Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Early Learning
Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT
SKY NEWS NEWSDAY WITH TRUDY MCINTOSH
Wednesday, 14 January 2026
Topics: Hate speech and firearms legislation; Australia’s Ambassador to the US
TRUDY MCINTOSH: Back home and we’re seeing a parliamentary committee look at the crucial details of the government’s proposed hate speech changes and also gun reforms. This is going to be a huge focus when parliament is recalled here Monday. I’m joined now by the Shadow Assistant Education Minister and Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie. Zoe, great to see you. We sit here today one month on from the Bondi attack. Parliament will return next week. Some of your colleagues have already made clear that they can’t support the changes that are out there. Are you comfortable with where Labor has landed?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, I think there’s a really important process ongoing under the umbrella of the inquiry of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. Sky is running that live on its channel 603 and I thank you for doing that. It’s really important. But the thing you would have seen this morning from the testimony given is that there’s a real question mark over whether the bills as drafted are going to do exactly what they were set out to do. We demanded that the government act on anti-Semitism, but what we’re seeing today is in fact the Jewish community questioning whether the bills will actually do what we want them to do or whether in fact what will happen is that they will just enable people to cite scripture, to cite religious texts and in fact continue with the same kinds of attacks that we have been seeing ever since October 7, 2023. So there’s a real question about whether the legislation does what it’s meant to do and there’s a real question about whether it needs to be amended. I think that’s a question that’s going to be asked by the government. I think that’s a question that’s in the government’s mind as much as it’s in our mind as well. We have processes to go through, through our party room and through our shadow cabinet, which we will in coming days, but it’s important that these bills are right, not a kind of political pizza, throw it all on there for frankly divisive purposes. The Prime Minister has demonstrated just how much he doesn’t understand antisemitism by this grab bag of measures that he’s put into this bill, including gun law reform, which frankly is not a good thing. And I think that’s a question that should stand on its own. That’s something that should be considered and looked at, but not part of this bill. This bill is about stopping what motivated the attacks we saw exactly one month ago today.
TRUDY MCINTOSH: Zoe, last hour I was joined by Labor Senator Raff Ciccone. He’s the chair of the Parliament’s powerful Intelligence Committee here. Are you heartened by him publicly confirming he has an open mind when it comes to proposing changes to that crucial exemption that has caused so much concern for the Jewish community, being able to quote from a text and use that, in Peter Wertheim’s words, he says, using religion as a cloak? Are you heartened by the fact that the top senator for Labor is saying they have an open mind to making amendments to that?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, I was on the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security in the last term of Parliament. Raff is an excellent chair of that committee. He has a really difficult job to do in terms of threading the needle. Frankly, I think he’s grateful for the quality of the Coalition contribution he’s getting, led by Phil Thompson and Jonno Duniam in the room. They’re having an appropriate, rigorous, and detailed discussion about what the bills will do and if they will do what they are meant to do. Raff will do that job very carefully indeed, and provide critical feedback to Tony Burke among other people, on what changes may need to be made to the bill to ensure its passage next week for both House and Senate.
TRUDY MCINTOSH: And Zoe on the gun proposals, there has been pushback today. It’s been growing, I’d have to say, Nationals, federally. But I spoke to the Tasmanian Police Minister too, a Liberal. He has taken issue with the Prime Minister saying that no-one in the city should have six firearms. Where do you stand on that as a principle? That has been a repeated argument the Prime Minister’s put forward in terms of the need for gun reform.
ZOE MCKENZIE: So I think that’s another issue that really takes appropriate consideration. I just spoke to a constituent a short while ago in my electorate who’s an avid gun sportsman. He goes to a club up in Cranbourne and he says it’s a really important club, in fact, even just for men getting together and having a chat, right, so they might have a barbecue, they’ll have a shoot together. It’s a professional sporting group. And he says, but invariably, whether they’re the club’s guns or indeed individuals’ guns, there may be a reason for owning more than four, and it’s a sportsman’s reason. So there are different reasons why people have multiple guns and we need to understand that. To me, as a layperson, the idea of having four guns at home just sounds excessive, but there may be good grounds for that and we need to interrogate those good grounds and understand what the impact will be on farming in particular, but also on sportsmanship. So we need to understand what the impact will be. And again, as I said, the Prime Minister’s thrown it all into this bill, which shows the extent to which he’s actually not trying to be dealing with antisemitism at all. He’s looking for political wedges.
TRUDY MCINTOSH: And Zoe, a final one, a big vacancy in Washington at the moment Kevin Rudd’s departure has triggered. Lots of names being bandied about. Joel Fitzgibbon. Joe Hockey attracted my attention this morning by endorsing Peter Dutton as a potential good pick. Who do you think should be Rudd’s replacement?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Well, it’s an interesting one to throw Peter into the mix. But can I say, if they’re looking for exceptional bipartisan leaders, they should look at somebody like Brendan Nelson. Brendan Nelson was an amazing ambassador to NATO. He has been a minister for defence. He is a man of great grace and judgement. He’s currently running Boeing out of the UK. So they should be thinking more broadly than just immediate past politicians. And go back to somebody from 10 years ago now who could bring a really even hand to that role.
TRUDY MCINTOSH: You’re on a unity ticket. I think Pauline Hanson also has endorsed him. Zoe McKenzie, appreciate your time today. Thanks so much.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Thanks, Trudy.
TRUDY MCINTOSH: Never thought I’d say that, did you?
ENDS.
