Andrew Hastie hung out his leadership shingle in a weekend interview that may have a few Liberals wondering if the right\u2019s factional heavyweights made the best judgement in choosing Angus Taylor for the top job. <\/p>\n
Hastie wanted to run for the leadership earlier this year but the right\u2019s numbers men decided it should be Taylor, more senior in the faction, who toppled Sussan Ley. <\/p>\n
But so far Taylor has not cut through, and indeed, he looks like someone suited to more conventional times. <\/p>\n
When Ley was leader, Hastie took himself to the backbench and conducted guerrilla warfare from there. Now, under Taylor, he is shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability, a job he says he is happy in, but, as Sunday\u2019s interview on the ABC\u2019s Insiders showed, he has no intention of being constrained by. <\/p>\n
Taylor, who made Hastie deputy leader of the opposition in the House of Representatives (the actual deputy, Jane Hume, is a senator), knows it would be potentially dangerous to try to put a lead rope on the aspirant who will be stalking him over the next 18 months.<\/p>\n
In Sunday\u2019s interview, Hastie strongly called out US President Donald Trump\u2019s Iran strategy. On the domestic front, he urged the need for comprehensive tax reform \u2013 even sounding open to some of the government\u2019s thinking regarding the taxes on assets \u2013 rather than following the Liberals\u2019 talking point that Labor only wants to tax people more. <\/p>\n
Like the new Nationals\u2019 leader, Matt Canavan, Hastie comes across as someone worth listening to (agree or disagree with him), not just a politician with a good memory for the cheat sheet. <\/p>\n
In common with most Australians, Hastie isn\u2019t a fan of Trump and the way he conducts policy. After a Trump outburst against allies earlier this month, he called the president \u201cpetulant\u201d. <\/p>\n
On Sunday, he said he had a \u201cvisceral\u201d reaction to Trump\u2019s Friday criticism of US allies not stepping up in the war with Iran. <\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know why we went in there [to the Iran war] now. I thought last year we did the job [with the bombing of Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities]. <\/p>\n
There wasn\u2019t consultation with allies, because had we had a bit more lead time, we wouldn\u2019t be in the current crisis we are now where we\u2019re trying to secure our liquid fuel. <\/p>\n
I think this was a huge miscalculation. Iran has managed to pretty much hold the whole world economy to ransom.<\/p>\n
While a critic of how Trump has handled things, Hastie is not going so far as to now reject the war. <\/p>\n
If I have to choose between the United States and Israel, and Iran, I\u2019m going to choose democracies rather than a murderous regime which has ambitions to build a nuclear weapon and potentially use it against Israel, the US and allies. <\/p>\n
So don\u2019t get me wrong here. But wounds from a friend can be trusted while an enemy multiplies kisses. As a close friend of the United States \u2013 I think that we can be honest, and we can ask hard questions.<\/p>\n
Hastie warns against a ground war, fears for the United States\u2019 credibility, and worries about Australians\u2019 support for the US alliance being eroded. <\/p>\n
I think the economic pain is going to be more acute, and they\u2019re going to question the judgement of the president as this drags on.<\/p>\n
As for a possible super profits tax on windfall gains gas exporters will make from the war \u2013 a policy both the Greens and One Nation urge \u2013 Hastie\u2019s sympathies don\u2019t lie with the large companies. <\/p>\n
On that I\u2019m open-minded because the Liberal Party is not the first line of defence for corporate Australia. I think multinationals and big business in this country have lost their social license, they\u2019ve made no effort to recover it, and a lot of Australians feel like the system is rigged against them. <\/p>\n
We [the Liberals] got smashed in 2022; we got smashed in 2025. Our primary vote is being cannibalised from both the right and the left. So I think adopting a posture of humility and being open minded is important \u2013 not being reactive. <\/p>\n
So I think the bigger geopolitical frame here, and the macroeconomic frame here, is that we\u2019re about to potentially slide into a recession. One of the things we\u2019ve got going for us is our abundance of gas. Is introducing a new tax right at this time, going to help our situation? Before February 28 [the start of the Iran war], this conversation looked very different. We\u2019re in a different period now.<\/p>\n
This is a new era [\u2026] we need to overhaul the whole [tax] system. We either fix the system, or it\u2019s torn down by people like Pauline Hanson.<\/p>\n
No one\u2019s going to reward us for a final last stand for neo-liberal politics, okay. There\u2019s no medal for that. I actually want to win and deliver centre-right government for this country. And the best way to beat Labor is to start listening to people and meeting their concerns head on, rather than reactively slapping them down. <\/p>\n
Labor will pick up on Hastie not being across the fine print when pressed about the Liberals saying last week the government\u2019s batteries policy had integrity issues. This is evidence he\u2019s not a details person, it will say. <\/p>\n
But the Labor strategists looking to the longer term might be hoping the Liberals don\u2019t eventually decide to install a third leader this term. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, and more immediately, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will hold a national cabinet on Monday morning to try to ensure maximum federal-state coordination as the fuel crisis deepens. The word from the federal government at the weekend was it wanted the next steps to be voluntary, rather than mandatory.<\/p>\n
The government on Monday will also introduce legislation for new powers to enable it to underwrite companies\u2019 additional imports of fuel, fertiliser and other essential items. Albanese said:<\/p>\n
These powers will be used to help acquire the additional supply that\u2019s so valuable for Australia\u2019s fuel security, where it would be cost prohibitive for private suppliers to source on commercial terms without government support. <\/p>\n
It will give suppliers the confidence to secure additional and discretionary cargoes and use it to service uncontracted demand, including for regional and independent fuel suppliers. So, we want more fuel here, and we want to make sure it gets to the right place as well.<\/p>\n
I want us to have the strongest possible plans, so we\u2019re ready for what may come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andrew Hastie hung out his leadership shingle in a weekend interview that may have a few Liberals wondering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-572463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}