call. Andrew, I love your patriotism, by the way. My question is around the policy that you guys have just released regarding immigration. Someone who, obviously, not in government, but looking at the numbers purely, I think it was 290,000 in the last figures from Labor, and you're proposing 100,000. That's essentially 190,000. Who exactly are going to be cut off?

ANDREW HASTIE: Sure. The Temporary Graduate Visas, we're abolishing that as a visa class, because what happens is people graduate from university and they go on to a Temporary Graduate Visa. We want those people to go offshore and then apply for a place as a skilled migrant, and then be tied to a specific industry, whether it's aged care, healthcare, construction, engineering – whatever it might be – rather than sitting on a Temporary Graduate Visa and then basically being on the pathway to permanent residency and citizenship. In the end, universities are not a visa mill; they're designed for education, and so we want to repurpose the visa system to deliver less of that and more skilled migrants.

NADIA MITSOPOULOS: Alright, we'll leave it there. It's been a busy morning. Andrew Hastie, lovely to have you in the studio. Let's get you back.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks, Nadia.

[ENDS]