Liberal MP Andrew Hastie is trying to move on from Ben Roberts-Smith. The world won’t let him

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie has a message for supporters of Ben Roberts-Smith, the former SAS corporal charged with murder: don’t blame me for your hero’s prosecution.

The Shadow Industry Minister’s involvement in the case threatens his reputation among veterans, his political career and perhaps even his safety. For Mr Roberts-Smith, the stakes are higher. He faces life imprisonment.

Last week on Sky News, Mr Hastie tried to convince his many critics — he can rarely post on social media without the initials BRS getting a mention — that he was not responsible for Mr Roberts-Smith’s loss in the seven-year defamation battle against Nine Entertainment Co that presaged this year’s war crimes charges.

“My evidence, as you said, is very small,” Mr Hastie said in Thursday’s interview. “I am not central to this but I’m public, unlike everyone else who was anonymised in the case, which is why I think people are fixated on it.”

The assertion was true. Mr Hastie, who was an SAS officer five-and-a-half years, provided corroborative but not first-hand evidence for two of the murder allegations against his famous former colleague and a count of bullying. Praised by the judge as “honest and straightforward”, his evidence received only four paragraphs in the 286,632-word judgment.

‘Cosmic justice’

That isn’t the full story, though, which is why it may be difficult for Mr Hastie to shake off his association with the campaign to convict Mr Roberts-Smith. In court, Mr Hastie didn’t hide his close contacts with the journalists who led the story for Nine, which has provided legal assistance for an unrelated defamation lawsuit against him and others that starts in Perth in two weeks.

As a captain in the SAS’s espionage unit, 4 Squadron, he became friendly with several of the central witnesses against Mr Roberts-Smith, including a sergeant known by the pseudonym Kenneth Barber who alleged for years Mr Roberts-Smith was not entitled to the Victoria Cross.

Sgt Barber and Mr Hastie appeared in a 2019 edition of the 60 Minutes television program that accused Mr Roberts-Smith of kicking a prisoner off a cliff in the Afghanistan war and having him shot.

In court, Mr Hastie described long conversations with Sgt Barber at the SAS headquarters in Perth discussing God, evil and “cosmic justice”. “Don’t you worry,” Mr Hastie said he told Sgt Barber. “Time will take care of himself.”

(Mr Roberts-Smith, who is on bail and lives in south-east Queensland, has denied the charges and said he intends to plead not guilty.)

Mr Hastie’s involvement in the case, which one writer called the “murder trial of the decade”, has won him admirers in addition to his detractors.

One Nation policies

After Mr Hastie reportedly told other Coalition MPs on June 18 he would die rather “than bend the knee to One Nation”, he was praised last week by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for standing up to the right-wing party.

“Good luck to you, Member for Canning,” Mr Albanese told Parliament on Thursday. “Certainly if it’s you or One Nation, I’m for this bloke, let me tell you.”

Mr Albanese likes to opine on the Liberal leadership. He defended Sussan Ley before she was removed in February. His support for Mr Hastie may have been designed to undermine Liberal leader Angus Taylor, who has limited his criticism of One Nation to avoid offending former Coalition voters.

The irony of the Labor endorsement, and Mr Hastie’s conflict with One Nation, is that Mr Hastie’s priorities mirror One Nation’s.

Like One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, Mr Hastie’s top demand is to limit immigration. His opposition to the net-zero Greenhouse gas emissions policy helped convince the Coalition to drop it last November. One Nation states: “Net zero is destroying Australia.”

Although Mr Hastie has given up his ambition to resume car manufacturing, he argues for “reindustrialisation” and declares the “rules-based global order is dead”. One Nation argues international institutions, including the United Nations, undermine Australian independence and wants more things made in Australia too.

Conspiracy theory

So what is the conflict about? That’s a mystery. But Mr Hastie, who has been provided with government security at his outer Perth home, seems to believe secretive forces are operating to harm him.

In the Bolt interview, he mentioned media reports last week that some of One Nation’s Facebook pages were operated by Indonesian contractors and cited a recent warning from ASIO’s director-general about foreign governments engaged in “psychological operations online to divide countries”.

“There are nefarious activities in the background,” Mr Hastie said. “We don’t know who is running them.

“I think there is money behind it. I don’t know about the source of that money.”

As a soldier who worked with intelligence agencies, Mr Hastie knows more than most about foreign interference. But it is difficult to assess the credibility of the conspiracy theory without more information.

In the meantime, as weak Coalition support threatens Mr Hastie’s seat and many other frontbenchers’, an opinion article in Nine’s papers last week ran under the headline: “Why Andrew Hastie is on the brink of abandoning the Liberal Party”.

Written by one of Australia’s most experienced political commentators, the article said Mr Hastie’s involvement in the Roberts-Smith case “had a profound impact on Hastie’s thinking and approach” and “undoubtedly cost him support internally”.

“To the point where if he feels abandoned by the Liberal Party in this fight to the death, he will abandon the Liberal Party,” the article said, without quoting him.

There are few better ways to test your value to an organisation than threatening to quit. That night Mr Hastie appeared on Sky News to promise he would stand in Canning at the next election — as a Liberal.

Whether he is re-elected may be influenced by whether Mr Roberts-Smith’s supporters blame the politician come election day for the downfall of a military icon.