Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Early Learning
Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health
Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT – SKY NEWS NEWSDAY WITH CHRIS KENNY
Thursday, 2 October 2025
Topics: 12th October Sydney Opera House Palestine protest; international students
CHRIS KENNY: Let’s bring in Zoe McKenzie, the Shadow Assistant Minister for Education, joins us live from the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. Thanks for joining us, Zoe. Look, state and federal governments, I think, have been pathetic on this stuff. They say they’re leaving it up to the police. We don’t know what the police will decide. Surely this protest should be kept away from the Opera House.
ZOE MCKENZIE: Chris it’s a disgrace so close to the second anniversary of what happened on the 7th of October two years ago. That is an ongoing trauma for the people of Israel. There remain some 50 hostages of which we believe only 20 are still alive in those tunnels under Gaza. For those families, for everyone who knew them, for everyone who’s been focused on this plight for the last two years, to be running around and celebrating under the sails of the Sydney Opera House is an outrage. Let us hope that by the 12th a peace deal has been reached, one [has been] put on the table, it has the vast endorsement of Arab nations across the Middle East and beyond. So let’s hope by then what we’re all celebrating is actually peace. The return of those hostages to their home and a future planning for Gaza, frankly, in peace, prosperity and security. But frankly, to plan this while that trauma goes on, while those lives are still being held hostage under the ground in Gaza, it’s a disgrace.
CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, it’s sickening. They should be out there protesting for this peace deal, trying to urge Hamas to accept this peace deal rather than planning this sort of hateful protest. Let me go to your portfolio area of education at the moment and the revelations about the foreign students vastly outnumbering local students at Sydney University. Do you have any concerns about that? Obviously it brings in big money for the university, but are there concerns from an educational perspective?
ZOE MCKENZIE: So we have to think about the quality of education being provided on our campuses, particularly to our domestic students, but equally also to our international students. When I first worked in the higher education policy area about 20 years ago, that was the total number of students in the system, about 900,000. We now have more than 900,000 enrolments of international students across Australia. What we saw today was Sydney University having an international student number of about 51%. Frankly, I think that degrades the education experience for everyone. We know now so many people aren’t actually turning up to lectures anymore. They’re doing their lectures online from home. One of the best experiences you will have as a domestic or an international student is to come to Australia and enjoy campus life. We are degrading campus life by not having an appropriate balance between domestic and international students. My personal feel is that should be around 30%, but what I feel even more strongly about is that there must be a diversity of countries from which students come. We need to have students from Asia, equally South America, North America and Europe and indeed Africa if we can get them here. We must have a diverse student body. That way you make sure everybody learns English, everybody participates in the great time they can have studying, learning, working, living in Australia. We must not put too much interest into one particular or two particular countries. Diverse market, great student experience and my personal feeling is about 30% is where it should be, not around 51%. It’s just too much.
CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense for the students and for Australia’s interests as well. Thanks for joining us again, Zoe. I appreciate it. Zoe McKenzie there from the seat of Flinders in Victoria.
ENDS.
