Amid Hanson’s vitriol, supporters are recasting aspiring Liberal leader Andrew Hastie as a voice of integrity and reason, but his track record makes it a hard sell, writes Andrew Gardiner.
WITH THE SPAT between Senator Pauline Hanson and accused “traitor” MP Andrew Hastie dominating headlines last week, supporters and reporters alike bestowed on Hastie a very different title: "genuine conviction politician".
‘Sometimes you get a flash of lightning, an insight into someone being more genuine and honest,’ the ABC’s Jacob Greber gushed after the Shadow Minister and aspiring Liberal leader called Hanson “weak” and “disrespectful to veterans” over her jibe.
Greber wasn’t alone in his praise, but was he right? We took a closer look at Hastie, his supporters and the image they curate for a sometimes-credulous Fourth Estate, large sections of which showed sympathy for Hastie after a One Nation cartoon posted by Hanson branded him a traitor for testifying against Ben Roberts-Smith at a 2022 defamation trial.
It turns out Hastie’s new “man of integrity” image – which kicked into overdrive during the cartoon spat – is more artifice than authenticity. That image has three essential elements: Hastie the patriot who tells it like it is and did the right thing over Roberts-Smith; Hastie the genuine, conviction pollie; and Hastie as voice of reason against the most rancourous elements on the right, including Hanson and, by implication, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor.
In pursuit of his “voice of reason” narrative, Hastie has emphasised points of difference with Hanson, arguing the Coalition can win back conservative voters without emulating her extremism. To that end, he’s tossed a few populist bones of his own to punters, insisting in April that “the system is rigged” and that Liberals should not be the “first line of defence for corporate Australia”.
But it’s near-impossible to reconcile the above with Hastie’s long history of Far-Right orthodoxy. This is the man who, in the last 12 months, insisted immigration levels make White Australians feel they’re ‘strangers in [their] own home’, who threatened to quit Shadow Cabinet if the Liberals didn’t jettison their 2050 net zero goal and who tried to somehow conflate late-term abortions with paid parental leave for those who lose a child.
Hastie's pressuring the L-NP to the Right on both net zero and immigration this year, together with occasional, off-putting outbreaks of religious dogma, raise serious questions around who he is at any given moment: the touted “voice of reason” or a Far-Right “conviction politician”.
Hastie oscillates between both in an attempt ‘to reach aggrieved One Nation voters’, journalist Rachel Withers believes. That makes him neither: conviction pols don’t abandon their ideology for votes and true voices of moderation don’t conceal a history on the farthest of the Far Right.
Withers and others see Hastie’s straying from long-held beliefs as naked opportunism. Their point is reinforced by free market lobby group Advance Australia, which might have been sorely tempted to terminate its support for Hastie when he went rogue.
Instead, it ignored those moments and continues to spruik Hastie harder than it does Hanson. Observers say Advance and its backers (Hanson-backing Gina Rinehart aside) still see Hastie as a good bet to help accomplish their goals and his off-reservation excursions as merely a short-term pitch for leadership.
Far from the grassroots guy who “tells it like it is”, Hastie is cocooned behind a well-resourced network of consultants and spin doctors. This team has dedicated its creative energies to transforming early-version Andrew – off-putting religious-Right ideologue – into Hastie 2.0: patriot, straight-talker and occasional populist who believes in the rule of law over Roberts-Smith.
Hastie’s comms team uses repetition to push a strict set of themes – integrity, military service, security, rule of law – in a steady stream of written statements, emails to supporters, social media videos and interviews with sympathetic media. They’re ably assisted by Advance and consultants Whitestone Strategic, the former going so far as to offer a subtle thumbs-up on the thorny matter of Roberts-Smith.
Hastie said about Roberts-Smith:
“I stand by what I have done in the past.”
And:
“For that I’ve been called a rat, a traitor and a dog c___."
Now here’s Advance:
‘We know he isn’t afraid to speak his mind [and] won’t resort to playing petty politics.’
Importantly, the image re-do is working, thanks in part to media reports on the “genuine conviction politician who cuts through”.
Greber’s aforementioned analysis was preceded by The Guardian, which relied on Justice Anthony Besanko at the Roberts-Smith defamation hearing:
“Mr Hastie was an honest and straightforward witness.”
‘Three times, in fact, [Besanko] characterised [Hastie] as “straightforward” in his testimony,’ writer Ben Doherty went on. Surprisingly, The Saturday Paper chimed in, referring to Hastie’s ‘courage under fire’ following the Hanson/Roberts-Smith onslaught.
‘The former special forces commander, who served twice in Afghanistan... showed dignity in confronting One Nation’s slurs.’
Bongiorno and Doherty were writing in the wider contexts of Hanson’s attacks and events in Parliament, but their words served a narrative Team Hastie is happy to get out there.
Since the Hanson cartoon controversy dropped, there’s been far less mention of what has long been known about Hastie: he’s of the Far Right and his religious homilies turn voters off. The media’s rush to cover the story of the moment (the cartoon and the backlash) was largely bereft of deeper analysis.
That must have delighted Hastie's coterie.
Why does the eco-system around Hastie stick with him despite his flaws as a candidate, despite Taylor leading his party and despite Hanson soaring in the polls? Analyst Kos Samaras points out that many voters who lean toward Hanson do so despite ‘reservations about her views’.
These voters could “come home” to the Liberals if they’re led by a “voice of reason”, Hastie's supporters believe. That moderate, nuanced voice is Hastie, they say, not Taylor, whose “One Nation-lite” positions leave him little more than Hanson’s pale imitation.
Hastie was one of the few Liberals to strengthen his status as an MP at last year’s Federal Election, achieving a swing his way of 5.4 per cent. In Parliament last August, he chalked that up to the “grassroots campaign we ran, focused on issues that affect real people”.
Others aren’t as rose-coloured in their assessment. They say his success was more due to the deluge of posters, mail-outs, newspaper ads and other paid publicity, which dwarfed those of his opponents and reportedly included a wrap-around, election-eve double-page Hastie spread in the high-catchment local paper.
Those aren’t the hallmarks of grassroots door-knocking. That’s money.
How much money? It’s hard to say (AEC candidate returns go through the Liberal Party) but we do know he brought in $260,000 for an online ad blitz on immigration, aimed (as with his crusade against net zero) at forcing the Liberals even further to the Right.
That campaign was “selfish and self-serving”, one Liberal insider told The Saturday Paper:
“Instead of trying to keep the pressure on the government (he tried) to make himself the issue.”
That’s a far cry from the “selfless digger who stood up for what’s right”.
Andrew Gardiner is an Adelaide-based graduate in Media Studies, with a Masters in Social Policy.
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