On the Sunday before he was overthrown as prime minister in September 2015, Tony Abbott sweated through a gym workout with his candidate in the upcoming Canning byelection, Andrew Hastie.
Hastie, who went on to win the seat on the southern outskirts of Perth despite the political chaos of the days preceding it, took the opportunity to ask for Abbott’s advice on leadership.
“I asked him about leadership and he said, ‘Look, I never sought the leadership actively – but I always put myself in striking distance’,” the Liberal MP told a business event in November 2022.
“That’s the way to look at it.”
Rise of the ‘Maga-right’
A decade on from that conversation with Abbott, with whom he remains close, the former Special Air Services (SAS) captain is putting himself within striking distance of the Liberal party leadership.
Or at least that is how some of his colleagues interpret the personal crusades Hastie has launched since the federal election, including a public threat to quit the shadow frontbench if the Liberals recommitted to net zero by 2050 and freelancing on manufacturing and immigration policy.
Hastie has denied his interventions amount to a leadership pitch, insisting he supports Sussan Ley and anyone suggesting otherwise is being “mischievous”.
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His actions have split Coalition MPs, widening the divisions created after Ley won the leadership and which were inflamed following Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s sacking from the frontbench for refusing to back the opposition leader.
Hastie has emerged as a defacto leader of what some insiders describe as the “Maga right” of the Liberal party, a small but noisy insurgent force attempting to drag it down a populist path.
After not contesting the post-election leadership ballot, some colleagues – including friends and allies – are perplexed and frustrated at Hastie’s apparent pre-positioning, which they see as not just distracting for the party but damaging for his own long-term aspirations.
His decision to publicly admonish anonymous colleagues briefing against him in the media – labelling them “nameless cowards” and “muppets” – has prompted some to question his judgment.
“I’m greatly surprised by the lack of strategic sense,” said one sceptical colleague, who predicts Hastie’s flame will quickly burn out.
‘He’s cutting through’
Others – including Price – are right behind the 42-year-old, adamant the Donald Trump-esque “Australia first” vision outlined in a recent video about domestic manufacturing is the path forward for a party searching for direction.
“The party has been drifting and he’s cutting through that in the way that the party needs,” said the Liberal MP and Hastie supporter, Garth Hamilton.
“Andrew’s laying out a vision. It’s been a long time since someone on the right has captured the narrative the way he has. We’ve heard for a long time about his leadership potential. I think we’re seeing him really grow into himself.”
Another supporter, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “At some point someone needs to have a backbone and do what’s right and not what’s popular. Hastie is filling that void.”
Liberal sources are downplaying any immediate threat to Ley with a majority of the party room, including the bulk of conservative MPs, unwilling to entertain the distraction of a leadership contest so early in the term.
But Hastie’s interventions have fast-tracked consideration of the alternative.
It is not just an alternative leader for the party, but an alternative brand of rightwing politics anchored in flag-waving patriotism, faith, family and a fight for what its proponents see as “western civilisation” itself.
The most high-profile exponent of which is Abbott.
Then prime minister Tony Abbott (L) with Andrew Hastie in 2015. After entering parliament, Hastie joined Abbott in fighting against same-sex marriage and helping to kill the national energy guarantee policy. Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP
Multiple Liberals aligned with Ley, who spoke to Guardian Australia on the condition of anonymity, strongly suspect Abbott and the rightwing campaign outfit Advance are influencing, if not orchestrating, Hastie’s disruptive interventions.
After entering parliament in 2015, the young religious conservative joined Abbott in fighting against same-sex marriage and helping to kill the national energy guarantee policy that hastened Malcolm Turnbull’s demise.
Two of Hastie’s new focus areas – dumping net zero and cutting immigration levels – are long-running campaigns of Abbott and Advance, which have enthusiastically promoted the Liberals MP’s interventions.
Abbott declined to comment and Advance denied it was “orchestrating” Hastie’s campaign.
“Advance will always encourage politicians who align with our supporters and criticise those who don’t. Nothing more, nothing less,” the group’s executive director, Matthew Sheahan, said.
One Liberal noted that just like Abbott, Hastie’s political mission was shaped by a global culture war being fought on the political right to preserve supposed threats to “western values”.
The two men are advisers to the UK-based Alliance for Responsibility Citizenship, whose stated mission is to “re-lay the foundations of civilisation”.
Hastie pointed to this struggle in a social media post marking the shooting death of the US conservative political activist, Charlie Kirk.
He wrote that Kirk’s murder was itself an attack on western civilisation, the result of “many of our intellectual class” not believing in western values.
“Now is not the time to take cover, even as bullets are fired at our friends. Our movement needs to grow, and we must speak the truth about the challenges ahead. If we don’t get moving, the west will continue to decline,” he wrote.
“Let’s go.”
Hastie used the same call to action – “let’s go” – at the end of an Instagram video last week lamenting the demise of Australian manufacturing, specifically car making.
‘We got smashed’: Sussan Ley reflects on Coalition’s historic election defeat – video
Standing next to a 1969 red Ford Falcon, dressed in denim jeans and brown boots, he bemoaned how Australia has turned into nation of “flat-white makers” and asks: “What sort of country do we want to be?”
The video was overlaid with old footage of race cars, car yards and factory floors.
He sought to invoke a similar sense of nostalgia for a bygone era in a series of posts arguing the Liberals could “die” as a political movement unless it committed to cut immigration, which he blamed for the housing supply and affordability crisis.
Hastie’s brand works in Canning, which skews older and less multicultural than the national average. He secured a 5% two-party preferred swing at the last election, defying a trend against the Liberals in Western Australia and nationwide.
But even some supporters questions whether he could appeal to urban voters that have largely abandoned the party at the past two elections.
Critics point to a catalogue of past controversial comments, including suggestions women shouldn’t serve in frontline combat roles and comparisons between China’s rise to the threat of Nazi Germany, as evidence of a belief system that is out of step with mainstream Australia.
Hastie’s target does not appear to be Liberal voters who have switched to Labor or the teal independents but rather those who are bleeding to One Nation or other rightwing minor parties.
“I just think we need to reconstitute our natural constituency on the centre right if we’re going to be a force to beat Labor in two years,” he said.
‘A potent weapon’
Kos Samaras, a former Labor strategist-turned pollster with Redbridge group, said Hastie was the Coalition’s most “potent weapon”, capable of building a political movement around millennial-aged families in the outer suburbs and regions.
Samaras said unlike Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, who sought to appeal to outer suburban voters while at the same time punching down on unions, Hastie better understood the working class.
He pointed to his solidarity with local workers from US-based resources company Alcoa during a strike in 2018.
But Samaras cautioned Hastie about continuing his anti-net zero, anti-immigration campaign, warning that while it might win him the Liberal leadership it could ruin his chances of becoming prime minister.
“No matter what he may personally think of net zero, what he may think of our migration levels, they run up against the politics of urban Australia, particularly in Sydney, Melbourne,” he said.
“[Hastie] is an extremely rational, deep thinker about the world around him. The [comments in the] last couple of months have been very, very weird.”
Hastie declined Guardian Australia’s request for an interview.
His supporters deny suggestions that his actions are part of some calculated, machiavellian plot to undermine and eventually overthrow Ley.
Instead, they insist, Hastie is simply fighting for what he believes in – fully aware of the personal risks.
“I’m not going to be an MP forever,” Hastie told the 2 Worlds Collide podcast in August.
“I’ve always said to myself – when I stop taking calculated risks for my country I’ve got to leave because you have no business drawing a salary as an MP if you’re not taking calculated risks to improve your country.
“You got to keep [firing] and moving.”