Election 2025: Ex-soldier Andrew Hastie beats a retreat from Liberal branding

When is the politician more ­appealing than the party? According to Labor, Andrew Hastie must have weighed before putting up signs with no Liberal branding.

A billboard of Andrew Hastie at the northern entrance to the city of Mandurah does not feature a Liberal logo.

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When is the politician more ­appealing than the party?

According to Labor, Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie must have weighed this question before ditching the Liberal logo from the home page of his website then putting up campaign signs that feature his face but no Liberal branding.

At the highway entry to the ­satellite city of Mandurah south of Perth, voters now drive past a billboard picturing a smiling Mr Hastie and the words “putting you first”. He is wearing a navy blue polo shirt with an Australian flag printed where a left top pocket might otherwise go. Under the flag are the words: “Andrew ­Hastie MP, federal member for Canning.”

The absence of a Liberal logo – again – was too delicious for Perth MP Patrick Gorman. On Monday the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister facetiously said Mr Hastie was an independent.

“We are seeing more and more independent candidates into this mix and there’s one I think the media has missed … there’s an ­independent candidate standing in the seat of Canning. His name is Andrew Hastie,” Mr Gorman said.

“He might be known to some of you, but if you go and look around the seat of Canning you will struggle to find a single Liberal logo anywhere in that seat.

“This man, this candidate, this frontbencher for Peter Dutton, has run away from the very party that endorsed him.”

Mr Hastie, a former SAS commander, has certainly become his own brand in Mandurah after 10 years as the MP for the sprawling seat of Canning. He has written a newsletter every week to his subscribers in Canning since 2017.

Mr Hastie campaigning for the 2022 election with Liberal branding on his signs.

The seat has been Liberal for 32 years, but keeping it is hard work. It is a notoriously difficult electorate in which to campaign because it is so varied – it is a mix of Perth’s southeastern fringes, rural areas and the satellite city of Mandurah, which is home to a significant portion of families with low household incomes, self-funded retirees and businesspeople with homes on the canals.

Mr Hastie hit back at his Labor nemesis on Monday, saying the claims about his campaign were deliberately deceitful. Mr Hastie says everyone in Canning knows he is a Liberal.

“Even the local possums know it,” Mr Hastie said, in a cheeky ­reference to Mr Gorman’s middle name Possum.

Mr Hastie said the majority of campaign material distributed in Canning was branded Liberal. His office provided images of a recent signed letter from him to every Canning voter with the Liberal logo on it. He also mailed out a brochure titled “Andrew Hastie and the Liberals’ plan to get Australia back on track”.

Team Hastie also drew attention to Mr Gorman’s social media featuring images of him without a Labor logo in frame. In one photo of Mr Gorman and volunteers, they wear red T-shirts printed with the words: “Patrick Gorman MP, local values, national result”. Most of the shirts have no Labor branding on the front, though a small Labor logo is visible on the front of two of the shirts. “By Patrick Gorman’s backwards logic, Labor is ‘not popular’ in Perth because his campaign material isn’t branded Labor,” Mr Hastie said.

Mr Gorman replied with screenshots, tearouts and photographs of his own showing the Labor logo plastered on his campaign material, including on signs.

Mr Hastie holds his seat by just 1.2 per cent. He is one of only three sitting Liberal MPs from Western Australia running for re-election in the lower house at the election. This follows an ­astonishing and sustained run by Labor in WA. The state Labor Party has won three elections in a row with thumping majorities and the pro-Labor sentiment in the west is credited with delivering victory to Anthony Albanese in 2022. The Liberals have been unable to recover as they hoped in WA. While there was an 11.9 per cent swing against the Cook Labor government at the March 8 election, two thirds of it went to parties other than the Liberals.