THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW CLENNELL, SKY NEWS

Monday 15 December 2025

Topics: Bondi terrorist attack

E&OE………………………………….

ANDREW CLENNELL: Andrew Hastie, thanks for joining us. I might start there with an aspect of Caroline's report. What do you think of Mehreen Faruqi and her colleagues visiting this site?

ANDREW HASTIE: It's utter hypocrisy. They have enabled a culture of antisemitism in this country to grow up over the last two years, and it's culminated in a terrible, murderous act at Bondi yesterday, where 15 innocent people lost their lives from age 10 to 87. I feel angry. I know a lot of Australians feel angry. We've had a gutful of this, and so for her to rock up – yeah, it didn't wash with me, mate.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Was enough done to protect Jewish Australians at this event, from what you saw?

ANDREW HASTIE: No. This was a monumental failure by the Albanese government. It's a monumental failure by the Albanese government – let me make that very clear. They've had two years. They had a report handed down by Jillian Segal in July, and they failed to act. I've got a question. How did this event happen? How did this slip through ASIO's fingers? How was this not detected? There are a lot of questions that need to be asked of our government, starting with the Prime Minister, the Home Affairs Minister and those responsible for protecting the Australian people.

ANDREW CLENNELL: What about the actual police and New South Wales' responsibility as well? Because it just seems to me, if you've got a Hanukkah event on at Bondi Beach, doesn't the joint need to be crawling with cops in the current environment?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, yes. Yes, absolutely. And I would say, they should have had long arms, because they could have sat those two guys down very quickly with long arms, but they were outmatched by the weapons that they had. They had pistols, from what I can see. Every time you rock up at Canberra Airport, you'll see AFP with long arms ready to go.

ANDREW CLENNELL: That's true.

ANDREW HASTIE: And so I think there are questions to be asked across the board.

ANDREW CLENNELL: That's actually a really good point, because sometimes I rock up to Canberra Airport, you sort of go, whoa, these guys have long arms. So why does that occur in Canberra Airport and not situations like this?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's a really good question, because with 5.56 mm, you can put a man down at 400 metres. That could have been over a lot more quickly, but instead, cops had to close with 9 mm pistols, and that's why it dragged out for so long. All that to say is that there are a lot of questions that need to be asked and answered as we examine what happened in the lead up to this event and subsequent to it as well.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Andrew Hastie, I do have to ask you, if the government had taken more action against antisemitism and given a little bit more money for security, made some tougher public statements, even thrown more resources into the Australian Federal Police or ASIO, do you consider it mightn't have made a difference? Because you've got a pair of psychos who want to go and shoot people randomly, and you can't contain every sort of lone wolf type situation.

ANDREW HASTIE: Andrew, this goes to a much deeper question about immigration. The father was not an Australian citizen; he was on a visa. So the real question is, who are we letting into our country? I know the Australian people have had a gutful, and I think we need to narrow, very dramatically, those who we let into our country. They need to support Australian values: faith, reason, inquiry, debate, persuasion. They need to support our country and our people. And what we saw yesterday were two people – let's be clear here – it looks like radical, militant, Islam who used guns to cut down people, innocent people, during a very significant religious festival, Hanukkah. That's why I'm angry. That's why so many people are angry, because our political class has to wake up. We can't keep going on like this. We saw it the day after October 7 in 2023. We saw it on the steps of the Opera House. We saw it. We were all warned. We saw the tumour, and that cancer has metastasised over the last two years under the watch of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, and that's a reality he's got to face up to. He has not done enough. He has not led with moral clarity. He has not done enough to protect the Jewish community. He failed to act on the July report handed down by Ms Segal, and it's unacceptable.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Ok, very good point that they were immigrants, but so was the bloke who intervened and ripped the gun off the guy, right? Now, there's some conjecture about whether he's Muslim, Catholic, Maronite – I don't know. I've heard from official sources he's Muslim. But let's forget his faith. I mean, he's obviously a good immigrant. So where do you draw the line?

ANDREW HASTIE: Absolutely. My wife's an immigrant. As is Ahmed el Ahmed.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Yeah, would you like to say something about him?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think he's an absolute hero. In the moment of crisis, he acted. He disregarded his own safety, he acted. And he took that guy head on, and he took the weapon off him. For that, he's a hero. He should be awarded the highest bravery honour we can give him. Absolutely no question.

ANDREW CLENNELL: So where do we draw the line on immigration then? Do you want to see less immigration from Muslim countries? Do you want to see tougher checks? What do you want to see?

ANDREW HASTIE: I want to see people come to this country who speak English, who support Australian values, like I said: faith, reason, inquiry, debate, persuasion. There's also this idea we are a Judeo-Christian country, in the sense that that's the basis on which our democracy works – every single person made in the image of God, which means it doesn't matter what race you are, what ethnicity you are. And the great evil, ugly lie of antisemitism is that Jewish people are somehow of bad character because of their ethnicity, and that's just unacceptable. So we should be screening people for antisemitism. We should be asking them very explicitly to sign up to the values of our country. There's a whole number of ways that we can do it, but we're not doing it effectively, obviously, because we have this problem. We had these two people yesterday committing murder on the streets of Bondi, so something's got to change.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you think if the son involved in this was first identified by authorities in 2019 that more could have been done to prevent this?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yes, and it's a massive deflection from the Prime Minister to start talking about firearms reform. The question I have is, why – with this guy being identified by ASIO in 2019 – was his father allowed to keep six guns? That's the question I have. A lot of law-abiding citizens out there who own firearms. This is not about guns – that's a deflection. This is about radical, militant Islam motivating these people to gun down Jews on Hanukkah.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Andrew Hastie, you could change gun laws to ensure that things like that don't happen again. I mean, gun law reform can cover that kind of aspect of things, can it not?

ANDREW HASTIE: Sure, I'm not ruling it in or ruling it out. I'm simply saying that we have a cancer of antisemitism in Australia, and we also have people who hold to radical, militant Islam, which is completely contrary to the values that we hold here as a country, which is a problem. So we're on a collision course here.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Do you fear further attacks?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yes, I do.

ANDREW CLENNELL: And what's the basis for that?

ANDREW HASTIE: I went to school near Bondi Junction, and I rang my year five teacher this morning, who is Jewish, who lives in Bondi – has done so for four decades – and I wanted to know if he was okay and if his family and friends were affected. You know what he said to me? He goes: I wasn't surprised. You have people in the Australian Jewish community saying they weren't surprised that this happened. And so the question we have to ask is, how do we stop this in the future? And I think the most important thing is that we have people who hold to our values, who love our country. This is a very clear moment, and we need to differentiate between those who love Australia, our people and our values, and those who don't. And if you don't and you're not a citizen, you're gone – it's as simple as that. I think that's what a lot of people in this country would like to see happen.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Is there any thought in your mind that you might go to One Nation over this sort of issue? That you might actually leave the Liberal Party?

ANDREW HASTIE: No. I was elected as a Liberal Party member, I believe in the Liberal Party, and I think the Liberal Party has a future. I'm absolutely committed to the Liberal Party.

ANDREW CLENNELL: What should the government do right now? Should they recall Parliament this year for new legislation? What concrete measures would you like to see right now?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think the Segal report makes very clear what needs to happen. We need to look at education, we need to look at migration, we need to look at public funding, and we need to run a ruler over all the organisations who take money from the Commonwealth, Australian taxpayers. And if they are shown to be antisemitic, then they should lose their funding, we should cut that funding. It's very simple.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Andrew Hastie, thanks so much for joining us on a difficult day for all Australians.

[ENDS]