Interview: Patricia Karvelas, ABC Afternoon Briefing

June 29, 2026

THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND SOVEREIGN CAPABILITY
 FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING
 
TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEW WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS, AFTERNOON BRIEFING
 
Monday 29 June 2026
 
Topics: One Nation, preference deals, Liberal Party, Multiculturalism, Vanuatu agreement.
 
E&OE……………………………………
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Shadow Industry Minister Andrew Hastie sent out an email to his supporters on Friday, setting out terms of engagement with One Nation. He told his mailing list he's ready for war with One Nation, and that talk of preference deals was a sign of weakness. He's my guest this afternoon. Andrew Hastie, welcome.
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks, PK.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: You say they've declared war on you. If they want war, they've got war. What does war look like?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Well, politics is a contest of ideas, and we want to win the next election. And One Nation is running a pretty aggressive campaign against some of us, including myself. And my view is that politics is a contest, and we're not going to tap the mat. We're going to fight hard to win the next election on our own terms, and that was the message I put out on Friday.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: It certainly was, but you talked in pretty dramatic language. War means—we know what war means. Obviously, you don't literally mean war, but you do mean that you want to take them on. Do you mean ideologically as well—ideas beyond just contests in seats?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah. I think there are definite points of difference, and we saw that with the National Press Club speech delivered a few weeks ago by Pauline Hanson. But we've got eighty-two years of political capital in the Liberal Party. We're not just going to vacate the space and give up, as some people are suggesting we should. And so, my message was to people out there, there is still very much—there is a lot of fight left in the Liberal Party. We're not going to vacate the space. We're not going to tap the mat and give up.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: And on that idea of what tapping the mat looks like, carving up seats, all of these ideas that have been framed, how dangerous have they been for the Liberal Party?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Well, preference deals are normally done in the lead-up to an election, maybe eight weeks out, and talking about it eighteen months away from a possible election—let's just say the Prime Minister went late next year—I think it signals weakness. I think it signals a lack of confidence in our values, in our party, in our policies, and weakness is provocative and it's contagious as well. People are drawn to strength, and so I think we should be sending a strong message that we are committed to winning government, delivering centre-right government for the Australian people.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: You said centre-right. Do you think One Nation is hard right?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I don't want to define One Nation, they're a bit all over the place. A lot of it is motivated by grievance, a lot of One Nation voters have legitimate concerns about the country, immigration is one, energy policy is another. They are legitimate, and we've addressed those in our policy. We've now got to sell them to the Australian people and win those One Nation voters back. I don't have a bone to pick with One Nation voters. I want them in our column, and I think we have a much better pathway to delivering that centre-right government, they desperately want.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: The Coalition is today on a primary vote of 17 per cent. When you saw that figure, what did you think?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I wasn't rattled. We've been around 20 per cent for some time. Polls always have a margin of error, and moreover, we're still in the winter of our troubles. We've got to rebuild the party. Angus Taylor is leading a policy development process within the Liberal Party. It's a good process, I have confidence in it, and it's going to take time to sell those policies, but we're in winter. We've got time, and we've just got to not get rattled, focus on the mission, which is winning government in 18 months.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Melissa McIntosh is a frontbencher, of course, in your team. She says the Liberal Party needs a rebrand, does it?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: I think we've got eighty-two years of political capital that people know who the Liberals are. Yes, we're at a low, but I would be very hesitant about walking away from the Liberal Party as a brand. Coca-Cola is a strong brand; people trust it for whatever reason. I don't drink a lot of Coke myself, but the Liberals stand for something, and it's really important that we deliver on policy. That's what people care about, and we've got to diagnose the problems and deliver solutions for those.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Brand isn't the problem? What I think—because I heard what she had to say—it was more than just a headline, of course. She said appealing to women, contemporary Australia. I mean, these are truths, aren't they?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: We want to make sure that housing, for example, is something that young Australians can actually buy, and at the moment they're losing hope, and so delivering on housing policy, immigration is tied to housing, that's why we're going to peg the net overseas migration figure every year to housing completions. I mean, this is an example of what policy looks like when we listen to people and deliver for them. So, we've got to do this on a number of fronts. Energy is another one, which is why we're getting out of Net Zero. We're going to unlock an energy abundance for the Australian people, bring costs right down, so people have more of their disposable income in their family budgets. Businesses can compete on the global stage. These are the things that need to happen.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Labor's got a bit of the support back, just a bit. Let's not get too excited or overreact to these figures. Just a couple of polls today, but the Liberals haven't. I mean, some support has been clawed back from One Nation. But not towards the Liberals, surely that's a concern.
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Look, it's a point in time, the key is not to get rattled, the key is to continue on with the policy development. I said there's problems, everyone knows what they are, and a lot of those problems are motivating One Nation voters. If we want to win those people back, we've got to deliver solutions, and that's what we're working on right now.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: And there's a big debate inside your party about what that looks like. You've expressed your support for Angus Taylor, but the elephant in the room—we all know you were a leadership candidate or at least prepared to be. You didn't end up running. I mean, you still have leadership ambitions, but you're putting them away right now?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Well, I think the question about leadership was answered back in February. Angus Taylor was elected. I'm the Deputy Leader in the House. I've got Industry, Sovereign Capability. I've got a lot of work to do. My job is to support Angus and help with the policy development, and just keep everyone focused on what we need to do by the end of the year, which is to build out our policy platform. If we don't get that done, doesn't matter how many social media reels you put out there, you won't be electable, and this is our—this has always been our advantage over parties like One Nation. We develop the policies that will build our prosperity and security for the future.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: End of the year, though, if you can't turn around some of this polling, you have to look at other options, don't you?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Well, no, I said end of the year, because that's a good deadline to get all our policy in place, so that we can spend the next year selling it to the Australian people. But look, I'm confident. 17 per cent, sure.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Oh, 17 per cent is terrible. You're nearly at the Greens level, and they're a minor party. I mean, it's fine for them, they're not a major party.
 
