Andrew Hastie has emerged as a potential LNP leader in the event of a leadership spill against Opposition Leader, Sussan Ley. According to an exclusive report in The Australian (17 November 2025) sourced to Greg Brown and Lachlan Leeming, Andrew Hastie now has the confidence of a much wider cross-section of the LNP team. The MP for Canning in WA currently languishes on the LNP’s backbench in self-imposed exile in opposition to the LNP’s former zero emissions target and current migration targets. In juxtaposition with the urbane Angus Taylor, Andrew Hastie also strikes me as the most outstanding leadership contender.On this occasion, I concur with the Exclusive Report from The Australian.
Complex policy options are seldom on the minds of most voters as they struggle with the cost-of-living pressures and personal stresses in an emotionally charged and environmentally unsustainable society.
Andrew Hastie’s communication frames in his media releases appeal to constituents in this situation who are isolated from active political involvement (Andrew Hastie MP). Readers can check the details online and note the limited number of media releases in favour of informal doorstop and studio interviews with supportive radio and television networks with the assistance of conservative commentators.
Hastie is still at home in the corridors of power and influence in Canberra and beyond. He served as Assistant Minister for Defence in the Morrison Government to Defence Ministers Linda Reynolds and later Peter Dutton during a period when key senior ministers in the Morrison Government negotiated the AUKUS defence deal for Australia with the first Trump administration and Boris Johnson in Britain.
He has represented Canning since a by-election on 19 September 2015 following the death of the long-serving LNP member Don Randall (ABC News 19 September 2015).
Hastie survived the tidal wave to Labor in WA on 3 May 2025 in his Canning electorate on the fringes of Metro Perth. Here, on 14 January 2025, Andrew Hastie MP was inviting applications for the Stronger Communities Programme in Canning (Image: Andrew Hastie MP). The local outreach worked well on election day.
Swing to the LNP in Canning on 3 May 2025 (Image: Wikipedia)
The Canning electorate offers a challenging electoral geography on the outskirts of Metro Perth. This electorate offers coastal localities on the Mandurah shoreline precincts, inland residential subdivisions as well as semi-rural and rural areas. This is now a fairly safe LNP seat with no strong Labor polling booths.
The ascendency of Andrew Hastie as Opposition Leader would be a big threat to the current polling profile of the Albanese Government with the assistance of the current polling levels from One Nation (AFR 16 November 2025):
National Public Opinion Indicators
The future requires responsible activism from both Labor and potential allies from a more disciplined United Front Crossbench. The silent majority of Australian voters in regional and Outer Metro Australia may want a stronger voice in Australian politics.
Hastie has not lost any of his canny commando style with this diverse constituency. His electorate of Canning gives him first-hand awareness of the stresses of life in these domains.
I do not share Andrew Hastie’s far-right political values but his new ascendency needs to be taken more seriously by Labor Insiders who can easily generate their own style of Centre-Left populism as an alternative as deteriorating global and Australian financial markets generate the need for a new style of politics to protect Labor’s historic majority and potential united front with progressive crossbench members of the Senate.
Regardless of the predictable style of mainstream Australian politics as 2026 approaches, the electorate has not lost its capacity for volatility as global and local financial indicators show signs of deterioration in the Trump era. President Trump seeks to capture a bigger share of the Chinese market for big corporations on his terms and at the expense of Middle Powers like Australia.
The US Trade Representative (USTR) in Washington, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, is responsible to the President and telegraphs his strategies quite openly for perusal by readers. The Ambassador was appointed by President Trump on 27 February 2025. USTR has offices in Geneva and Brussels but not in Australia. Here, the USTR operates out of the US Embassy in Canberra with the support of the US Consulates in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth and the goodwill of US intel offices and compliant agencies in Australia (Images: USTR Web Site and US Embassy and Consulates in Australia).
Boasting of USTR Priorities
Well-Choreographed Game Plans to Advance America First Agendas
Attention to the structures of power and influence must always complement news reporting with its emphasis on eyewitness news coverage even if the reporting is less entertaining and sensational. Andrew Hastie operates in both domains with a leadership capacity to move Australia into the far-right of the political spectrum to the cheers of One Nation and the National Party.
Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building on the critical issues raised in each article. Your comments on this and related articles can be recorded on theaimn.net site.
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Fascinating as Andrew Hastie may be, with his boyish good looks and a safe lower house seat, albeit in Western Australia, I do not see him as leadership material. The drawback is his limited life experience as a soldier. His entire adult life has been limited to the defence sector, and while I am certain that he would bring much expertise to defence areas, I cannot believe that he has the broad experience outside that realm to allow him to truly take the leadership role in the Liberal Party.
Captain H. is underqualified, under educated for this role, a midget. This nation needs a person of substance, not illusion, A celluloid image is not reality. Even a Colonel would be suspicious of him…
Captain H. is underqualified, under educated for this role, a midget.
