Hastie by name rather than nature

Until early October, Andrew Hastie, a 43-year-old former SAS captain with an honours degree in history, was a frontrunner to ascend to the leadership of Australia's opposition Liberal Party and become the nation's alternative prime minister.

- Bernard Lagan

Instead, the MP resigned from the party's front bench, choosing instead to go to the back benches where, unbound by shadow cabinet solidarity, he will be free to speak his mind.

Specifically, Hastie was vexed over his party's generous immigration policies. He has claimed Australians are becoming “strangers” in their own country.

A month earlier, he appeared in a video lamenting the loss of the country's car-making industry and urging a revival of manufacturing. Weeks before, Hastie had threatened resignation if his party did not abandon the target of achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Comparisons with the populist policies of Britain's Nigel Farage and Donald Trump are inevitable. Hastie is in the thrall of political charlatans, some suggest, willing to pursue regressive policies that will alienate rather than absorb Australia's urban conservatives.