Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations
Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT
SKY NEWS WITH CHRIS KENNY
Monday, 6 April 2026
Topics: One Nation; Nepean by-election; fuel supply and prices; war in Iran; NDIS rorts.
CHRIS KENNY: Let’s go to Victoria now and catch up with Zoe McKenzie, who is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations. Happy Easter to you, Zoe. Good to talk to you. When you think about the renewal and promise of Easter, there’s not a lot of that around at the moment for the Coalition, is there, with these One Nation numbers showing that you’re in all sorts of strife and you must be fearing that Victorian state election come, November?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Interestingly, Chris, I’ve actually got my own little mini-Victorian state election going on in my home seat at the moment. The state seat of Nepean currently has a by-election on. We’ve got a Liberal candidate, a One Nation candidate, a Teal candidate, Greens… I think that could be it at the moment… Oh, no, a Libertarian as well, sorry. So it’s a full spectrum, but for Labor, of course, who don’t want to have any judgment passed on them at the moment for good reason, may I say. There’s a question of $15 billion wasted on the Big Bill project that may have gone to a CFMEU dividend or to corruption or to bikies. We’re not quite sure what, but certainly there’s plenty of concern there that public money has been wasted. So Labor doesn’t want judgment at this point in time fearing what people might be saying to them about what they need to do to provide a better offering to Victorians. And so, obviously, the attention is on what those particular parties and groups can promise to the people of Nepean. But it’s interesting to me that some of that, you know, ‘do better’ vote, that cry to all of us, my side, the Labor side, all of us, to do better. To give you one example, there’s a cafe in Rye in my electorate which had a teal sign in its window at the federal election and a couple of weeks ago had a One Nation one. So I take from that a desperation that we do a bloody better job and that’s what we’re trying to do. You know, in addition to my shadow industrial relations responsibilities, I sit on the policy development committee with Simon Kennedy and we are peddling hard under the water to make sure we have the best value proposition to put forward at the next election.
CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, peddling under the water is not going to cut it now, though, is it? You need to get some policies out there. You need to be fighting hard for these policies, having the arguments about policies, not the introspection about what’s gone wrong.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Totally agree, right? So there’s a tonne of work that’s going on with incremental deliverables. It’s not all just about 2028. We’ve obviously got a budget and reply in a few weeks’ time when what appears to be a rapidly rewritten budget gets delivered by Jim Chalmers and then Angus gets to stand up and talk about his priorities, his plans for Australia and that will be the first suite of policies being brought forward. But there’s a lot of work going on. We’ve got task forces across every single area of the Australian economy and that’s where our focus has to be, on economic management and on trying to do something to relieve the cost of living pressures. As I just drove up here from the Mornington Peninsula now, diesel’s at $3.10 a litre already. Families are doing it tough. There were almost no cars on the road as I came up to the city. It’s Easter Monday. What does that tell you? People didn’t necessarily go away. People haven’t been able to put their hands in their pocket and go down to the beach or go and see friends interstate. They’re staying home because they haven’t got trust in the system that they’ll be able to afford or find fuel for the way back.
CHRIS KENNY: Let me just pick your brains on another couple of issues. You have a lot of experience in foreign affairs and trade from your life before politics; What is your sense of what’s unfolding in the Middle East? These increasingly strong lines in the sand being drawn by Donald Trump; Are we close to a ceasefire there? Or is he, in his words, going to rain down hell on Iran?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, I don’t think we have any certainty about what’s going on there and I don’t want to put too much store on I think what is now the third deadline, it may well be missed again. What I do know is that as a country we have a strong interest in the Strait of Hormuz being opened again and that oil and gas being able to get to Australia. My understanding is at the moment that the Iranians are letting, what I might call, their friendlies, so China, Pakistan and others, get oil through that strait but not sort of Western allies as we might think of ourselves. So we must fix that. Otherwise this crush on the Australian economy, you know, you had Sam Birrell on the telly a few minutes ago talking about what this means for urea, fertiliser, crops, food on the table in this country within three to six months. So we must lean in and do what we can to get that strait open. A ceasefire would be good, but I’m not sure it’s predictable at this point in time and obviously there have been very dramatic scenes overnight with the extraordinary rescuing of that dude 44.
CHRIS KENNY: Alright, I just want to get you also on the NDIS. This is a massive problem for this country, the growing expense of the NDIS. Here’s Chris Bowen talking about it today.
CHRIS BOWEN: Minister Mark Butler’s been doing a great job getting the growth in spending down from an unsustainable rate to a more sustainable rate but he’s also been clear there’s more to do with the states. That work is continuing and no doubt there’ll be budget updates.
CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, they keep telling us that work is continuing but the cost of this scheme is growing exponentially. We know it’s being ‘rorted’. How can they bring it under control?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, everyone’s got a story of that rorting now, right? So it’s a blind-free situation. Bowen says we’ve got a problem. Mark Butler himself said the system’s out of control. 740,000 people are on it. Something like 16% of young boys are on the NDIS. 16% of young boys between 5 and 7 are not disabled, right? The system was designed to deal with disability and it is now being used for many other things and frankly pushing spending for what were the traditional parts of you know, care whether that be education or sort of health services. The NDIS has become the panacea for everything. It sounds like the government might be trying to do something in this budget. They have our support in trying to do that, but they must do it in a way that consults with people and brings them on the journey. The fear in families, when this many families are NDIS recipients of course there’s a natural fear about what’s going to happen and whether it’s going to happen in a knee-jerk fashion. So it must be done with proper planning, grandfathering, transparency and advice to families, so that they can make alternative arrangements if they can.
CHRIS KENNY: Zoe McKenzie, thanks for making time for us on your Easter Monday. I appreciate it.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Thanks Chris.
CHRIS KENNY: Zoe McKenzie there, joining us from Melbourne.
ENDS.
