SENATOR THE HON ANNE RUSTON
SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN THE SENATE
SENATOR FOR SOUTH AUSTRALIA

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH ANDREW CLENNELL, SKY NEWS SUNDAY AGENDA

22 March 2026

Topics: South Australian election result, energy policy, Labor’s aged care crisis

ANDREW CLENNELL: Joining me live now, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care and Deputy Liberal Senate Leader Anne Ruston. She’s the Senator for South Australia as well. Anne Ruston, thanks for your time. What do you make of this route of the Liberal Party last night?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, it was a very sobering result last night, Andrew. I don’t think you can put it any other way. But I think there’s a lot of lessons that we’ll have to draw out of what happened in this election, because I don’t think that there’s any one lesson. I think there will be a number of things that we need to address. But, quite clearly, South Australians were angry when they went to the polls yesterday. I think they feel like they haven’t been listened to in South Australia, to some extent by both the major parties, but most certainly by the Liberal Party. And we’ve got to make sure that we do a whole heap better about making sure that South Australians know what we stand for, making sure South Australians know that we’re listening to them, and making sure we’re communicating our message in a way that they’re actually able to receive it. Because you’ve only got to look at the difference between what Ashton Hurn did in her seat, with quite a significant swing to her, and what’s happened around the rest of the state, and I think there’s a lot of lessons about how Ashton campaign and what Ashton did over the last four years in her seat that we are going to have to draw on as we rebuild after what was, as I say, a very sobering result last night.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Is One Nation here to stay in Australia now as a political force?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, I mean, time is going to tell whether that’s the case or not. History would suggest to you that that’s probably not the case. You know, we’ve seen the rise and fall of One Nation on numerous occasions around the country, whether that be in Queensland or some of the activities in Canberra. But we need to focus on the Liberal Party and the rebuild of the Liberal Party and making sure that we’re telling Australians and South Australians, but Australians from here on in what we stand for, why they should vote for us. Because I think that’s clearly where the breakdown for us is. We can’t be focusing on other parties. We need to be focusing on doing a whole heap better ourselves.

ANDREW CLENNELL: So you’re expecting them to implode, One Nation. That’s your best hope, isn’t it?

ANNE RUSTON: No, that is not what I said. I think what I’m expecting of us as the Liberal Party and as the Coalition is that we get back to the basics of being Liberals and Nationals and being a Coalition, that we clearly articulate what our values are. Because I think the average Australian actually really resonates with the values of the Liberal Party - you know, reward for effort, that personal responsibility is held very high. They like small government. We want to see Australians get ahead by allowing Australians to make their own decisions about their life. They’re the values that underpin the Liberal Party, but we quite clearly aren’t articulating them. Australians don’t know what we stand for.

ANDREW CLENNELL: You said history shows that they implode, or they fall apart. So you’re hoping that happens this time, aren’t you?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, it’s not a matter of hoping. I’m just telling you the facts of what we’ve seen over the past. But I don’t think that, as the Liberal Party, we should be focusing on One Nation. I think we should BE focusing on what we should be doing better.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Well, Amanda Rishworth obviously thought differently. She felt that you didn’t take them on. You disagree with that assessment. That’s not the way to go. You should just ignore them.

ANNE RUSTON: Well, I mean, I’m not going to take my advice from Amanda Rishworth, but as I said, there are some really, really sobering lessons to have learnt out of what has happened here in South Australia. And not the least of that is the rise of the vote that has gone to One Nation, and it wasn’t just our vote that went to One Nation. If you have a look at the outer metropolitan seats here in South Australia, there was a significant shift in vote from the Labor Party to One Nation, and I think that demonstrates that South Australians didn’t think they were being listened to by their major parties and so they decided that they were going to use their vote as a way of expressing their annoyance at what is going on with the major parties. So I think we just need to soberly look through what has happened over the last, well, so many months and work out how we’re going to forward. But I think the shining light out of the last three months has been the rise of the Liberal leader, Ashton Hurn, here in South Australia, who has defied the odds in her own seat but shown that we can do it if we actually talk about things that are important to South Australians, are important to Australians, and then communicate that in a clear and effective way. She did that in her own seat, but three months was just not long enough for her to be able to do it on a state-wide basis.

ANDREW CLENNELL: I want to ask you about Peter Malinauskas’ attack on One Nation in his speech, which is quite extraordinary really in my book. Do you think that will work, those sort of words that he was uttering there?

