THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE

TRANSCRIPT INTERVIEW WITH PETA CREDLIN, SKY NEWS

SUNDAY 10 JUNE 2022

E&OE…

PETA CREDLIN: Andrew, thank you for coming on the show. I said then that Labor are unhappy about Peter Dutton speaking out on this issue. But I think he's pretty honourable, in the sense he's concerned that Labor is not fair dinkum about these nuclear subs. Do you think they're under internal pressure, perhaps to drop nuclear capability?

THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP, SHADOW DEFENCE MINISTER: Good evening, Peta. I'm not sure what's going on inside Labor. But I know this, that Richard Marles this week, the new Defence Minister, not even in the chair for 20 days sent some pretty worrying signals to the US and the UK, to our adversaries and also to the Australian public that he's just not that serious about delivering nuclear submarines in a timely manner for this country. Now, last September, we announced AUKUS. Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Boris Johnson and President Joe Biden, together. We've set this task for ourselves to get submarines in the water as quickly as possible. And Richard Marles said this week that it's going to blow out till the mid-2040s and he's now open minded about a diesel-powered interim solution. Now, that just says to the UK and the US that we're not that serious about getting these submarines anytime soon. And that's why it's so concerning.

PETA CREDLIN: That's why I think there's something going on inside Labor that they just ‘Me-Tooed’ you on AUKUS last year. They said everything that the electorate wanted them to say in relation to this nuclear capability, because they wanted to win the election. And now on the other side, suddenly, the date that you know was different is suddenly pushed out under them. And they're saying that we need this bridging product, a new conventional sub between what we've got now and nuclear. Now you know, and I know, if you go down the path of putting another submarine in the mix, we're never going to see nuclear, right? We are not going to have nuclear submarines. Why on earth, if there's a magnificent Virginia Class in the United States, and they will sell it to us, why would we get one of theirs?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's absolutely right, Peta. And moreover, the Chief of Navy said this year that having an interim submarine, it's just not possible for the Royal Australian Navy. We're a small Navy relative to our partners. And so you know, to crew, those boats, to maintain those boats, to spread our force across three classes is just unsustainable. So the really important thing here is that Richard Marles needs to be mission-focused as the Minister of Defence. He's got to show resolve, he's got to show leadership. And he's got to do everything in his power to get those boats in the water as soon as possible. I don't care about internal pressure from Labor. And I wouldn't be surprised if there is Peta, because we saw Energy Minister Chris Bowen's almost hysterical reaction yesterday at a press conference when he said we're never going to consider nuclear power as part of our energy mix. So I wouldn't be surprised if indeed there are internal pressures on Richard Marles with the nuclear submarines.

PETA CREDLIN: I think I think what they're worried about, Andrew, is that once you have nuclear power at sea, it helps dissolve the argument that we can't have nuclear power on land. You know, you build up a nuclear capability and sustainability industry for the submarines, you get nuclear expertise in Australia, all the arguments against nuclear power, which is like kryptonite to Labor, they start to evaporate. So I think that's why there will be this pushback on nuclear submarines. Can I go to this decision in the High Court about Islamic State? I appreciate you would have dealt with this in great depth when you were chairing the Intelligence Committee, but there was the citizenship revocation legislation taking a dual citizen their Australian citizenship off them if they were ISIS terrorists. That's been overturned in the case of those that haven't yet been convicted in Australia. Because the court held, their argument was they need to be convicted in Australia of terrorism, before this can be moved on. Peter Dutton has said to the government, look, you've got to fix this, you got to fix it fast, and we'll do everything we can to help you. Do you think Labor are going to take it seriously, and we are going to see a situation that amends legislation to avoid the situation where these terrorists come back to Australia?

ANDREW HASTIE: Peta, I was the chairman of the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security for four years. I issued a report which Labor dissented on with these exact laws. We passed, as you know, tranches of legislation. James Patterson continued as Chair for the last 18 months. We did a lot of work with Labor. And my sense is that Labor's instincts are a bit wobbly on this issue. And so it's up to Mark Dreyfus, the Attorney General now, to come up with a plan to deal with these people because we can't be letting them back in our communities. We’ve got to have a plan to deal with people who've taken up arms against the Australian people and against our national interest.

PETA CREDLIN: All right, well, they're lukewarm on these bills, this legislation, it's law now. We know they're lukewarm because they had the dissenting report. And we know that Dreyfus spoke out about it at the time. We've had two boats come from Sri Lanka in the three weeks that they've now been in office. We've got this new precedent with the Biloela family against what the courts right up to the High Court have decided. They're now on a visa ticked off by the Labor government. We're not long after the election, Andrew, and there's a sense that all this national security stuff is starting to run away from them. Add in subs, I'd be concerned.

ANDREW HASTIE: That's right. There's a number of indicators now that this government is getting tested. We've seen Richard Marles is sort of crab walking away from AUKUS. We've seen these two boats. And, you know, we're going to hold them to account. That's our job in Opposition. We've got a strong record, over the last nine years of stopping the boats, securing our sovereignty, our borders, and the Opposition leader Peter Dutton and his team—I'm a proud member of that team—we're going to do everything we can to hold this Labor government to account.

PETA CREDLIN: I know a lot of people that have got a lot of faith in you, it's a lot to do for you. Just before we go, in the media in WA today, there was a secret recording—which I don't support; people being recorded against their knowledge—but ended up in the paper, a meeting of Liberal MPs, you included discussing why you lost so badly at the last election. Why did you do so badly?

ANDREW HASTIE: Peta, it was a meeting of the Liberal Party policy committee. About 150 people turned out, mainly grassroots members. Matt O'Sullivan, Dean Smith, among others, turned up to this to this event, and we spoke pretty frankly, and we engaged for the people there. I said we have 1000 days to go until we have both a state and federal election in Western Australia. We do not have the ascendancy; WA Labor has the ascendancy. They are the incumbents, and we need to come together, we need to unify, we need to double down on our values, go back to the We Believe statement and then come up with a plan to return to government. There are a whole number of reasons as to why things went badly here in WA. They were ventilated during the meeting. And I'm sure they'll come out in subsequent post-mortems both at the state and national level.

PETA CREDLIN: I'm so pleased to hear you talk about values. I think that was missing in the last term of Parliament. Let's hope it returns even though you're in Opposition. That's hope you put it back on the table. Andrew Hastie, thank you for your time.

Andrew Hastie: Thanks Peta.

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