Andrew Hastie can’t wait to lead the Liberal party, so this weekend he gave us a sneak preview. After spending Friday with Malcolm Turnbull, Hastie by name, proved he was hasty by nature, following the well-worn path of his newfound mentor onto the set of the ABC’s Insiders. All that was missing was Turnbull’s trademark leather jacket.

Only two Liberal MPs attended Turnbull’s talkfest on sovereignty and security. Turnbull said he was disappointed there weren’t more. Given his tireless white-anting of the Coalition since he became prime minister in 2015, it’s surprising that there were any. From the high-water mark of 90 seats won by Tony Abbott in 2013, the party has suffered a cumulative loss of 47 seats, and while Turnbull can’t take all the credit, he deserves full marks for trying.

Hastie says he and Turnbull have long been friends, and why not? After all, a week is a long time in politics, and both men seem to share a common interest in tearing down the actual leader of the Liberal party, Angus Taylor.

So, there was Hastie, fearlessly freelancing on foreign and economic policy. Not only was the war on Iran a ‘huge miscalculation’, Hastie said he’d had a ‘visceral reaction’ to President Trump criticising Australia for not helping to secure the passage of tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

As the shadow minister for sovereign capability, Hastie could have done his day job and instead of attacking our most important ally, attacked the Albanese government for refusing to increase defence spending, leaving Australia with almost no capacity to assist the US in securing a vital sea lane of critical importance to Australia.

Hastie said that after their last two electoral drubbings, the Liberals need to ‘adopt a posture of humility’, but he wasn’t inclined to show enough humility to admit his own failure to ensure Australia was better armed when he served as as either a former assistant defence minister or shadow defence minister.

Hastie also called for the Liberal party to be ‘open-minded’ on reducing negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, saying no one was going to reward the Liberals for a ‘final last stand for neoliberal politics’. It sounded as if he was channelling Kevin Rudd or Jim Chalmers, but if Hastie thinks voters will reward him for reducing negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount, he should talk to former Labor leader Bill Shorten whose proposal to restrict negative gearing to new homes and cut the capital gains tax discount from 50 per cent to 25 per cent didn’t make housing more affordable; it made him and his party unelectable.

Albanese was quick to encourage division in the Liberals by praising Hastie, and the left-leaning commentariat applauded his ‘best on-field performance’, savaging Taylor’s leadership as ‘terminal’, and calling Hastie a ‘Liberal leader in waiting’ who ‘continues to impress’.

Turnbull said a key question about his new protégé was whether he could outgrow the right-wing politics that ‘destroyed the party’. Presumably, he wants Hastie to adopt the green energy policies of Zac Kirkup, who almost succeeded in giving the Liberals net zero parliamentarians in Western Australia.

Hastie gave it a red-hot go. Asked about a windfall profits tax on gas exports, Hastie said he was ‘open-minded’ because the Liberal party should not be ‘the first line of defence for corporate Australia’. The trouble with being too open-minded is that your brain might fall out. If you’re not sure whether your grey matter has gone AWOL, a tell-tale sign is that Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young welcomes your support for her levy on gas exports. In March, Labor, the Coalition and One Nation voted it down. But the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet began modelling the tax grab while the Treasurer announced the budget would be ‘ambitious’, with the understated menace of Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

Hastie is the shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability, but if he wants to champion a policy like this, he should be the shadow minister for sovereign risk. The Chair of Shell Australia, Cecile Wake, explained that a 25 per cent levy would ‘fundamentally erode the investment case for new gas supply from LNG exporters and domestic producers alike’ and send a ‘strong negative signal’ to trade partners.

But Hastie has no time for ‘multinationals and big business in this country’ who have ‘lost their social licence and made no effort to recover it’.

Instead, Hastie is flirting with a policy championed by the eco-doomster socialists at the Australia Institute who want to kill off the gas industry entirely. They argue that the levy would not only raise loads of money but increase domestic supply by making exports ‘less attractive’. This, they believe, would have little effect on investment returns because the current regime allows ‘excessive’ profits to flow overseas.

In the real world, increasing gas extraction is the key to energy security, self-sufficiency in fertiliser production, and lower costs for aluminium smelters and other manufacturers.

This week, Albanese was attacked for fuelling inflation by cutting the excise on petrol and diesel and the road user charge. It was a ‘Taylor-made’ moment for the opposition leader to savage the PM for adopting his cuts but not offsetting them as Taylor proposed by slashing subsidies for green hydrogen, home batteries and electric vehicles.

Instead, Taylor had to address the chaos Hastie created. Showing true leadership, he didn’t publicly chastise Hastie as Sussan Ley did when Hastie went rogue; he quietly gave Hastie a ‘gentle reminder’ of the shadow cabinet process, using media interest in Liberal infighting to make his policy so simple that even the economically illiterate in the press, the parliament and his party could understand: all we will get from more taxes on houses, oil, and gas is less of the very things we need.

Those who backed Hastie to lead the Liberal party said he needed an economic portfolio to broaden his credentials; what he really needs is a crash course in economics and Liberal values. There’s more to promoting industry than striking a pose in front of a vintage Falcon XW like a latter-day Fonzie in Happy Days.

Hastie has the Hollywood looks of a war hero, but he isn’t a team player, doesn’t follow orders, and puts self-promotion ahead of loyalty. If his leadership were a movie, it would be Thelma and Louise, Hastie behind the wheel of a 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible with Turnbull at his side, driving the party straight over a cliff.