Interview with Andrew Clennell, Sky News Politics Now

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS POLITICS NOW
TUESDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2025

SUBJECTS: March for Australia protests, Migration, Housing, Nauru MOU with Australia, US beef imports, Record forecast for Australian agriculture, Renewable energy.

ANDREW CLENNELL, HOST: Earlier today I sat down with the Agriculture Minister Julie Collins and began by asking her about this incident. Julie Collins, thanks for your time.

JULIE COLLINS, MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY: Thanks for having me on, Andrew.

CLENNELL: Let me start by asking you about the protest at the weekend, including in your home state and this incident involving – this terrible incident today, a neo-Nazi yelling at the Victorian Premier. Have you got a reaction to all that?

COLLINS: Look, I think this behaviour is unacceptable. I think most Australians would find it unacceptable. Australians have got a democratic right to protest, absolutely. But what they don’t have a right to do is to speak to people that way, to intimidate people and to use the types of language that they’ve been using, which is essentially racist in many cases.

CLENNELL: The PM said yesterday that there would have been some good people at the rally. Do you believe that to be the case in terms of the Tasmanian rally?

COLLINS: I do, indeed. I do think that there are a few ringleaders, and they are going about recruiting and you’ve got some people who feel disenfranchised who are attending these thinking they’re something quite different.

CLENNELL: Are politicians now more fearful of their safety than they have been in the past?

COLLINS: Well, I guess that’s on an individual basis depending on what you’ve dealt with. Certainly, all the advice we get is that we should be on alert, and I don’t think that that has changed. What I would say is that we certainly are getting more threats than we have in the past.

CLENNELL: Tony Burke announced a permanent migration level just a short time ago – 185,000. Do you think Australians will be accepting of that level or is – do you see concern about the level of migration in the community at the moment?

COLLINS: What I would say is I think most Australians either have a parent born overseas or were born overseas themselves and many Australians understand that we’re a rich multicultural nation and that’s how we’ve been so successful as a nation – by having people come here with skills and different cultures and coming together to form the great Australian story that we’re all so proud of. So I think most Australians accept that we certainly need to have a migration program, and that’s been the case for many, many years. I do think that there has been a little bit of concern and obviously that’s why you had some good people turn out at the rallies, but I think for most Australians they understand that we’re a multicultural nation and that we need skilled migrants to come here.

CLENNELL: You were previously Housing Minister at a time when we had record net migration. How hard did that make your job?

COLLINS: Well, obviously we haven’t been building enough houses for a very long time. This is not something that’s happened just recently. We need to get on and we need to build more homes. We need to get rid of the roadblocks. The state planning needs reform, some of the local government reforms that need to occur and obviously the Federal Government now is back at the table as a partner with the other tiers of government. And we’ve been pretty upfront that no tier of government is going to solve this alone, we all need to work together and we need to work with industry. But we’re investing a record $43 billion in a housing plan to get more homes on the ground more quickly and homes of every type - homes for people to buy, homes for people to rent and homes for people who go and build their own.

CLENNELL: What’s the breakdown of that $43 billion? Because I hear it from Clare O’Neil often, but what’s the actual breakdown?

COLLINS: Obviously, you’ve got the $10 billion for the Housing Australia Future Fund. You’ve got billions of dollars that we upfront gave the states to build more social housing. You’ve got the additional money that we’ve put into the Housing Australia Future Fund in terms of the social housing supports and the housing for young people and women and children fleeing family violence as part of the arrangements with the states and territories. You’ve got the billions of dollars for the Housing Accord for the states to meet the housing targets that we’ve put on the table with the states and territories. You’ve got the additional funding in the Help to Buy program, and that is obviously where there’s a shared equity scheme with the government. You’ve got billions of dollars coming through the system in regards to the social housing and homelessness agreement with the states and territories. That’s over $9 billion where we’ve got a new agreement with the states and territories. So there’s billions of dollars on the table working with other tiers of government to get more homes built.

CLENNELL: Matt Thistlethwaite spoke to me on the program yesterday about what I see as a vicious circle or a catch-22. That involves the fact we need skilled migrants to build homes, but the more migrants come, the less homes we have. Do you think that’s a fair summation?

