Andrew Hastie has found his enemy, drawn his sword, red texta ready, and quoted Sun Tzu. The only trouble is the scoreboard. In a newsletter on Friday reported by Sky News, the Liberal frontbencher turned his week of war talk into a manifesto.
"One Nation has declared war on me, so they shall have war," he wrote, vowing not to be "pushed around" and declaring the fight "personal." "They will have to blast me out of Canning."
He reached, again, for the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, whose Art of War he'd already brandished in Question Time back in February. "If One Nation wants to meet us on the battlefield, then so be it," he wrote. "They should heed Sun Tzu's wisdom to never press a determined foe."
A theatrical run of form
The props are something of a habit. On the morning UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned, Hastie went on Sky News and held a Treasury consultation paper up to the camera with one word scrawled across it in red texta, ''TOXIC''. Weeks earlier he'd branded Pauline Hanson "MAGA first" and been thrown out of Question Time under 94A. The Sun Tzu book is just the latest prop.
The battle he's picked, and the scoreboard he's avoiding
Hastie calls this "the biggest battle since Sir Robert Menzies formed the Liberal Party in 1944", and says he believes the Liberals can defeat Labor and win government. Belief is doing a great deal of work in that sentence. Recent Capital Brief and DemosAU seat modelling has One Nation winning more than 60 seats at the next election and the Coalition shedding almost 40 MPs. If the Liberals are about to march off that to form government, then Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are real, and Sun Tzu is available for the campaign launch.
The war One Nation says it isn't fighting
There's also the matter of the enemy. Hastie says One Nation "declared war" on him. One Nation says it isn't running any campaign against him at all, and that the Liberals are doing plenty of damage on their own. So the war he's now vowing to wage is, on his opponent's account, one he's largely declared himself. This is, after all, the man who told his party room he'd rather be taken out in a box than bend the knee, and who promised to do One Nation "slowly".
Acting from a position of strength
Hastie warned colleagues off any talk of preference deals. "It signals weakness," he wrote. "We should only act from a position of strength." The position of strength, for the record, is a party the modelling has losing 40 seats and bleeding its base to the very outfit he's declaring war on. "If One Nation really wants to make peace, then come to the table," he added. "But it will be on our terms." The terms, just now, are being written by the polls.
Why One Nation is in his sights at all
The feud has roots. Hastie is a former SAS officer who gave evidence in the Ben Roberts-Smith case, and One Nation, which backs the Victoria Cross recipient, has made him a target. Roberts-Smith denies the war crime charges he faces and is yet to stand trial. Sun Tzu, it's worth noting, also wrote at length about knowing the size of the army you're up against.
For now, Hastie has his war, his newsletter, his red texta and his Art of War. One Nation has the polling. Two years is a long time in politics, as he says. It's also long enough to lose 40 seats.
