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

SKY NEWS - JULIA BRADLEY

Saturday, 30th May 2026

Topics: Liberal Party National Convention, Labor’s Budget, Private Health Insurance Rebate Cuts for over-65s

JULIA BRADLEY: Joining me live now is Liberal Senator and Shadow Health and Aged Care Minister Anne Ruston. And thank you so much for being patient there. You were at that meeting today. What did you make of the message coming from Angus?

ANNE RUSTON: I think there was incredible clarity in the message that we all want, everybody in the room wants the same thing and that’s what we wanna be able to go and tell the Australian public that we’re gonna put them first. Everything that the Liberal and the Coalition Party is going to take to the next election is going demonstrate to the Australian people that we only want what’s best for them and our policies are all going to focus on making sure that they are better off because I think quite frankly right now if you ask the average Australian they’d say that things have only got worse in their lives over recent times we want to make sure that we give them the hope and the confidence that we’ve got a policy suite that’s going to make their lives better into the future.

JULIA BRADLEY: I think we heard the words aspiration and ambition about five times between Angus Taylor and Jane Hume. It’s clearly their pitch to voters moving forward in light of the recent Budget. I want to get your take on Tony Abbott being appointed Liberal Party President. Is this the right move for the party?

ANNE RUSTON: Look, we need to have every player on the field. There is no doubt about that. You know, there’s no secret about the fact that we’ve had some challenges in the Liberal Party and the Coalition of recent times. And the fact that everybody wants to come together and it wasn’t just Tony Abbott. Alexander Downer has put his hand up to help, as have many other people who put their hands up this weekend to say that they wanted to be part of the rebuild of the party. And it’s great. You know Tony was an incredible Opposition leader. He... Won a landslide victory back in 2013. And I think he has got the skills to be able to help the administration of our party, which is what will underpin the platform that Angus and Jane and the rest of us will build our platform to go into the next election.

JULIA BRADLEY: Difficult time to be a moderate in the party though, ever consider joining a new party?

ANNE RUSTON: Never, I’m a Liberal, I am a Liberal through and through, and that is never going to change. And I also think that what we’ve demonstrated this weekend Is that I think everybody is singularly focused on the delivery of Angus’s Address in Reply and the policy platform you talked about, you know, aspiration and making sure that we get Australians ahead. I think we’re all absolutely united behind those goals. So whilst I think of myself as a Liberal first and foremost. My job, being elected to the Australian Parliament, is actually to represent every single Australian, and that’s what I intend to keep doing.

JULIA BRADLEY: Not interested in any party, Malcolm Turnbull might want to have a role in.

ANNE RUSTON: I’m a Liberal, I’m absolutely a Liberal and I’ll be a Liberal till the day I die.

JULIA BRADLEY: Well, are inner-city seats like Wentworth now permanently lost for the Liberals?

ANNE RUSTON: No, look, I don’t believe so. I think what we’ve got to do is make sure that our policy platform that we take to Australia recognises the wants, the needs and the aspirations of every single Australian. We want to focus on those people that will want to work hard to get ahead. We want make sure that we’ve got budget security and economic prosperity so that we can provide all of those services that Australians rely on. But the thing that we missed for the last four years particularly has just been a lack of productivity. You know, it’s almost like productivity has become a dirty word in the lexicon of politics. And we want to put productivity back into the conversation. We want people to believe that if they work harder, they’ll actually keep more of what they earn. We want Australians to think that we’ve got their back. So I think being a Liberal is one of the, you know, I’m very proud about being a Liberal. But I absolutely believe every Australian will see over the coming two years as we get ready for the next election that we’re thinking about every one of them in our policy development.

JULIA BRADLEY: We heard Angus Taylor suggest the budget is killing aspiration. What are you expecting in terms of any carve-outs for businesses on those tax changes?

ANNE RUSTON: Well, we’ve had a very confusing response from the Labor Party post the budget. You know, they’re going to carve this out, then they’re not going to carve that out. And, you know, we’re seeing the Prime Minister backpedalling furiously about much of what he’s said. So I think we’re all hopeful that the Prime Minister and his Treasurer will see the error in their ways. But, you, know, quite frankly, I think the most egregious thing about the Budget was the Prime Minister and his Treasurer told Australians that they weren’t going to do something, and then within a year of being elected, they’ve done the complete opposite. And I think it’s a pretty sad indictment on this government that they would think it’s okay to lie to Australians and then try and make some sort of virtue about the fact that they’ve changed their mind. I hope the government actually realises they’ve made a big mistake and also realises that they lied to Australians and they should not make these changes until they’ve taken these policies to an election.

JULIA BRADLEY: Before we let you go, would you make it a Budget in terms of support for aged care?

ANNE RUSTON: Look, I was particularly disappointed that there was really very little in there. They made a big fuss about a headline, but really that headline amount was doing nothing more than fixing a problem that we’ve been telling the government right from the time they put the aged care reforms into the parliament was always going to be a problem. So terribly disappointed and absolutely disgusted that they would abuse older Australians by taxing their private health rebate and taking it away from older Australians just to fix Jim Chalmers’ budget bottom line. We need to fight this because older Australians deserve our support.

ENDS