Federal election 2025: Shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie defends low key appearances on campaign trail

Shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie has defended his low key appearances on the campaign trail, confirming he’ll be on hand to announce a “major” defence commitment on Wednesday.

The comments come after reports of the Canning MP being “missing in action” during the Coalition’s campaign despite holding a senior shadow ministerial position and the issue of defence coming to the fore in recent weeks.

Mr Hastie denied his lack of air time this Federal election was an issue, saying he had spent plenty of time talking to his constituents.

“Every three years we apply for our jobs and I’m working very hard for my constituents and I’m doing a lot of work across the country,” he said on ABC radio on Tuesday afternoon.

“In fact, I’ve visited 24 state seats across the country since late January — every state and territory less Tasmania — so these reports are false.

“In those seats I did a lot of defence forums, talking to hundreds of people. Just because the media weren’t there at the time, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

The fired up MP also hit back at one of the few headlines he had been part of: the resurfacing of comments he made on Sky News in 2018 where he said he personally believed women should not serve in frontline combat roles.

The same viewpoint was expressed by the Liberal’s Whitlam candidate Benjamin Britton last year. He was dis-endorsed by the party when they came to light in April.

When asked about his own comments, Mr Hastie said he did not regret them, but reiterated the Coalition’s position of allowing women to serve would remain.

“I don’t regret it, and here’s why, I’ve been in this role now for almost five years, 18 months I was the assistant Minister for Defence in the previous government,” he said.

“I’ve been the shadow minister for defence for three years and our position has always been that combat roles are open to all Australians who meet the standard.

“There has never been an indication that I would change that personnel policy, there’s no record of me ever doing that and our Coalition position is very clear, we have combat roles open to everyone in the Australian community.”

But, his personal view remained. He said he was thinking of his own defence training when making the comments.

“I still remember picking up an 85kg mate and dragging him and it was one of the most intensive, aerobic, anaerobic activities I did in the defence force,” Mr Hastie said.

“I did that in training, but I worked with men who in Afghanistan actually had to do that, had to drag one of their former mates in combat under fire.

“So there’s just this bond between blokes that is hard to explain and you know, people like (defence minister) Richard Marles who deal with ideology and abstractions, won’t ever get it and I don’t pretend to have to explain that to him, I don’t really care what he thinks.”

On the Labor campaign, Mr Hastie’s absence has been capitalised on in recent days.

Mr Albanese said on Monday a string of shadow ministers had been nowhere in sight, singling out Mr Hastie, and described Mr Dutton’s frontbench as “the leftovers of the Morrison government”.

Labor’s candidate for Canning Jarrad Goold said he wasn’t focused on Mr Hastie’s whereabouts.

“He can answer for himself, no doubt you’ll ask him the questions on where he’s been and what he’s been doing. I’m focused on the people of Canning,” he said.

While in Perth on Tuesday, Mr Marles said in general the shadow defence minister had important role to play, and said it was up to the Coalition to decide what that role would publicly look like.

However, Mr Marles said “in light of the circumstances” with campaign suspended for the mourning of Pope Francis his remarks “might not be quite the volume they would otherwise have been”.

Campaign spokesman and shadow Home Affairs minister James Paterson – who has taken the lead on much of the commentary on national security issues – denied Mr Hastie had been in hiding.

“You will see more of him in the coming days as well about this and other issues. Andrew Hastie is an outstanding colleague whom I have immense respect and admiration for, for his service to our country in uniform and his parliamentary service,” he said.