Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations
Federal Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT
ABC AFTERNOON BRIEFING WITH PATRICIA KARVELAS AND JEROME LAXALE
Thursday, 20 August 2026
Topics: National debt; Zomi Frankcom death; bipartisan deal-making.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: I want to bring in my political panel for today. Jerome Laxale is the Labor MP for Bennelong. Zoe McKenzie is the Shadow Cabinet Secretary and Liberal MP for Flinders. Welcome to both of you.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Thank you.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: I missed you both in Canberra, but I’ll see you in September for the next sitting fortnight. National debt is up to a trillion dollars. What does that milestone mean, Jerome? Do you see it as negative? Do you agree that it’s an intergenerational problem for Australians who have to pay it off?
JEROME LAXALE: Yeah, look, I think it’s higher than anyone would want it to be, PK. But in our time in government, we’ve made sure that we’ve delivered savings at each and every budget. And we also know that the debt would have been $173 billion higher if the Liberals were to remain in government from 2022. So, you know, we’re taking responsible budgetary measures to reduce the debt and pay it off, which have saved Australian taxpayers $70 billion in interest payments. But to your question, yeah, I mean, I think it’s higher than I’d like it to be. But instead of talking about it and crowing about it, as Tim Wilson was just then, we’re doing something to address it.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Zoe, I’ll give you a right of reply.
ZOE MCKENZIE: I am literally stupefied by that response and indeed the responses we’ve had from government all day today. We’re paying around $30 billion a year in interest payments alone. And while Jerome just called out what it could have been interest payments, let me talk about what this reckless spending is doing. We’ve pushed up interest rates 15 times because the government keeps spending what it gets. It gets a windfall gain and it spends it straight away. The average Australian household, therefore, is paying an extra $30,000 a year in interest payments alone. Everything is going up every day. We talk about the cost of living here endlessly, and it’s because this government cannot get its spending under control. When I first worked in this building, we had inherited $96 billion of debt from the previous Labor government. It took us the better part of a decade to get it under control. And at that point, we could spend money on all sorts of things that had been denied us before, on traditional trades apprenticeships, on areas of health that were new and developing, and we could actually spend money. We could put money aside for the future. You could do the Higher Education Endowment Fund, which, by the way, Labor spent immediately when it got elected a few years later. So we’ve got a history of having to pay down the debt, but $1 trillion, $30 billion in interest a year. It’s unthinkable. It’s so reckless.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: But it’s a joint responsibility. It’s a bipartisan… you’ve both contributed to it, though, haven’t you?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Yeah, but I know what joint looks like. It looks like them doing nothing about it. And then when we finally get elected, we have to address it. It’s always the Coalition that has to make the hard decisions. Why can’t they for once? They sit there and sprout their Liberal-lite ideology. Jim Chalmers does it every day. Let him actually fix it for once.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Jerome, I’ll let you reply to that.
JEROME LAXALE: The last Morrison government had zero savings in their final budget, right? The average return of windfall gains was around 40% under the Morrison government. We’re pushing around 70% to 80% of windfall gains being returned to the budget. Again, we’ve got a deficit that is $173 billion lower. So, like, I agree with you, PK, this is a joint effort. You know, the Liberals doubled the deficit before COVID and then there was COVID. But to say that we are not addressing it and not taking action is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Alright, I want to change the topic. We have just heard from the Frankcom family. They want the Australian government to seek full disclosure of the evidence for the decision and in relation to the death of, of course, their beloved family member and pursue an independent inquiry. Zoe, is that what should happen?
ZOE MCKENZIE: PK, first, I apologise. I didn’t see the interview or the reporting of the conversation with the Frankcom family. This is obviously a terribly sad day for them. The way in which they’ve found out about the final decisions or the final conclusions. But equally, it’s World Humanitarian Day and she was a young woman in her prime doing a job she loved when she lost her life. So my thoughts are with that family. Look, I do know that today both Penny Wong’s had a conversation with the Israeli ambassador and so has our foreign affairs spokesperson Ted O’Brien. So if you don’t mind, I will leave it for Ted to speak on behalf of the Coalition because I’m not privy to that conversation and what was said.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: I understand, but just as a, just as an MP, don’t you think they should apologise to this family?
ZOE MCKENZIE: PK, we spent the entirety of last week talking about diplomatic faux pas. I’m not going to add to that list if you don’t mind. I don’t want to say the wrong thing. What I’m saying is… My deepest empathy is with that family. It is a terrible day for them. I know very serious conversations have been had by both the Foreign Affairs Minister and the Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister and I will leave them to speak for the country. I think that’s appropriate.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Jerome, should the Israeli government apologise?
JEROME LAXALE: Look, well we’ve taken pretty strong action and some of the language used by Foreign Minister Wong is quite extraordinary. Australia has every right to be outraged. The Frankcom family have every right to be distraught and outraged themselves. I’m not privy like Zoe to the conversations that the Foreign Minister had with the ambassador. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall and witness that because I can’t imagine it would have been too pleasant. But I will leave announcements on what Australia should do next to the Foreign Minister. But this is the timing of the announcement, insensitivity of that timing and of course the outcome is not what Australia expects of the Israeli government.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Just finally, the last two weeks, it’s been deals, deals, deals, deals between your side of politics actually, three pieces of legislation, news bargaining, gambling, and also in relation to the NDIS, around the cuts. Zoe, in the last parliament, there was a lot of ‘no’ action from your side of politics. Is this a deliberate strategy to shift?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Oh, no, I wouldn’t say so. I would just say that some of the issues that we have discussed this fortnight have been absolutely, fundamentally, in the national interest. Getting the NDIS spend that now is eclipsing Medicare and eclipsing Defence, getting that under control was absolutely essential. And so Melissa McIntosh did a power of work with the government to make sure that sensible reforms and amendments were made to the government’s original architecture. A similar thing with the gambling reforms. May I say, that has been some of the best speeches I have seen given in this parliament in my time here. If you haven’t read Jamie Chaffey’s, I suggest you do. If you haven’t read Lisa Chester’s, I suggest you do. They were great moments for our parliament, speaking from its core, from its soul, from its life experience. But equally, Pat Conaghan, who’s been, I think, on the ABC, speaking very much about why he crossed the floor, a privilege that is available on my side. We can cross the floor, and it’s been a really important time for the national interest in getting what was needed to be done, done.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Jerome, will you stop calling them no-alition? They’ve been saying they’re going to be saying yes-alition. Can you call them the yes-alition?
JEROME LAXALE: I think what this shows is that we’re a government that’s happy to work with the parliament as a whole, right? Late last year, we passed environmental reforms, working with the Greens, and I think that was a good thing. This year, we’ve worked with the crossbench to pass important measures in the budget, and now we’ve worked with the Liberals and Nationals. I think that’s a good thing that we can work with the entire parliament.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: But they’re not the yes-alition? Come on, go with it.
JEROME LAXALE: No, you got it, Patricia. I’ll leave it at that.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: That’s it for Afternoon Briefing. Thanks to both of you, and congratulations on surviving the last fortnight of parliamentary sittings.
ENDS.