Sorry Phil; given the LNP these days, that makes him perfectly suited to the position of their leader.
One has to ask: why did a promising young officer slated to go to the highest ranks leave a mere Captain?
Were his superiors upset that he didn’t take any personal responsibility for the severed hands incident (it happened on his watch), but instead threw his diggers under the bus?
Or did he come to realise that the next time he, his diggers, and live ammunition were all in the same place at the same time, he would, as they say in the military, get fragged.
Or perhaps even both.
Are Australians about to repeat the failures of Obama’s 30,000 troop surge into Afghanistan at home in Australia?
This article revisits Australia’s sad role as the 51st State of the Union and an outpost of the British Empire with the financially crippling AUKUS agreement and joint surveillance operations against our most profitable trading partner. These are gullible times with worse to come.
Thanks for an interesting article.
Whereas Hastie is no immediate threat to Albanese I’m certain that Richard Marles would see Hastie as a direct personal threat. But will Hastie slavishly accede to the wishes of the US war machine as Marles has done, much to our embarrassment?
Thanks, Mediocrates and others for their comments.
Risks must be taken to promote discussion. In an emotionally charged society, a bit of existential style goes a long way.
In the Oxley electorate in the Ipswich Region, the late Bill Hayden survived the tidal wave to Harold Holt in 1966 with a slight increase in his TPP vote of 1.3 percent despite a drop in his primary vote of 0.4 percent to 57.2 percent in an emotionally charged campaign over the war in Vietnam and the conscription of just 10 percent of 20-year-old guys.
This surely shows that emphasis on needs based local priorities can work for local federal MPs.
If I have time, I watch Vingt Heures which is transmitted on Channel 35 here on the SBS News Network at 8.30a.m. Laurent Delahousse still hosts some news productions.
Here is Laurant in action a few minutes before 20 Heures went on air four years ago from Channel 2 in Paris as preserved by You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULPWtw3H4eo
Laurant is emotionally involved in the tasks in preparation for the 20 Heures deadline.
I did not expect news presenters to be so engrossed in their work.
There are a few spots of Laurant news presentations around. He has a small fan club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/29093510758
I respect Laurant’s work and his emotional involvement in news presentations.
Laurant could be expected to have strong political opinions from his interactive style. These private opinions are not tolerated in French public broadcasting.
Private opinions in Australian news coverage are more than tolerated in the Murdoch press here and on Sky News.
Yes, I liked Mediocrates’comment also.
So let’s form a united front support base! I am asking France 2 in Paris to investigate AUKUS too. There are too many secret deals. Back in the 1970s Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands received a gift from Lockheed Martin to work towards a cancellation of Mirage contracts with France in favour of F-35 fighters from the US (NY Times 7 February 1976):
WASHINGTON, Feb. 6—The Lockheed Aircraft Corporation paid $1.1 million to Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who is also inspector general of the Dutch armed forces, to promote the sale of its aircraft, a source familiar with the investigation confirmed today.
In testimony before a Senate subcommittee today, Lockheed’s president said the company had paid about $2 million to Government officials in Japan and $1.1 million to a high official of the Netherlands, whom he did not identify. A source familiar with the Lockheed case later said the Dutch official was Prince Bernhard.
This could happen in Australia. My sources suggest that the purchases of our F-35s was contested within defence units. Ex-Ministers are doing PR stunts for the Trump administration and work on the AUKUS Council.
Let’s unite the progressive opposition and not worry about sectarian divides within the Left.
Canning should be a Labor seat but Andrew Hastie has obviously inspired constituents.
Andrew Hastie is using populist rhetoric against Labor. There is nothing wrong with a bit of Left Populism in return. Labor cannot advance if it leans to far towards the LNP and detaches its support base from proactive involvement. Canning electorate needs more resistance to Andrew Hastie. Public housing areas are voting for the LNP and One Nation in this electorate.
I regard Hastie as a very dangerous candidate for leadership.
His electoral appeal is built mainly on his presentation as a straight, white, conservative, clean looking and dressing middle class male.
Far too little is being exposed of his indiscretions in the theatre of war. Yes those severed hands. And of his political inexperience and childish arrogance about his fairly limited world view and even country view.
The video with the muscle car is such blatant and misleading propaganda.
His “do it my way or l take my bucket and spade….” is emblematic of his self regard and political inexperience. No one is irreplaceable in the political arena. No one is worth more than the entire party and just because you are an opinionated opportunist does not make you a leader.
We should all watch this one very closely as he appears to have the sandgropers fooled.
Sing us a song Andie Hastie,
You making the regions hum with insight
We’re al in the mood for a strong voice
And Canning likes you alright.
Andrew Hastie: The Murdoch press likes your style.
Sing more lyrics Andie Hastie
Make those regions hum with your insights
They’re all in the mood for your strong voice
And Canning loves you alright.