Transcript: Interview with Chris Kenny, Sky News - 9 April 2026

TRANSCRIPT

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS KENNY, SKY NEWS

9 April 2026

Topics: energy, green hydrogen, Labor’s flawed new aged care algorithm

E&OE…………………………………

CHRIS KENNY: I'm coming to you live from Adelaide tonight. Our next guest, Anne Ruston, is a Liberal Senator for South Australia and Shadow Health Minister. The scarf around your neck would betray the reason for my visit, Anne. It's Gather Round kicking off here tonight and you'll be supporting the Crows. It's good to see, along with me.

Now, I was just talking to Matt Canavan about Net Zero. We know the Coalition backed Net Zero up to the last election. When you look at our energy self-harm, the problems in industry and business and the farming sectors and elsewhere, we've really got to get hold of this, don't we? We've got to – sure we all want to protect the environment, but this country needs to return to reliable, affordable energy above all else. It underpins the whole economy.

ANNE RUSTON: Look, absolutely, and I think what we've seen of recent times and not just in the last year or so, but over the last number of years, the argument's become political. It's been distorted by ideology. We should be talking about our energy, about our resources, about Australia's wealth in an economic sense. You know, where it makes economic sense for us to exploit our resources, we should be doing so within those environmental safety constraints that you talk about. And I think we've got so far away from the economic argument and we seem to be having a political argument, and that is not a good argument to be having.

CHRIS KENNY: Exactly, and it's this lauding and worshipping of renewables. Of course, there's a role for renewables and biofuels and all the rest of it. Of course, you reduce your emissions where you can, but you don't vandalise your economy because we're not going to save the planet with our 1% anyway.

ANNE RUSTON: Yeah, and that's my point. We need to let economics be driving this argument. Where it is economically viable to do so, businesses will seek to go out and make good with our resources in this country, but unfortunately it's been completely derailed by this sort of ideological pursuit of some crazy things, like we see here in South Australia – you know, Mali's green hydrogen.

CHRIS KENNY: Green hydrogen.

ANNE RUSTON: You know, stupid things that did not take into account the economic stupidity of what he was trying to do.

CHRIS KENNY: And Federal Labor now tipping more of our money into this same green hydrogen revolution that they fund with our money and we've just seen project after project fall over.

Anyway, the reason I asked you on was stuff more related to your portfolio, to health and aged care. And that is news of a tool, a management tool in aged care. Now I know for everybody trying to either access aged care or help their parents and others access aged care, it's such a difficult process, but you've got concerns that are basically a judgement mechanism that the Government's using could be catching a lot of people short.

ANNE RUSTON: Well, what we found out after we had a look under the bonnet of the new reforms from the Aged Care Act was that the Government, without telling anybody, has actually put in place a robot determination in terms of the care needs of older Australians. And we're seeing time and time and time again, it's spitting out results that are completely in conflict with what the medical professional of that particular person is saying their needs are, and there's no human override. So we're calling on the Government, you cannot let a robot be making decisions about the care an older person needs without the ability for human intervention.

CHRIS KENNY: So, let's just explain how this happens. Instead of a human being meeting an elderly person and making judgements about the level of care they need, the details are what, just fed in online by the patient themselves and a computer makes the decision?

ANNE RUSTON: No, what happens is they go through their assessment, there's a series of yes-no answers that go into the system, the person who's filling out the assessment on behalf of the older person feeds them in, and the algorithm then spits out the answer in terms of what level of care. There is no other mechanism determining what an older person needs. And we've seen people who have got serious, serious care needs being told when they go for reassessments, they need less care or no care. You know, older patients with dementia, people with MND, which we know are deteriorating conditions, but somehow this algorithm is telling them they don't need as much care as they did yesterday, tomorrow.

CHRIS KENNY: Are there government carers who can override that system?

ANNE RUSTON: No.

CHRIS KENNY: Because you need some human common sense on these things.

ANNE RUSTON: That's what we're calling for. We're saying to the Government, you cannot let your Budget bottom line dictate the care needs of older Australians, and we're calling on the Government to immediately put in some human override and make sure - because we've seen hundreds and hundreds of people seek reviews because they think their determinations are wrong and they're taking months to assess whether these are right or not, during which time older Australians are going without the care they've been assessed as needing.

CHRIS KENNY: We'll keep a watch on that and see if you get any change or action from the Government. Thanks for joining us, Anne. I'll see you down at Adelaide Oval. Go Crows.

ENDS