Zoe McKenzie MP
Shadow Cabinet Secretary
Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Early Learning
Federal Member for Flinders
TRANSCRIPT
SKY NEWS KENNY REPORT INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS KENNY
Tuesday, 21 October 2025
Topics: PM’s meeting with Trump; net zero
CHRIS KENNY: But let me now go to the Liberal member for Flinders in Victoria and Shadow Cabinet Secretary Zoe McKenzie. Zoe McKenzie, thanks for joining us again. Do you think that Kevin Rudd should keep his job as US ambassador first up, or be brought back home?
ZOE MCKENZIE: Poor Kevin. Wasn’t it a devastatingly awkward moment? I know you’ve played it a couple of times already. It was hard to endure the first time and it’s even hard for the second, third, fourth and fifth. The poor bloke. Look, if I were the Prime Minister and had to endure that, and I think he was putting on a bit of a fake laugh, I suspect he might look at ways of moving the ambassador on in due course without it looking like a knee-jerk response to what was a terrible situation for the ambassador and equally for Australia.
I’m mindful Kevin Rudd has done great work in other parts that aren’t necessarily presidentially facing. He’s done great work in and around critical minerals and rare earths. But that was a devastating outcome for him, I imagine terribly embarrassing as well and one that forced him to eat some humble pie and apologise unfortunately for him. That was not on the camera so we’ll have to take his word for it.
CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, we will see. Now tell us about this net zero climate and energy policy. Isn’t Matt Canavan right? Isn’t John Anderson right? The Coalition has to get together quickly and thrash this out because the delays and the infighting and the speculation are killing you?
ZOE MCKENZIE: They’re right in that we do need to have a clear, comprehensive, honest policy before the next election. You know well, Chris, so many countries have made commitments to net zero and so many countries are failing to deliver on them. We ourselves are failing to deliver on the commitments that the Labor Party has made. So we need to make sure that what we are going to commit to is in fact achievable and that involves rigorous discussions in and amongst our various separate party rooms and then together as a joint party room.
But may I say we also need to keep in mind the 33 seats we don’t hold and that we have lost over the last two elections. We need to be mindful of what are the priorities in terms of both industry, affordable and abundant energy for the Australian people, but equally what I still believe to be the case, they expect us to make a contribution to the mission over time.
CHRIS KENNY: You’ve just got to stop, surely, this sort of political soothsaying where you’re looking at electorates and looking at polls and working out what might be the policy to nab this seat and that seat. The whole problem is no-one’s argued a coherent case. Don’t you just need to work out what energy policy is best for this country and promote it and accept that the intelligence of Australian voters will follow you for taking the right decisions?
ZOE MCKENZIE: And to be fair, I think that’s exactly what is going on. Dan Tehan’s been running many conversations across the party rooms and there’s also a process going on within the National Party separately as well. They are important conversations about what we’re going to take forward to the Australian people. And Chris, you know as well as I do, the Australian people are not focused on what they’re promising.
Down here in Victoria, I had a community roundtable on Sunday. They’re focused on crime. They’re focused on cost of living. They are not asking us what our climate policy or what our energy…
CHRIS KENNY: Well, they’re focused on their electricity bills and what it’s doing to our economy and their household budgets and that’s a direct consequence of our energy policies.
ZOE MCKENZIE: But therefore, what they’re going to look for us to say is, and this is how much we think your energy bill should be reduced by. And that, we can’t just pull out of the air. That involves hard work. It’s hard work that Dan Tehan is leading.
CHRIS KENNY: Well, we all know we’re $275 a year better off now according to the promises the first time around from Labor, of course. Where is it? Thanks for joining us, Zoe. I appreciate it. Zoe McKenzie there in the Melbourne electorate, the Mornington Peninsula electorate of Flinders.
ENDS.
