The Weird Psychology of Two Liberal Party Takers

by David Archibald

7 July 2026

 

Elon Musk has simplified the political lexicon with the terms “makers” and “takers”; no explanation needed. The takers in this instance are the former Army captains Andrew Hastie and Jonathon Huston, members for the Federal seat of Canning and the State seat of Nedlands respectively. Of the two, Hastie is doing the greater damage to the country, so we will start with him.

Hastie did not have a glorious war in Afghanistan. His war was one of carelessness, vindictiveness and slight regard for him by his own troops. The carelessness was shown by the fact that two Afghan shepherd boys, 6 and 7, were killed by a helicopter strike called in by him. He may not have communicated directly with the American Apache helicopter involved but he was in command, which means he bears responsibility. There is a strict procedure in calling in air strikes to avoid wasting munitions on the wrong targets. The fact that the wrong people were killed means there was laxity in following regulations. Nevertheless the Defence Department was merciful and ‘no adverse findings were made against ADF personnel’ meaning Hastie.

Hastie has a high opinion of his own moral rectitude so engaged in a lot of performative rending of garments for his role in killing the innocent shepherd boys. From those articles:

Hastie said the shooting was a very sad and tragic consequence of war. “It’s an incident that I know all involved hold deep regret, including myself,” he said.

“As I have said previously, not everything goes to plan in any aspect of life, let alone in a high-pressure war zone where people are trying to kill you.

“The example reported today of an accidental shooting of two young Afghan civilians from a US Apache helicopter is a very, very sad and tragic consequence of war.”

And the tell: “I’ve seen these things and I’ve had to have the strength of character, integrity and honour to deal with these incidents and serve my country.”

It is a truism that anyone who feels the need to talk about their ‘integrity and honour’ is warning others that the proclaimer may be deficient in integrity and honour. If someone is self-confident in those things, they don’t mention them.

The slight regard for Hastie by the troops under his command was shown by the incident in which Hastie, orbiting the battlefield in a helicopter, told his troops to bring back biometric data on insurgents if they could. So two of them cut the hands off a dead Afghan to bring back to camp for the fingerprints, most likely just to freak him out. By his own admission, Hastie never fired a shot in anger in Afghanistan; he was likely not inclined to.

Hastie’s vindictiveness is manifest in his decade-long campaign against someone who had a very good war indeed, Ben Roberts-Smith. Ben Roberts-Smith is the epitome of manly virtue, fearlessness and selflessness. He risked his own life to save his comrades-in-arms more than once. His guidance was appreciated by younger troops. Nobody had a bad word to say about him. Ben Roberts-Smith is the exact opposite of our hapless do-gooder, Andrew Hastie. So why the vindictiveness? The psychological term for it is narcissistic projection. Ordinary projection is a defence mechanism in which someone attributes their own unacceptable behaviours to another person. Instead of acknowledging these things in themselves, they “project” them outward and accuse or criticize others for the very same issues. Narcissistic projection is a more deliberate or manipulative version often seen in personality disorders, where the person accuses others of their own toxic behaviours to deflect blame and maintain a positive self-image.

Toxic behaviour? Most readers will be unaware that Hastie has been a defendant in a defamation case brought by Perth businessman Greg Poland. Hastie had become aware that Poland would be talking business at a meeting in the Subiaco Hotel. Hastie employed a bikie to go there and record Poland so he could use it against him.

It appears that Hastie passed the recording on to former State Liberal leader Kirkup, who then passed it on to journalists, who in turn wrote articles defamatory of Mr Poland. Toxic or not, this is not the behaviour of a gentleman. The case is ongoing in the WA Supreme Court.

Hastie is a fabulist. He tells stories to himself often enough that he believes them. In this article, he says he was shamed by the Brereton Report of 2020. If he had any grip on reality, he should have been laughing at it instead because on page 120 the report says that Australian special forces had a habit of surrounding Afghan villages and then tying up and torturing all the men and boys before slitting their throats. Not one such village has been named or found despite the more than $300 million spent on trying to find war crimes in Afghanistan. You can’t take seriously anyone who takes the Brereton Report seriously.

In this article, Hastie admits to making things up, saying that his “observations, along with what he had heard and been told over the years, formed a “mosaic” in his mind that Mr Roberts-Smith had committed a war crime killing at Syahchow”. Hastie has accused Ben Roberts-Smith of murdering six Afghans. One peculiarity of all these claims is that there is not one photo of any of the dead Afghans. In another article, Hastie alleged that Ben Roberts-Smith “blooded” a rookie soldier by ordering him to murder an unarmed Afghan. One problem with that story is that the word rookie is an Americanism. No Australian of the sort that would join the SAS would use it in conversation. The fable of ‘blooding the rookie’ was likely dreamed up in Canberra.

The clearest evidence that Hastie’s animus against Ben Roberts-Smith is driven by narcissistic projection is when he said in court that ‘Mr Roberts-Smith was a hypocrite, because “bad stuff had happened in Afghanistan, and yet the outward-facing picture of Mr Roberts-Smith was at odds with his battlefield conduct.” Hastie could have been describing himself because after 11 years of pretending to be a conservative, earlier this year he outed himself as a taker, that is a leftie, in this article with this headline:

In the article, Hastie is quoted as saying that “he was open to possible changes to the capital gains tax discount, negative gearing and a windfall profit tax on gas exports.” It is spooky that he anticipated what happened in the budget a couple of months later. He is so in tune with Labor Party thinking. Yet more repulsive is that Hastie spoke of a father-son dynamic with Malcolm Turnbull. In defence circles in Canberra, Hastie is considered to be an arrogant lightweight. He will not be missed.

The other troubled soul, former Captain Huston, resigned from the Liberal Party so he could advocate for higher royalties on mining companies operating in WA. And he also believes that Ben Roberts-Smith was responsible for five murders in Afghanistan for which there are 21 witnesses, but strangely no photographs, not a single one.

 

David Archibald is the author of American Gripen: The Solution to the F-35 Nightmare

 

P.S. It appears that Hastie now regrets trying to destroy Ben Roberts-Smith’s life, not because it was a nasty, unchristian thing to do but because it has ruined him politically. This article has this headline:

Hastie had previously boasted of his role in the persecution of Ben Roberts-Smith. It mostly sprang from his imagination.