Liberal MP gets security upgrades as One Nation campaigns against him

Andrew Hastie, a Liberal MP and Opposition defence spokesperson, has had his home and office fitted with new security measures. One Nation, a minor party, has been running a political campaign against him over his public stance on Ben Roberts-Smith — a former SAS soldier who lost a court defamation case in 2023.

The security upgrades are real and significant. They don't happen by default. Federal Parliament's own security service and the Australian Federal Police assessed Hastie's situation and decided the threat level was high enough to justify hardening his home and his electorate office in Perth. That bar is not easy to clear.

One Nation's campaign is not just online chatter. They're running a genuine ground campaign in Hastie's seat of Canning — ordering how-to-vote cards, knocking on doors, potentially running a resourced candidate — because they want to unseat him at the next election.

What's the Roberts-Smith question about?

Ben Roberts-Smith was a decorated SAS corporal. In 2023, a court ruled against him in a defamation case. Some people, particularly One Nation supporters, view that court decision as unfair — they see it as the establishment punishing a decorated soldier. One Nation has backed Roberts-Smith publicly and framed the judgment as a stitch-up.

Hastie served in Afghanistan with the SAS himself. But he has spoken publicly about the need for accountability within special forces. That puts him in direct disagreement with the "establishment stitched him up" story that One Nation is selling. The fact that Hastie is a former SAS operator himself gives him credibility when he makes that argument — it's harder for critics to dismiss him as an outsider.

What does this tell us about Hastie?

Hastie has a track record of calling things as he sees them, regardless of what his own party thinks is politically convenient. In April 2025, he publicly warned that Australia's military alliance with the United States faced real uncertainty under the Trump administration — a position that differed from the more reassuring public line some Coalition figures preferred at the time.

He's also been active in Parliament since the Budget. According to reporting from the Sydney Morning Herald, he's contributed to debates on spending bills, environmental treaties, and small business cyber security. The Liberal Party sometimes discusses him in talks about future leadership, and this level of activity is consistent with someone building a cross-portfolio reputation.

On One Nation's campaign against him, news.com.au reports that Hastie has said he will not back down.

What does it mean that he needs security upgrades?

One Nation's targeting of a sitting Opposition frontbencher escalates what's been called "intra-right pressure politics" — that is, conflict within the conservative and nationalist side of Australian politics — in ways that have sharpened since the last federal election. The temperature has risen.

The specific dynamic here is unusual: it's a former SAS operator being targeted by a political campaign because he won't endorse another former SAS operator's version of events. When security services and the Federal Police assess a threat serious enough to warrant home and office hardening, that registers on its own terms, separate from the political theatre around it.

The real test will come at the ballot box. One Nation has to convert this campaign effort into actual votes in Canning at the next election. Everything before that is just pressure.