ANDREW HASTIE: The only way is up. Sometimes you got to go through the valley to get to the peak, and again, I'm not tapping the mat, and that was the message I sent out on Friday. A lot of people saying, "Oh, just give up, join One Nation." No, no, I'm a Liberal because I hold to certain values, I hold to a vision for this country. It's not Pauline Hanson's monoculture.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Well, let's go to monoculture. I was going to go there. There's been a big debate about that. Do you think some of her support has dipped because of her comments about monoculture?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I don't know the reasons why. But I think she revealed quite a fair view—quite a bit of her views at the National Press Club, and people have had a chance to digest that and see what Pauline Hanson, as Prime Minister, would actually be like. She still hasn't answered the question, which seat will she run in; she hasn't answered the question, who her Treasurer will be, who her Defence Minister will be, who her Attorney-General will be. These are really important questions, because those positions determine the shape of our lives, our security, and our prosperity.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: You've been speaking tough about One Nation, but some of your colleagues haven't, as much, including Angus Taylor. Would you like him to speak more stridently about One Nation?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Look, Angus doesn't have to be getting up and banging on about One Nation every day. Our job is defeating the Albanese Government. One Nation have brought the fight to me—that's the other side to this story. They brought the fight to me. They've been targeting...
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Because of Ben Roberts-Smith?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: A number of reasons. They've been targeting me personally, so much so that Tony Burke called me about two weeks ago and let me know that I have to get more security for my family home and for my office, so it's personal. These things have consequences, but also their policy suite has consequences for Australians as well.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: What are you most scared of?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: What am I most scared of? Well, let's take monoculture, for example. How do you police that? Do we want government more involved in our lives, policing who fits into Pauline Hanson's definition of Australian culture and who doesn't? How do you do that? Particularly with Australia looking very differently to what it was 40 years ago. She mentioned Norman Gunston and Paul Hogan. Well, that's a throwback to the 80s. Are we going to watch reruns of Neighbours with Toadfish and Harold Bishop? What is her definition of monoculture? I believe Australia is a strong country. We have people from all over the world, and so-
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Are we a multicultural country?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Well, monocultural and multicultural—they're two kind of two extremes in a sense. I think we just have a strong civil society, we have people from different backgrounds, it doesn't matter what country you came from, it doesn't matter what you’re-
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: We've used the term multicultural for a long time, are you comfortable with it?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Sure, well, it's now a loaded political term.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Why? It didn't use to be.
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Most Australians, when they talk about multicultural, think, you know, different foods, different backgrounds, but in the end, we have one language, which is English. We have one set of values, we have one flag, and I think it's fair enough that people raise questions about pockets of Sharia law, for example, emerging in our country. We can't balkanise or split into tribes, and so it's really important that we cohere as a society.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: But we do have one set of laws. We don't have another set of laws for Muslims, do we?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: No, we don't, but people, but I think people are concerned that, you know, when people come to our country, that they obey our laws. They submit to our values, or they embrace our values, and I think there's a few examples where that hasn't happened, and that's where people are concerned, but nostalgia is not helpful. We're here now. How do we come together, live peacefully with our neighbours when we disagree and build our prosperity and security into the future? That’s the question. And once government gets involved deciding who's in and who's out, that's very problematic.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: But do you support the bipartisan position that we are a multicultural country still?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah. Look, I have all sorts of people—I grew up in inner city Ashfield. My father was the minister of a church where we had a Chinese, Korean, Western Samoan congregation. I lived multiculturalism in that sense, but they were all bound by one faith. That's really important, and again, I come back to the fact that in the end, if a democracy is going to function, you have to have a common set of values, it can't just be a free-for-all and live according to how you think the world should be. No, everyone has to sign up to Australian rule of law and values.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: I want to ask you, before you go, we've signed a new agreement with Vanuatu today. Part of the agreement is to not allow its territory to be used for a foreign military base. Feels to me like it's about countering China. Is that how you read it, and is it a good deal?
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Well, Vanuatu is a close partner, a trusted neighbour. The history with Vanuatu goes all the way back to World War Two, it was a key staging post, and that geography is still really relevant to us today. So, they depend on us for their security, we depend on them for our security, and it makes sense to deepen that relationship. We'll have a closer look at the detail of that agreement, but in principle, of course, we support a deepening with Vanuatu.
 
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Andrew Hastie, love having you on the show. Thanks for coming in.
 
ANDREW HASTIE: Thanks so much, PK.
 
[ENDS]

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