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

TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW CLENNELL, NEWS24

Tuesday 27 October 2026

Topics: Prime Minister’s golf club grant; Fatima Payman; political violence; One Nation cartoons; Liberal Party. 

E&OE……………………………………

ANDREW CLENNELL: Joining me live now is Shadow Industry Minister and Shadow Minister for Sovereign Capability, Andrew Hastie. Thanks for your time.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good to be with you, Andrew.

ANDREW CLENNELL: The PM misled Parliament. Is this mea culpa good enough?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, there's a lot more to run on this. This clearly doesn't survive the pub test. The Marrickville Golf Club was the only golf club asked to participate in this program, his electoral staff had contact with the golf club, and now it's clear that the $6 million hasn't gone towards sewage. So, he's got questions to answer.

ANDREW CLENNELL: All you major parties do this, don't you? The old pork barrelling.

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, it doesn't survive the pub test, and we're going to keep asking the questions because we do think the Prime Minister has questions to answer.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Was that good enough, his response today?

ANDREW HASTIE: No, it wasn't.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Okay. What should he have said?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, he should have made it very clear exactly what the grant did. Instead, he deferred to a New South Wales state government press release, which, as you say, was an inadvertent acknowledgement that he had misled the Parliament.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think it was inadvertent?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, it seems that way. He was trying to get away with it, but we're going to keep pursuing this. We've still got Estimates, and we've got Question Time tomorrow and Thursday.

ANDREW CLENNELL: What do you make of Fatima Payman's spray over staff?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think there's two issues here. There's the issue of security, and if she has legitimate security concerns, she's right to raise them. But then there's also the issue of productivity. We'd all like to have more staff because there's a lot of constituents out there that we need to look after, but it's on her and it's on every senator and member to motivate their team, to work hard and to serve their constituents well. Getting more staff isn't the answer and she shouldn't be using this moment, I think, to request more staff.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Wow. Okay. It doesn't really feel like the temperature has turned down this week, does it?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think people approached yesterday with the right attitude. It was pretty sober in the Parliament. We reflected on Helen Haines and what it means, but it's business as usual. We're committed to our Westminster system of government, which is adversarial, and we're going to hold the government to account.

ANDREW CLENNELL: What do you make of the behaviour of James Ashby and One Nation in refusing an interview with Pauline Hanson on Politics Now today?

ANDREW HASTIE: I'm glad the Australian people are getting a sense of what they're like and the character of the leadership team at One Nation. If Pauline Hanson wants to be Prime Minister of this country, she's got to start fronting up and answering questions.

ANDREW CLENNELL: What do you think of James Ashby?

ANDREW HASTIE: I don't think much of him, but I'm sure that's mutual.

ANDREW CLENNELL: You told Andrew Bolt earlier this year a One Nation official called you in April and warned you of an online campaign to be launched against you. Can you confirm that was James Ashby and what did he say?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I'm not going to get into that discussion. I think I've dealt with that last month, in fact, and it's no point going over the past.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think there are some cartoons involving violence One Nation should take down, particularly politicians being hit by busses?

ANDREW HASTIE: I don't watch One Nation cartoons for pleasure or instruction, but I'm not in the business of censoring people. But the ones that you showed, I thought they were fairly violent, with all the stabbing and using vehicles to run people down.

ANDREW CLENNELL: One Nation's argument is there are plenty of times in Parliament MPs have talked about being thrown under a bus. What do you say to that?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, figuratively speaking, but making a cartoon about it is probably a different thing altogether.

ANDREW CLENNELL: There's a school of thought that attacking One Nation doesn't work for you because they're popular. What do you think of that?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think we're in a three-cornered contest. We've got to defeat the Albanese government, but we've also got to defeat One Nation. I want to come first on the ballot when people place their vote, whenever the election's held, and that means we've got to be prepared to argue the case. Now, you don't go around picking fights needlessly like James Ashby did with you, but certainly you've got to be prepared to push back when people come at you and One Nation have been coming at us for some time.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think there's any chance of a challenge to Angus Taylor in the final sitting week of Parliament this year? One week to go.

ANDREW HASTIE: No, I don't.

ANDREW CLENNELL: You won't be challenging?

ANDREW HASTIE: No, I won't be challenging. No.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think Angus Taylor will lead the Liberal Party to the election, or does he need to lift the primary vote to not face challenge from you and others?

ANDREW HASTIE: Angus Taylor will lead us to the next election. The primary vote is lifting if you go by the latest polling. It's been a big year. People are just angry. I'll tell you this story. So, Jonno Duniam and I are out for dinner on Sunday night in Canberra. Big puddle. It was raining. This bus driver crosses the lane, drives straight through the puddle and splashes us, just for giggles, I suppose. But people are just angry.

ANDREW CLENNELL: You got splashed deliberately?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah. People are just angry.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Did you freak out?

ANDREW HASTIE: No, we were just standing there wet.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Would you be happy with Home Affairs if Taylor decides to give that to you when Duniam retires shortly?

ANDREW HASTIE: I'll serve wherever Angus wants me to. It's a pleasure working for Angus. I'm happy to do Home Affairs.

ANDREW CLENNELL: So, there are no circumstances that you'd run for the Liberal leadership before the next election?

ANDREW HASTIE: Angus Taylor is our leader. He's leading us through a pretty tough year, and I think he's done pretty well. We're getting policy out. We've got $31 billion worth of on-budget savings. We're focused on the Australian people; we're not focused on ourselves. And leadership speculation only reminds the Australian people that we're not focused on them.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think you can shift like 10 per cent of One Nation voters? Research from the Labor Party shows that the votes a bit soft. People are seeing it as a protest at the moment. Do you think you can shift that as we get closer to an election campaign?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, that bus driver and a lot of people out there are just frustrated and angry.

ANDREW CLENNELL: One Nation are politicians. Why aren't they angry at them?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, they're masquerading as populists, but Pauline Hanson is a career politician. The point is, we can take that primary back off them, and we've got to be tough about it. It's a fight. It's a three-cornered contest. This assumption that somehow the two-party preferred system will just work for us at the election, and that we'll come through, is not good enough. We've actually got to compete, and we should be trying to win every single political contest that we have.

ANDREW CLENNELL: What's the disadvantage for them? How can you take them on? Is it that it's Pauline and not much behind her. I mean, behind her, you've got a bloke who sends text messages about journalists being dickheads.

ANDREW HASTIE: I think structurally they're weak. It's really Gina Rinehart's One Nation, and so Pauline Hanson doesn't have a whole lot of flexibility. It will be interesting to see how they position themselves on the domestic gas reservation, the European Free Trade Agreement. They don't have a lot of flexibility and Pauline Hanson runs the party as well, so we don't know who a successor will be. She hasn't declared whether she's even going to drop down to the House of Representatives. So, I think when the pressure builds, the political situation gets more dynamic, they crumble under the pressure. Whereas the Liberal Party – we're dynamic, we've got breadth, we've got depth of talent, and we organise around a common set of values, not personalities. That's the point of difference.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Andrew Hastie, thanks so much for your time.

ANDREW HASTIE: Thank you.

[ENDS]