{"id":43389,"date":"2025-04-23T08:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T08:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/43389\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T08:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T08:44:11","slug":"shadow-defence-minister-andrew-hastie-warns-australia-cant-take-us-alliance-for-granted-under-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/43389\/","title":{"rendered":"Shadow defence minister Andrew Hastie warns Australia can’t take US alliance for granted under Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senior opposition figure Andrew Hastie has warned Australia’s long-standing military alliance with the United States faces uncertainty under President Donald Trump’s “unpredictable” America First agenda.<\/p>\n

Speaking alongside Opposition Leader Peter Dutton at the unveiling of the Coalition’s long-awaited defence policy<\/a>, the former soldier said a massive increase in military spending was needed to deal with rapidly changing geo-strategic circumstances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“With the election of President Trump, America is moving to an America-first posture,” he told reporters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We still have a strong relationship with the United States, but we can’t take anything for granted.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Federal election live updates:<\/a> Get the latest updates from the campaign trail<\/p>\n

Catch the latest interviews and in-depth coverage on ABC iview<\/a> and ABC Listen<\/a><\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Andrew Hastie says Donald Trump is “hard to predict”. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)<\/p>\n

Later asked to clarify his remarks, the shadow defence minister told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing program that President Trump was “hard to predict” and suggested Australia had to show strength if it wanted the US onside.<\/p>\n

Trump’s trade war to hit economic growth, including in Australia<\/a><\/p>\n

The International Monetary Fund says the US will be hardest hit by its own increased tariffs, which the organisation says is the biggest upheaval to global trade in 80 years.<\/p>\n

“We always have had a strong relationship with the United States \u2014 we’re two of the world’s oldest continuing democracies \u2014 but leadership matters, and President Trump is rebalancing the terms of trade and security with all of their partners,” he told the ABC.<\/p>\n

“So, the message for us is we need to be strong on our own two feet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Yes, we do have a deep relationship with the United States but the lesson from Ukraine is often in times you’ve got to demonstrate strength yourself if you want your friends to help you.<\/p>\n

“At the operational level, military-to-military, diplomat-to-diplomat, all the other touch points that we have with the United States are very strong, but President Trump is somebody who is hard to predict, and we need to be able to defend ourselves.”<\/p>\n

Earlier in the election campaign, the opposition leader suggested Australia should “leverage” its defence relationship with the US <\/a>as it pushes Washington to lower trade tariffs as part of President Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day”.<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump has imposed sweeping tariffs on countries around the world. (Reuters: Carlos Barria)<\/p>\n

Speaking in Perth on Wednesday, Peter Dutton and Andrew Hastie refused to say what new capabilities the Coalition would buy with an extra $21 billion the opposition has promised to spend on defence during the next five years.<\/p>\n

Under sustained questioning, the opposition only offered vague assurances the money would be spent on new guided weapons and drones, and that there would be “massive investment” into AUKUS infrastructure in Western Australia.<\/p>\n

Read more about the federal election:<\/p>\n

Want even more? Here’s where you can find all our 2025 federal election<\/a> coverage<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Coalition announced it would spend $3 billion on 28 additional F-35 aircraft but during the election has stopped short of specifying any other new capabilities it would acquire if it won office.<\/p>\n

Defence Minister Richard Marles has slammed the opposition’s long-awaited policy announcement, which has been unveiled after early voting had begun, saying the Coalition has failed to say how it would be funded or what it would deliver.<\/p>\n

“Throwing out a number and doing nothing to back it up \u2014 not explain how you would raise the money, or how you would spend it \u2014 does not equate to increased defence spending,”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

he said.<\/p>\n

“There is nothing to see here, they announced nothing today. There was no single new capability announced in the Coalition’s defence policy today,” Mr Marles told reporters in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

Hastie stands by criticism of women in combat<\/p>\n

The opposition’s defence policy unveiling also featured ongoing questions over Mr Hastie’s well-publicised comments in 2018<\/a> warning that women should not serve in combat roles.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Asked whether he stood by his view, he declined to back away from the comments saying:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I did say it, and I’m not going to disown who I was seven years ago.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The shadow defence minister said the Coalition’s policy that all combat roles were open to women would not change but a future Dutton government would insist on high standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senior opposition figure Andrew Hastie has warned Australia’s long-standing military alliance with the United States faces uncertainty under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[24158,24157,9202,2993,24161,13656,24159,811,24160,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-43389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-andrew-hastie","9":"tag-australian-defence-force","10":"tag-coalition","11":"tag-defence","12":"tag-defence-minister","13":"tag-peter-dutton","14":"tag-richard-marles","15":"tag-security","16":"tag-shadow-defence-minister","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114386401854101105","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}