Senator Bridget McKenzie has admitted the timing of her party’s split from Coalition on a national day of mourning is appalling, but claims the Nationals couldn’t do anything about it.
In an interview just before 9am, ABC Radio Melbourne host Rafael Epstein asked McKenzie: “Why on earth are you playing leadership games today?”
Senator Bridget McKenzie.Alex Ellinghausen
“I think the timing’s appalling,” McKenzie admitted, before saying she had stood by the Jewish community.
“Why didn’t you guys just wait 24 hours?” Epstein responded.
“The National Party didn’t have a say in Labor’s legislation, didn’t have a say in when it was tabled, didn’t have a say when the prime minister called the parliament back, didn’t have a say in the setting of the national day of mourning,” McKenzie replied.
“You know, I think Raf, that’s quite an unfair question.”
Epstein, however, argued the Nationals did have control of when they sent resignation letters and formally announced a Coalition split, to which McKenzie replied:
Well … the action of voting against legislation triggers what your next step is. And the appropriate response was to offer to resign to the Leader of the Opposition.
[We] probably should have sent it as soon as we voted at 10 o’clock or 10.30pm [on] Tuesday night.
McKenzie said she would still be observing a minute’s silence this evening for the Bondi victims.
“As horrible as the timing of this is, we can spend 10 minutes on your show talking about the timing of resignation letters, or we can talk about why Victorian Jewish kids are going to school under armed guard.”