COLLINS: No, I don’t. I think we can continue to build more homes and ramp up how quickly we can build homes. We’re also looking at non-traditional methods of construction such as modular homes and we can build those with Australian components and we can improve Australian manufacturing by doing that. And there’s a lot of great ideas and a lot of pilots being run by states and territories about how to get the homes built much more quickly.

CLENNELL: Now, the Coalition have moved for a Nauru NZYQ inquiry into your legislation allowing this deal where you have payment to Nauru and they take criminal deportees. The government’s agreed to that as I understand. Take us through that.

COLLINS: Well, obviously we’ve struck an agreement with the Nauruan Government to take these people. These are people who don’t have any legal right to a visa in Australia so they need to be removed from Australia. So we’ve got an agreement. Our Minister was there late last week and signed that agreement. And, of course, we’re legislating it, and the Senate wants to have a better look at that legislation and we’ve said, okay, well, let’s have a better look at it. But we still need to get this through and we need to get these people out of the country.

CLENNELL: Now, in July you lifted the ban on US beef. But Coles, McDonalds, Aldi, Woolworths have also said they have no plans to import it. Is anyone importing it?

COLLINS: Well, I’m sure that there will be little bits of it coming in. But obviously we’re a two-way trading nation, Australia. We benefit from trade. Seventy per cent of our agricultural trade gets exported, so we’re a net beneficiary of two-way trading. So we send a lot of product out of Australia and we’re getting a premium price for it across the globe, including our beef to the US.

CLENNELL: But do you know of any beef that’s actually going to be imported here at this moment?

COLLINS: Well, I’m not at this moment aware, but what I can say is though I’m sure some small quantities will come in. But this is really about making sure that we have a robust biosecurity system. It was the end of a process and, of course, we’re a net exporter and a proud two-way trading nation.

CLENNELL: Do you think that decision will help Anthony Albanese get his first meeting with Donald Trump and help with relations with the US?

COLLINS: Well, this decision was completely separate to that. It was done – as I said, it was a risk-based scientific assessment that had reached the end of its process. We continue to have engagement, of course, with officials across the globe when it comes to my portfolio of ag and making sure we can diversify our trade. We now have our agricultural trade the most diversified it’s ever been, Andrew, because we have been working closely with other nations to give our farmers more options in terms of their trade. And more than 169 markets, tens of billions of dollars going overseas every year.

CLENNELL: You’ve released figures which show agriculture is set to reap $100 billion this year.

COLLINS: That’s right. Over $100 billion for agriculture, fisheries and forestry is the forecast for this financial year. And that’s because of the careful work that we’ve done working with our farmers. And our farmers should take the credit for this. They have done an extraordinary job. We have a great product that the globe wants. Our farmers are some of the most productive on the globe and they have some of the lowest emissions, and they’re getting premium prices for great Australian product.

CLENNELL: One big concern for farmers and their agricultural land is the renewable energy rollout. Are you representing their interests with your colleagues? Do they have genuine fears?

COLLINS: Well, obviously there has always been land use tensions, whether they have been in the past for housing, for mining and now, of course, it’s for some renewable energy. And what we can do as a government is to better consult with our farmers, have better discussions and provide them with the information they need to make decisions about their land. A lot of farmers are looking at opportunities to diversify their income. I was at an event last night, Farmers for Climate Action, more than 8,000 farmers in Australia who are a member. So there’s certainly farmers taking advantage of that. But we’ve also been pretty upfront. We’ve now got an Infrastructure Commissioner to better consult and have discussions with farmers so that farmers feel like they’re being heard, and they are being heard, and that those discussions are happening on their terms.

CLENNELL: Is this something you’re working with Chris Bowen on?

COLLINS: Absolutely. We’re having discussions to make sure that we can get as many renewable projects out there and up as quickly as possible and certainly that our farmers are able to reap the benefit of those.

CLENNELL: Julie Collins, thanks for your time.

COLLINS: Thanks for having me on, Andrew.