Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations
Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT
SKY NEWS NEWSDAY WITH KIERAN GILBERT AND ANDREW CHARLTON
Thursday, 12 March 2026
Topics: Nationals leadership; Dennis Richardson resignation; petrol prices and supply.
KIERAN GILBERT: Let’s get back to Canberra now. Joining me live in the studio is the Shadow Cabinet Secretary, Zoe McKenzie, and Cabinet Secretary Andrew Charlton. Great to see you both. Zoe, I’ll go first to you. Matt Canavan, what sort of impact will he have as Nationals leader?
ZOE MCKENZIE: I think he’ll have a huge impact. Matt is a brilliant individual, a former economist, a real economist, as one might say. Dr Charlton is a real economist versus the Treasurer…
ANDREW CHARLTON: Well, I wasn’t a Marxist, but I am an economist.
ZOE MCKENZIE: As opposed to our Treasurer, who is a PhD in Paul Keating. So the good news is somebody with real economic credentials now leads the National Party, somebody who’s had quite a long history in this building, both as a staffer and then indeed as a senator, who has been on the front bench before and now goes back onto the front bench leading his party. I’ve been working with him in our Policy Development Committee and I’m quite excited to see what happens from here.
KIERAN GILBERT: Yeah, well, it’s going to be a more robust challenge against the surging One Nation, isn’t it? And he’s a good communicator, he’s smart.
ANDREW CHARLTON: Sure. But, I mean, the bottom line for Australians is that Matt Canavan will put up your energy prices. This is somebody who wants to subsidise new coal-fired power stations in Australia. Coal-fired power stations that are not commercially viable, that no private sector operator is willing to put in, and every expert says is the most expensive form of power. This is his one thing. And that one thing would put up energy prices for everyday Australians. And that is going to be a hard sell in electorates like Zoe’s, where climate change denial, subsidising coal-fired power stations and driving down Australians’ wages probably aren’t going to go down very well.
KIERAN GILBERT: Andrew says it’s his one thing. To be fair to Matt Canavan, he’s got a lot of views on a range of issues and a lot of it is quite conservative and it’s going to take on One Nation in Queensland. But does it fit in your seat of Flinders and other more urban seats?
ZOE MCKENZIE: So, Matt’s always had a broad remit and very strongly defending the community from which he comes, which is a coal community, right? So, his view is, let’s make the most of the sovereign assets we have, let’s try to go back to being one of the cheapest energy countries in the world that we used to be and have not been for some time. Now, Matt has been advocating for his community on the backbench. Matt now has both tasks of community and country. And so, we will see, in coming weeks, as we all sit down and talk about what is in the best interests for the country, what is the combined value proposition that the Coalition will be putting to Australians at the next election and, indeed, at the by-election in Farrer.
KIERAN GILBERT: Can you get that balance right?
ZOE MCKENZIE: I believe we can.
KIERAN GILBERT: Reset?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Absolutely. Absolutely. Having worked with Matt in the trenches in relation to policy development, I am very confident, indeed, that we will have a compelling offering for the entire country and one which does drive down energy prices, because last time I checked, they’re 40% up under these guys.
KIERAN GILBERT: And this number of… You know, the primary for One Nation, that’s got to send shivers up the spine of every major party, I would imagine, with more than a quarter of voters saying they’ll back One Nation now.
ANDREW CHARLTON: I mean, it’s a very difficult position for Matt Canavan to be in. On the one hand, he’s got to try and chase that One Nation vote, and that’s why he’s saying things like, let’s subsidise coal, denying climate change, being anti-renewables. But on the other hand, he’s part of a party of government and it’s going to be very difficult for him to marry those views with the kind of views that are going to go down well in electorates like Zoe’s.
KIERAN GILBERT: Well, he’s coming up on this show in half an hour, so I’ll talk to him about all of that shortly. On Dennis Richardson leaving the Royal Commission, it’s not a good look, is it, for where this is headed?
ANDREW CHARLTON: Well, Dennis Richardson is an eminent Australian and he’s made a decision to leave the Royal Commission. But the Government has full confidence in Virginia Bell. Virginia Bell is a High Court Justice, a former High Court Justice. And I think she’ll do a fantastic job on the Royal Commission.
KIERAN GILBERT: So what’s going on here?