ANNE RUSTON: I think in listening to Peter’s speech last night, I think there are a lot of things that he said that would resonate really well with Australians or with South Australians, and the idea that we should be incredibly proud of living in this country, incredibly proud of living in this state. I think Australians would resonate with the idea we’ve got to stop with the cancel culture and we’ve actually got to be tolerant of other people’s views. I think there were some very strong messages in Peter’s speech that would resonate with all Australians. So, I think we do need to reflect on the fact that we do have to be more tolerant of each other and that we need to stop cancelling somebody’s opinion just because we don’t like it.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Does the Liberal Party face an existential threat in your view?

ANNE RUSTON: The Liberal Party has got a lot of work to do to rebuild the trust of Australians. I absolutely believe that we can do that. And I think that Ashton Hurn showed that it is possible, when you’ve got a leader of conviction who is communicating very well, that you can do it. I mean, we gave her 100 days. That was completely an unreasonable task to give anybody, even somebody as fantastic as Ashton is. But I think we do need to sit down and have a very serious think about what it is that we are going to show to the Australian public how we’re going to communicate who we are. Because I absolutely believe - I’m a proud, proud Liberal, and I absolutely believe that the values of the Liberal Party will resonate and do resonate with Australians. We just haven’t been telling our story very well.

ANDREW CLENNELL: So you didn’t vote for Angus Taylor, what direction does Angus Taylor need to take the party in to win back the trust of former Liberal voters? And I point out here that Tony Pasin last night on our panel said the Liberals need to go to the right and I understand on another channel, you said they don’t need to get further to the right. Is that fair?

ANNE RUSTON: Look, I think if you have a look at history and when the Liberal Party or the Coalition has been its strongest is when it’s actually operated from the middle of the band, like when we come from the centre right is when we win government and that’s the history of the Coalition and the Liberal party in this country over the 70 plus years that we’ve been in existence. So I’m very strongly of the view that we have to govern from the centre. I’m also very strongly of the view that we have to heed the very wise words of John Howard and that is we’re a broad church. We have to be tolerant of the views that are across the wide spectrum of views that exist within our party, but we need to focus every time to run them through the prism of the values that underpin the Liberal Party. I think if we do that and we’re tolerant, then we can rebuild a Liberal Party that will be relevant to Australia.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Anne Ruston, I can tell you the most successful period federally of the Liberal Party, federally at least, that I’ve ever seen was John Howard, who was very much to the right on issues like immigration and economic reform. Do you concede that?

ANNE RUSTON: Look, I’d say that John absolutely governed from the centre, I mean, he was very, very economically rational and would agree with much of the stuff that John Howard put forward at that time. But John Howard’s great strength was that he brought the party together and he absolutely demanded tolerance of the views that were the broad church of our party. I mean, he famously did say, we are a broad church. We have to get back to accepting that broad church. And we have to get back to saying, just because I don’t necessarily agree with every view of every other member of the Liberal Party, we respect your right to have that view. And I think that’s where we have to get to, making sure that the tolerance that we expect within our party is the kind of tolerance that I think that our nation deserves.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Will you believe personally in the net zero policy, has it helped the Liberals and Nationals against One Nation to jettison it?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, I think the one thing that has been pretty clear over the last few years is that Australians want affordable power. Our nation needs affordable power, our families need affordable power because it’s part of the cost-of-living crisis that we’re facing at the moment. And I think that the decision to prioritise affordability and reliability has been the right decision. We need to move forward, making sure that Australian businesses aren’t crippled or sent offshore, that Australian families can afford to pay their energy bills. And so I think that was the right decision.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Now the Coalition is calling for spending cuts in this budget, but in things like your portfolio of aged care we’ve actually seen the Opposition attack the Government for the wait times in terms of home care. So it feels like you don’t want to see cuts to some services, is that right?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, I think my criticism of the Government when it comes to aged care as a specific area has been that we were on a trajectory of getting older Australians the care they needed when they needed it. We’d seen wait times come down, we’d seen wait lists significantly reduced. And under the term of this Labor government, we’ve seen them go from the lowest that they’ve been in so many years to now being the highest they have ever been. And that’s because the Government basically stopped providing new home care packages. So I think there is a false economy in saying we’re going to stop providing this because it’s going to cost us immediately, because when people don’t get the care that they need they become sicker and by the time they actually do get to receive their care, they’re needing care that is much, much more expensive than it would have been if they’d received it when they needed it. And not the least of which is that these older Australians are actually suffering incredibly and becoming less well because the Government is denying them care. I think that is inhumane. In a country like Australia, where we all made a commitment after the Royal Commission that we were going to make sure that we worked really hard to get older Australians the care they needed when they needed it, and to have this government completely ignore them and almost actively worry more about their bottom line when it comes to aged care than actually the care that older Australians need.

ANDREW CLENNELL: Anne Ruston, thanks so much for your time.

ANNE RUSTON: Thanks, Andrew.

ENDS