Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations
Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT
NEWS DAY WITH KIERAN GILBERT ON SKY NEWS
Thursday, 16 April 2026
Topics: Energy security; fuel supplies; Geelong Viva Oil Refinery fire; defence spending.
KIERAN GILBERT: The Liberal frontbencher Zoe McKenzie is with me now, the Shadow Cabinet Secretary. Zoe, thanks for being with us. I just put up these pictures again from Kuala Lumpur, we’re awaiting Anwar Ibrahim and also our Prime Minister. They’ve just released a statement saying, a joint statement, “we recognise the complementarity of our trade and economic partnership and the role our countries play in each other’s energy security. Both countries serve as energy suppliers to one another, underpinning a mutually important energy security relationship. In this context, we affirm our shared commitment to open rules-based trade in energy products. We commit to promote open and stable trade flows between our two countries.” Zoe, your thoughts on that, as the Prime Minister does secure further commitments in the region to just consider that complementarity, I guess, between this two-way trade?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Yeah, indeed. Look, the Prime Minister is out and about doing what he can to, in fact, do exactly what we asked him to do maybe three or four weeks ago now, which is to secure our fuel supply and particularly affordable fuel. I do understand if you need to break from the morning to potentially go to Malaysia to cover the press conference, I will understand, Kieran. But in that respect, yes, the Prime Minister is doing the right thing, to remind people that we are interdependent in terms of trade, especially in our region, but now more globally as well with the recent deal they did with Europe. And it’s important to reinforce those bonds by turning up and being present in those relations.
KIERAN GILBERT: And it’s an interesting, I mean, we can hardly sort of take a break at the moment, catch a break, when you look at the fire at the refinery in Geelong today.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Yeah, extraordinary news to wake up to this morning. I did look across the beach this morning and there was no sign of fire. It was obviously blowing back towards Geelong. And we’ll obviously find out later on what impact that’s going to have. But terrible news for Victoria. We have, to some extent, been protected because we have the refinery so close. New South Wales has had more empty bowsers than we have, but this now means that Victoria may have even tighter, tighter expectations of when fuel will be delivered and indeed at what price. On the peninsula, we’ve already had fuel, diesel up to $3.30 a litre, even after the excise cut. I have a very diesel-based economy here, lots of agriculture, lots of tradies, everybody’s in a ute. We absolutely need affordable and available diesel 24-7.
KIERAN GILBERT: How do you reflect on that question of sovereignty when it comes to energy supply at the moment? There’s, you know, there are views from drill, baby, drill on the one side, to find the oil and drill for it. Everyone should have an EV. Where do you sit on that?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, I think the good news is Australians are now much more aware of the fact that we are one of the most energy-rich countries on the planet. It’s just that we don’t make use of what we’ve got. If you look at what’s been done elsewhere, the United States is now almost entirely sovereign in its energy supply. We could be making steps in that direction. And the great news is now we can have a proper conversation about that in this country. Nuclear arguably can come back onto the agenda here. But as can what we do with gas, we have plenty of gas, and talk about what can be done and what should be done. So that circumstances like this, which are, um, um, unprecedented to some extent, the last time we’ve had fuel supply issues like this was the 70s. So we need to live for the times, and that involves going back to the drawing board in terms of energy.
KIERAN GILBERT: Yep. And I think that abundance story is, you know, look to all energy sources in an agnostic way and, and hopefully common sense will prevail, and at least the moratorium, the ban would be lifted when it comes to nuclear, because that is nonsensical.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Indeed it is. And that is something that we have been arguing for some time now, didn’t find its place at the last election. The Australian people did not vote for nuclear energy, but maybe we can have a more methodological, detailed, informed, educated debate. Small modular reactors are now more realistic than ever. We can actually push forward, take the best of technology and invention and investment from overseas and ensure our energy future, because there’s one thing we now understand, is energy is the entire economy.
KIERAN GILBERT: The speech by the acting Prime Minister on defence spending, it’s going to be a NATO comparison. He says they’re basically just comparing apples with apples, why not?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Look, it was interesting. That was actually probably the most comfortable that I’ve ever seen Richard Marles in the defence minister shoes, possibly because he got the acting PM label at the same time. I was curious about what he meant by, what was it called? Alternative financing. It almost sounded like alternative facts to me, I’m a bit worried about what sits behind that or what he’s trying to hide. And, indeed, what I think is in the $4 billion he flagged was being reprioritised. Of course, those $4 billion in reprioritisation are lived as cuts in capability, if you are working in that area of the ADF or, indeed, the ADF supply chain. So I’m sure my colleague James Paterson will be all over it, looking at that and explaining what difficult choices have been made. It was clear from what Richard said. He didn’t get the money he wanted. You could see that pain on his face, but we’ll go through the detail in coming days.
KIERAN GILBERT: OK Zoe, you’ve timed that well. Let’s go live to Kuala Lumpur.
ENDS.
