THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP

SHADOW MINISTER FOR INDUSTRY AND SOVEREIGN CAPABILITY
 FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH MARK LEVY, 2GB

Thursday 16 July 2026

Topics: World Cup, artificial intelligence, Net Zero, small business, gender quotas, One Nation, Iran

E&OE……………………………………

MARK LEVY: Being a Thursday morning, every couple of weeks we catch up with the Shadow Minister for Industry and Sovereign Capability, Andrew Hastie. He's up nice and early for us over in the West. Andrew, good morning to you.

ANDREW HASTIE: Good morning, Mark. Good to chat to you again. 

MARK LEVY: Mate, do you know any devastated England supporters rueing the missed opportunity this morning?

ANDREW HASTIE: Well, on this side of the country, if you throw a rock, you'll hit a pom. And so, just up the road, the Mandurah City Football Club, where I sometimes go, they were up at 3:00am watching it. So, it's going to be hard for a lot of Brits down this way. I was supporting England this morning, and I was disappointed to see the result, particularly that they had it—so it seemed—and then sort of just gave up attacking—or not gave up attacking, but changed the strategy. And you've always got to be attacking to stay in the game.

MARK LEVY: You missed your calling, mate. You could be a sports reporter.

ANDREW HASTIE: Maybe, there's hope yet.

MARK LEVY: Well, let's get into what you are focused on, and that's the future of this country. I thought we'd start off with artificial intelligence. That's on the agenda this week, with the Prime Minister delivering that speech yesterday at the University of Sydney. Anthony Albanese signalled tougher regulation and intervention on tech companies looking to set up shop in Australia. Do you use AI, Andrew? And what did you make of the speech yesterday?

ANDREW HASTIE: Yeah, look, I use AI. I use Claude for my work sometimes. Yes. And look, I gave a speech about a month ago on AI in Sydney, and I said, there's an arms race underway. It's between the United States, who's seeking to be the dominant global AI power, and China. And Australia will miss out on being an AI power if we don't act soon. And so, what we haven't seen from the Prime Minister, who's been very flat-footed, is an AI strategy where we make AI work for Australians, where we impose democratic safeguards around it. And in his speech yesterday, he didn't talk about how he would attract investment into Australia from these big US companies like Anthropic and Meta and Google. One of the key things we need is an abundant amount of energy, which we have in this country. But under Labor's Net Zero, it's hard enough for households and businesses to pay the high cost of energy. It's going to be even harder once we add AI into the mix, and he didn't talk about that at all. So, yes, he acknowledged the importance of AI, but he didn't actually come up with a strategy.

MARK LEVY: Well, was there anything in the Budget that was announced only a few months ago by Jim Chalmers about artificial intelligence?

ANDREW HASTIE: They didn't talk about AI at all, it's so important. Like I said, there's an arms race between China and the US. In the US itself, you've got these massive companies which are almost as powerful as nation states in terms of the amount of money they have and the amount of research and development they're spending. Companies like Anthropic, Google, Meta, Elon Musk's xAI, and OpenAI. So, we're falling behind. Australia won't ever create these sorts of frontier models that are coming out of the US, but we can attract investment into our country. We've got a stable landmass. We've got abundant energy. We've got talented people, and we need to attract investment here so that we're not tethered to the United States at the end of a submarine cable, we need to have the capability here on our soil. Otherwise, people can build kill switches and take the capability off us in a crisis.

MARK LEVY: Well, the other thing that concerns me, Andrew, is these data centres, for instance, right? They run on technology that need power 24/7, so we can't have intermittent power. But we're still infatuated with renewables under this Labor government, despite the report this week from the CSIRO that's now saying baseload power is actually cheaper than renewable energy. So, Net Zero targets will drive energy prices up to thirty-nine per cent higher. How's Chris Bowen going to spin his way out of this one, mate?

ANDREW HASTIE: He can't, and this is why Net Zero is such a massive problem for this country. We've got to get out of Net Zero, not just for people's household budgets and their small businesses, but also the heavy industry and AI. We're already bailing out smelters. There's no way we can plug in big data centres, especially when data centres consume so much energy.  For example, an AI search on, say, ChatGPT or Claude is ten times more energy intensive than a Google search, and as more and more Australians use AI, it's going to get more and more energy intensive. So, we need to talk about coal.

We need to talk about gas. We need to talk about nuclear power as well. And here's another thing your listeners probably don't know: in the US the wait time for gas turbines now is about three to five years because so many of the AI companies are trying to build their own gas turbines to power their AI data centres. So, there is a race that we're in, and we're behind, and Anthony Albanese doesn't seem to have the legs.

