The member for Canning has stood up to Pauline Hanson, risked the wrath of Gina Rinehart, criticised WA opposition tactics and sat quietly behind Angus Taylor for months
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Amid the sometimes raucous scenes of question time in federal parliament this week, Andrew Hastie maintained a dignified silence.
The Liberal frontbencher barely spoke, even as his colleagues pursued Labor over Australia’s newly minted $1tn national debt, controversial caps on veterans’ healthcare funding, and rising rental prices around the country.
So evident was Hastie’s silence, day after day, that even Anthony Albanese motioned to the shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability at one point, asking what was going on.
“When are you going to get a question? It’s been six months,” the prime minister was heard to say across the chamber to Hastie. The former soldier sits just behind the opposition leader – and his putative leadership rival – Angus Taylor.
But, despite his silence in question time, Hastie has a bit going on.
He has spoken regularly about the threat of Pauline Hanson’s surging popularity to the Liberal party, and will be closely watching the results in the upcoming byelection in the Western Australian state seat of Secret Harbour.
One Nation wants to win the seat from Labor next weekend, and then come for Hastie’s own federal electorate of Canning, which shares much of the same territory.
There is little love lost between Hanson’s supporters and Hastie, who some hate because he gave evidence against the Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith in a mammoth defamation trial against Nine newspapers.
Hanson and her billionaire benefactor Gina Rinehart have publicly supported Roberts-Smith and are using their money and political muscle in WA to go after Hastie as a result. It’s always hard to understand internecine power dynamics in Perth from the east coast, but the current turf war, including in local media coverage, is particularly bitter.
Hastie has talked about the many threats made by others to his safety and the moves by the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, to offer additional security for his home and electorate office. In interviews with News24, formerly Sky News, this week, Hastie said he and his wife were shielding their young family from online abuse and vitriol, and even revealed an unnamed One Nation official had told him he should prepare for a deluge of personal attacks after campaigning in the Farrer byelection earlier this year.
In another interview, Hastie said Hanson’s closest adviser and One Nation strategist, James Ashby, was “coming for me”. Hastie insisted he would run at the 2028 election, and hold Canning for the Liberals.
Unlike many of his colleagues, Hastie has correctly identified a weakness in One Nation’s political offering.
He said this week that Hanson’s problem “is that she is Maga first”, even when Australian voters suffer the economic consequences from the US president Donald Trump’s backwards and misguided political project. Just like Labor successfully hung Trump around Peter Dutton’s neck at the last election, painting Hanson as the unpopular president’s best friend in Australia could be a smart strategy to dent her support.