ANDREW CHARLTON: Well, Dennis Richardson has answered the question. He thinks that the Royal Commission is in good shape and that the inputs that he has provided, he has provided. And he’s described his departure as him having delivered what he was going to deliver and is now moving on.
KIERAN GILBERT: Do you accept that?
ZOE MCKENZIE: No, I don’t. So Australians are right to be concerned. You can’t be the best man for the job, in the Prime Minister’s own words at the start of the year, and surplus to requirements in March. Either you’ve lost the one man who really knew how to look under the lid and to work out what had gone wrong, if indeed anything had gone wrong, in terms of our ability to predict what happened at Bondi and, indeed, failures to act on our warnings about antisemitism in this country over the last two years, or maybe that’s no longer a priority. So I think what the Australian people need is a bit more clarity to make sure that all aspects that led up to what we saw in Bondi are going to be fully and rigorously tested. Dennis was obviously an eminent Australian with extensive experience across foreign affairs, ASIO and defence. No-one was better capable of understanding if there had been an error in processes over the last two years – why is he no longer needed?
KIERAN GILBERT: And also diplomacy, to add to that list, because he’s a former ambassador to the United States, former head of DFAT. He knows what he’s doing. And to pull out a month out, he doesn’t want ownership of it, clearly.
ANDREW CHARLTON: I wouldn’t say that he doesn’t want ownership of it. It’s only just begun. What’s happened is that we have now a Royal Commission that has been established since his inquiry was established. And that Royal Commission is broader, deeper and longer. And that is the appropriate way to go forward, to investigate all of the important questions that Zoe has outlined. And the Commissioner is doing that work. I think it’s important that that work gets done. And Dennis Richardson has made his contribution. And now the Commissioner will take it forward.
KIERAN GILBERT: It’s interesting, though, the way he characterised it when he was on this program earlier, describing his role as it had become under the Royal Commission as a, quote, research assistant.
ZOE MCKENZIE: And he referred to it being a very legalistic process. And yes, of course, royal commissions are by their very nature a legal procedure. But again, you need his intellect. You need his know-how. You need his experience, to make sure that every stone is being upturned. We had been warning about the prospect of a serious antisemitic attack in this country for years. Those warnings had been going largely unheeded. Dennis is the one person who can actually talk to ASIO and understand which flags may have been missed or, frankly, which flags that were raised but were not acted on by the Government.
KIERAN GILBERT: And finally, before we wrap up, the fuel question. People are hurting at the bowser. Is this a gouging?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Fuel’s gone up 20 cents in my electorate overnight.
KIERAN GILBERT: Is this just clear-cut gouging?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Well, it looks to me like it is. And we’ve got the Treasurer saying, oh, I’ve done this and I’ve done that and now there are bigger fines. Okay, great. So start investigating. Instruct the ACCC to get on the case and start investigating. Mine always go up on the Peninsula before a long weekend, so they had started a week ago, but this morning is 20 cents more overnight. That’s outrageous.
KIERAN GILBERT: It does look like… I mean, if the supplies, as Chris Bowen has argued, remain, why are we seeing such a spike right across the nation?
ANDREW CHARLTON: Well, Australia doesn’t have a fuel supply problem at this stage. What we have had is very large spikes in localised demand.
KIERAN GILBERT: And price.
ANDREW CHARLTON: And that is pushing up price and leading to challenges in some local markets. The most important thing that we can do is not panic buy, to recognise that Australia does have the fuel that it needs. That’s why it’s so disappointing to see the Liberals politicising this issue and encouraging panic buying, which is making the problem worse.
KIERAN GILBERT: Petrol’s normally politicised, though, to be fair. It’s very rarely not a political issue.
ANDREW CHARLTON: True, but this is a time when that politicisation has real costs, Kieran, because it’s making the problem significantly worse.
ZOE MCKENZIE: But Andrew you’re not politicising it when people are running out. People are running out. Farmers can’t actually get in and do their job. We’re not able to produce what we need for food in this country, and food prices will consequently go up as well. We’re careering towards 5% inflation already in this country, and an interest rate rise next week.
ANDREW CHARLTON: Everything you’re saying is right, except that we have enough fuel to manage our economy right now, and the problem that we have is very high spikes in demand, which are being fuelled by your leader, who is politicising this issue.
KIERAN GILBERT: We’ve got to go. Thank you both, Andrew, Zoe.
ENDS.
