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, 5 March 2026
Topics: Iran conflict; Mark Carney
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Joining me on the panel for a different kind of panel, actual people in the parliament, not outside. Let’s hope they can be just as loose. Jerome Laxale is the Labor MP for Bennelong. Zoe McKenzie is the Shadow Assistant Employment Minister. Welcome to both of you.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Thank you.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: You will be, won’t you?
ZOE MCKENZIE: It’s Thursday afternoon. It doesn’t get more loose.
JEROME LAXALE: Loose Laxale they call me, Loose Laxale.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: OK, so we have the escalating war in the Middle East. There are thousands of Australians affected by this. I want to start with your criticism first, because the Coalition’s come out of the gates criticising the government for not being transparent enough. The government has just announced a military deployment, clearly to assist Australians not to be part of the military effort. Isn’t that the clarity?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, I saw DFAT getting on the plane in terms of an assistance group to people who were there. We know it’s about 115,000. I’ve got constituents. Jerome would be the same. People ringing out saying, we’re in Bahrain, we’ve been forgotten, we desperately need advice and guidance on what to do. So, look, it’s been a little bit slow, but I hope now things will start to roll out. People will have confidence that if they need to get home, they will be able to get home. So that is a good thing indeed.
JEROME LAXALE: Oh, look, I think it just fits in with the opposition politicising national security issues. Of course, the government hasn’t forgotten Australians overseas. There’s over 115,000 people stranded in the regions. We’ve seen this horrific war escalate to 11 countries in the region. And if military aircraft has been deployed, it’s clear that we’re exploring all options to not only assist them, but hopefully to get people home.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Do you think the war should be… There should be a ceasefire?
JEROME LAXALE: Oh, look, I think the Australian position has been for quite some time across a lot of conflicts that war is a bad thing. Obviously, we support action to denuclearise Iran and reduce their capability. But obviously, we don’t want to see particularly Australian citizens dying. Obviously, people in my electorate, I’ve got a huge Iranian-Australian community. They’ve not only got family who are Australian citizens, but friends over there. They’re excited at the prospect of change and freedom, but petrified at the cost of that. So I think…
PATRICIA KARVELAS: So I’m going to be specific. Do you want to see a ceasefire?
JEROME LAXALE: I want to see Australians return home, I want to see the loss of innocent life reduced, and for that to happen, the quicker it comes to a ceasefire, the better.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: What do you think?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Well, I think we had one of the most important foreign guests’ speeches in Parliament today. Mark Carney came in and spoke about what he sees as an alternative to the global rules-based order we’ve had in the past. We now have a global rules-based disorder. And he was calling on countries like ours to work together. And Jerome and I, of course, would immediately say, and also with the European Union, I was there last week talking defence, trade, security partnerships, critical raw minerals, and everything else we need to deal with, stable, predictable, shared values nations. And Mark was effectively saying the UN has failed, as the WTO has failed. We need to think about new structures, new architectures for collaboration. This current conflict in Iran shows exactly that. State-sponsored terrorism that has been on our shores, the backing of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis movement in the Red Sea. Something had to be done about Iran. All of us would probably like a system that enables that to be discussed, debated, and for communal action to be taken. So that’s what we all need to focus on now, how we build around a better architecture for the future and I think that was the call that Mark Carney made to all of us today.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Malcolm Turnbull suggests that it’s obviously a dangerous precedent to have the US go in and take out a leader. How about if they did it in Russia, he said, or Kim Jong Un? That’s right, isn’t it?
JEROME LAXALE: Well, the US will need to explain their actions. They’ve got access undoubtedly to intelligence that other countries don’t. Our position has been clear, we support the demilitarisation of the Iranian regime, particularly in regards to nuclear weapons. That conflict hopefully will end as soon as possible.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Did we have that position because we are sucking up to the US?
JEROME LAXALE: I wouldn’t put it that way, Patricia.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Looks it to a lot of people, Malcolm Turnbull suggested it was about that relationship.
JEROME LAXALE: Well, Malcolm Turnbull’s got a lot of opinions, but that certainly wouldn’t be the position of the Iranian-Australian community in my electorate who see the Iranian regime as murderous, brutal, killing their own citizens and exporting terror. So Malcolm Turnbull may have his opinion, but it’s very different to those in my community.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: He was on your side of politics.
ZOE MCKENZIE: To be fair, I’ve missed Malcolm’s comments today, but I’m glad Jerome’s been following them, so I will refrain from commenting
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Well, he certainly agreed that it’s a murderous regime. No-one contests that. It’s about whether this will deliver the regime change that clearly many people seek, but there’s not a great track record of it, is there?
ZOE MCKENZIE: To be fair, none of us are partial to the intelligence that the US and Israel have based their actions on, and I think we should wait until the heat of the moment has passed and there will be a fulsome discussion between allies I trust about the action that was taken and how they went about it.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Okay. In terms of the Australian position, the Coalition has said perhaps, you know, open to if we were drawn in. What’s your view? Should you consider Australia’s involvement?
ZOE MCKENZIE: At this point, I don’t think that’s being asked of any of us, and I’m mindful that nor has the UK or France or anyone else who’s actually been the victim of attacks from Iranian action in the last few days, they’re not being drawn in either. So I don’t want to precipitate and say anything out of line, and I’m sure you’ll get Ted O’Brien on to talk about such matters and James Paterson at the appropriate time.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: I wouldn’t want to possibly be out of line. Is that a hard no from the government, though, if there was a request, no involvement?
JEROME LAXALE: I’ll leave that for the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to answer. Our role right now is to keep Australians safe, get them home and support their families and friends. That’s our primary focus. Okay.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: But at the same time, we have articulated a position which is quite controversial, even among your left-wing flank. There’s been a lot of criticism. People like Doug Cameron, who believe that it’s the wrong course of action and that you’ve actually abandoned international law.
JEROME LAXALE: Well, those in my community disagree with Doug Cameron, and the Prime Minister came out very early and made a strong position clear, and I support that.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: Do you agree that it’s not international law that’s being followed here?
ZOE MCKENZIE: I would say that we haven’t followed the process we’ve followed in the past. I’m old enough to remember sitting up through the night to listen to the debates that happened in the United Nations before action was taken in Iraq, and so that’s not the process. But I don’t think that that necessarily means a condemnation of the United States. I think what that means is we’ve all got work to do in terms of building a better, more relevant, fit-for-purpose architecture, not just in relation to the field of war, like the United Nations, but equally in relation to trade. We have a number of multilateral systems that are sitting moribund at the moment, and we all need to lean in and try and make them better.
PATRICIA KARVELAS: All right. That was a spirited discussion. Thank you.
JEROME LAXALE: Always.
ENDS.
