# ‘I don’t want to be here’: Andrew Hastie was a reluctant but ‘straightforward’ witness in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case

https://mins.news/en/item/53257

- The Guardian, 2026-09-10 15:00 UTC
- Politics
- Original: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/sep/11/andrew-hastie-reluctant-witness-ben-roberts-smith-case-one-nation-traitor-attack-ntwnfb

> Liberal MP and former SAS soldier Andrew Hastie was compelled by subpoena to testify in Ben Roberts-Smith’s failed 2022 defamation case. The judge described Hastie as honest and straightforward, while Pauline Hanson’s One Nation attacked him online as a “gutless maggot” and “traitor”.