MARK LEVY: Well, the other thing that I'm enlightened by, given the comments this week from Angus Taylor, is the support that the Coalition wants to give to small businesses. Andrew, I had the last couple of weeks off, and I spoke to a lot of small business owners. I've just been through it myself, and the insolvency numbers at the moment are shocking. 30 businesses a day are closing their doors since Labor won government. Throw in the changes to Capital Gains Tax. I mean, why would you start a business in this country at the moment under this government?

ANDREW HASTIE: You wouldn't. There's a lot of risk. There are the Capital Gains Tax changes, which again allows the government to take more of your money, but also there's energy costs. There are all the overheads: the red tape, the green tape, the woke tape. Small business is wrapped up in tape, and because small businesses run pretty small operations, they don't have the massive internal manpower of the big businesses to manage all that stuff. And so, a lot of them just walk away. It's just too hard, and we know that small business—they're the driving force. They're the small engine of our economy. So, Angus Taylor is absolutely right. We want to back small business. We want to cut the green, the red, the woke tape, whatever else is slowing them down.

MARK LEVY: Just make it easier for them, hear, hear. What's your position on gender quotas? Because there's a report today that suggests the Liberal Party faithful have been probed where the gender quotas are needed to allow more women to run in winnable seats following consecutive election losses criticising the lack of gender parity. Is this true?

ANDREW HASTIE: Look, I haven't seen that report, but my instinct is always to come back to merit. I think we have some amazing women in our party, we've got some really talented men, and I think we should have a merit-based approach. It's as simple as that. We should certainly make more effort to recruit and develop and give opportunities to women. But once you start imposing quotas like the Labor Party, you kill the very idea of merit within the party, and I think that's poisonous to cohesion. 

MARK LEVY: I know that a lot of your colleagues at the moment have been distracted by One Nation, and admittedly, a lot of the questions that are put to politicians, conservative politicians, relate to the rise of One Nation. When I picked up this report today and heard that the Liberal Party is talking about gender quotas. I immediately thought to myself, Andrew, here we go again. Another distraction from what the Coalition should be doing, and that is going after this Labor Government and highlighting the damage that Anthony Albanese and his team are doing to the country. Is that the sole focus of the Coalition at the moment? Because when I think voters, frustrated Liberal voters, pick up the paper today and hear that you know the Liberals are thinking about the need for gender quotas. I think yet again they just think to themselves, what are these people actually talking about? Is that fair or not?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think it's a fair comment. People are so desperate for leadership. People are so desperate for solutions. You talk to people out in the street. I was out doorknocking yesterday in Western Australia, and you know people are doing it tough. They just feel like they can't get ahead, and so they're looking to political leaders for solutions. They don't care if they're male, female, or what their background is. If people have a solution, they'll back them, and that's what we've got to focus on.

MARK LEVY: Speaking of One Nation, I started the week saying it was madness for the One Nation leader Pauline Hanson to spend time with a thug and criminal like Tommy Robinson in the UK. There's some polling that's come out this week showing their popularity is declining. Pauline Hanson's approval has dropped; I think it was eight points. Is One Nation starting to self-inflate, Andrew?

ANDREW HASTIE: I think people are starting to look more closely at One Nation, which is all we've ever asked for. Apply scrutiny to One Nation as you apply scrutiny to the Coalition, to Labor, to the Greens, and anyone else who wants to lead this country. Pauline Hanson wants to be Prime Minister of this country, so her and her team deserve proper scrutiny. And when you find out that people like Senator Malcolm Roberts are talking about chemtrails and other sorts of odd things—they're not really focused on delivering good economic solutions for Australian people to improve our standard of living. So, these questions are going to take the gloss off One Nation if they can't answer them.

MARK LEVY: A couple more before you go. Donald Trump, he's backtracked on his twenty per cent toll on the Strait of Hormuz as this conflict escalates again. I mean, that's good news for everybody, including us here in Australia. How is this thing going to end, Andrew? I mean, you understand this better than most. Where to from here for Donald Trump, do you think?

ANDREW HASTIE: That's a really good question, Mark. I'm not sure. One thing I do know is that Iran have discovered immense leverage through the Strait of Hormuz, and they also know that the US has Midterm Elections in November. And at the moment, the Republicans control the House and the Senate. But if the economic pain from a strait closure continues, this could have consequences domestically for the White House and the Republicans. So, I think the Iranians are going for more leverage at the negotiating table, but they're also trying to damage President Trump.

MARK LEVY: Yeah, I think we've just lost Andrew Hastie, so we might just leave it there. 

[ENDS]