Interview with Jaynie Seal, Sky News Regional Breakfast

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS REGIONAL BREAKFAST
WEDNESDAY, 24 SEPTEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: AgXChange Australia 2025; Australia-US relationship; mining.

JAYNIE SEAL, HOST: Well, joining us live is Minister for Agriculture Julie Collins and one of the speakers at the event. Minister, thank you so much for joining us. Talk us through the importance of this event, in your opinion.

JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: Well, this is a terrific opportunity for farmers and for people who are looking after our land across the country, organisations like Landcare, to work together and to look at what the opportunities for Australia are in terms of our innovation, our productivity and indeed our sustainability of agriculture and land management in Australia. So, this is a great opportunity for everybody in industry, but importantly for Australia here to make sure that we do grasp the opportunities that we have. We already have some of the world's best farmers. They're some of the most productive farmers, they have some of the lowest emissions and they produce great Australian produce and the globe wants it. So, we need to work with them to make sure that this can continue.

SEAL: And some of the great farmers, as you mentioned, we just had Deputy Nationals Leader Kevin Hogan on and he brought to our attention the timber industry. He went there to Lyons, he said that they were gutted. He said there were plenty of men crying. What can you tell us about what's happening there?

COLLINS: As the Australian Government, we're working with states and territories through regional forest agreements, and of course, state and territories make all the decisions in relation to management of their state forests. But as a federal government, we're investing over $300 million in the plantation estate. We have announced just recently, a few weeks ago, the last round of that, in terms of getting more trees into the ground, so that we can increase our plantation estate. We also know that this is great in terms of farming land. It provides shelter for livestock, but it also provides diversification of income for farmers because a lot of the plantations are eligible for ACCUs, the Australian Carbon Credit Units and provide some income to farmers as well. So, we've been working on that. We also have our Timber Fibre Strategy plan that has been worked on with the timber industry around Australia and that's about getting better utilisation of our existing timber resources and our fibre. We know that Australia doesn't have enough timber and we're a net importer of timber. So, this is about making sure that we build our plantation estate and that we utilise our timber resources better into the future. So, we are working with the states and territories when it comes to a timber resource and fibre across the country.

SEAL: All right, we just spoke to our colleague Andrew Clennell in New York, and the President has said at the UN General Assembly that climate change is the biggest con job. And we've locked in, by the sounds of it, a meeting with the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, set for October 20 with the US President. How do you anticipate that the meeting will go, including discussing climate change and renewables, considering the President also described renewables as fake?

COLLINS: Well, obviously, this will be a respectful meeting between two leaders, as it should be, you know, both democratically elected by our nations. Our Prime Minister obviously was re-elected just a few months ago on our platform of renewable energy and having a climate change target. And that's what we're busy implementing. We also know from the data released last week that the cost of not acting is greater than the cost of acting and that an orderly transition to net zero growth is better than a disorderly one. And I'm here today talking to farmers about what the opportunities for them are. As I said, we already have some of the greatest farmers on the planet with some of the lowest emissions. We need to help farmers understand that that is the case. We need to help them in terms of making sure that they can tell that story, because we know that the globe wants great Australian produce. We export around 80 per cent of our agriculture products across the globe. Australia can feed ourselves more than two and a half times over, and that's a terrific thing. And our farmers deserve the credit for that. But we want to work with them to make sure that we get the opportunities of net zero and of course, the changing climate and sustainability practices that farmers have been implementing as land managers for many, many years and decades.

SEAL: Would your government at all, Minister, look at potentially lifting bans, for example, in WA on uranium? We've got the Premier, Roger Cook in Japan, and also China. We spoke to the Chamber of Commerce here on the weekend. And it's $1 billion business a year just to export uranium without building any nuclear power plants. And nuclear experts say that Australia could play a significant role in lowering global emissions if we were to do that. If we're going to make $1 billion a year by exporting our uranium, why wouldn't we look at lifting the ban?

COLLINS: Look, we've been very clear that we do not support the nuclear power and that we've been very clear about our existing mining policy when it comes to nuclear energy. What we saw at the last election, of course was the Coalition went to the election with a nuclear powered plan and of course they did not win that election. And indeed it would appear that they have learned nothing from the election when it comes to trying to implement very expensive nuclear power. What we know is that in terms of new generation, renewable energy is cheaper than nuclear energy. And what we also know is Australia stands to benefit from the transition to net zero by investing and by getting ahead of that renewable plan.

SEAL: Absolutely understand what you said there, Minister, but in terms of just exporting it alone, a $1 billion industry, we wouldn't have to have any nuclear power plants here. But the, the countries that do have nuclear power plants could purchase our uranium and we could play a significant role in lowering global emissions.

COLLINS: As I said, we've been very clear about nuclear power. We've also been very clear about nuclear mining and Australia's policy on that. And we've been very clear with the Australian people about our position that we took to the last election.

SEAL: Alright, Agriculture Minister Julie Collins, hope you have an awesome day there today and thank you so much for joining us.

COLLINS: Thanks so much.