Colleen Harkin on The Weekly Wrap Mornings ABC Radio Melbourne – 25 July 2025

In this interview, Colleen Harkin appeared on The Weekly Wrap Mornings ABC Radio Melbourne and discussed the IPA’s research on Net Zero.

All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research.

Below is a transcript of the interview.

Justin Smith:

Let’s do it. Let’s wrap up the week. It’s Justin Smith here filling in for Raf. He’ll be back on Monday at 8:30. Now it’s 10:06, 1300222774. Please join us. Colleen Harkin is here, director of Schools programme at the Institute of Public Affairs, and Jessie McCrone is the managing partner of FMRS Advisory and former senior advisor to Dan, Dan, Dan, Premier Daniel Andrews. Hello, both of you.

Jessie McCrone:

Hello.

Colleen Harkin:

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Good morning, both of you.

Justin Smith:

We’re going to talk about beef first up. Let us just set the scene very quickly.

Donald Trump:

When it comes to great steaks, I’ve just raised the steaks. Trump steaks are the world’s greatest steaks. One bite and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. Believe me. I understand steaks. It’s my favourite food.

Justin Smith:

I thought Jessie McCrone’s eyes were going to roll out of her head as we were playing Donald Trump. The floor is yours.

Jessie McCrone:

Well, I just don’t think I’ve disagreed with Donald Trump more. The American steaks are just not as good as Australian steaks, anyway. I know he’s a salesman and that’s what he’s doing, quite honest.

Justin Smith:

What do you think of the deal?

Jessie McCrone:

I think it has been interesting for a couple of reasons. The first is, we’re discussing this off-air. It has been a sacred cow, not to use a terrible pun for Australian biosecurity, this idea that all of our meat is tested and made sure that it’s to the highest biosecurity standards. This is a surprising move from my perspective. I think I’ve been particularly surprised that there has not been the strength of the reaction I expected from the usual cohorts. I had basically thought the National Farmers Federation would storm parliament over something like this.

Justin Smith:

Yeah, I thought it would go crazy.

Jessie McCrone:

Yeah. Feedback from your producer is obviously, the listeners are very concerned about this and it’s obviously the community’s concerned about this. I’ve been surprised at the lack of institutional pushback.

Colleen Harkin:

The Nats have made a few comments about it, obviously. I’m with you, Jess. It seemed to have come out of nowhere. All of a sudden there didn’t seem to be much pre-talk about it. I mean, our biosecurity is paramount. We are very lucky to live in an island where we can control these things.

Justin Smith:

We’ve been good at it.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. We have been very good at it. This embargo, this has been in place for more than 20 years. I mean, it seems to me, I’m not a foreign trade expert, but it seems to me there is a risk of disease and that we seem to be, there’s a vague trade game potentially, maybe is to create the impression that we have a better relationship with America at the moment than we possibly do. I’m with you. There’s a big question mark over it.

Justin Smith:

I mean, is there any doubt that this is being used as a bargaining chip? Is that we’re giving this to America. We’re saying you bring your beef in. Please don’t do this to steel. Please don’t do this to anything. Is there any doubt that it’s a bargaining chip?

Jessie McCrone:

Well, certainly there’s been a lot of moves made to suggest it’s not that. It’s completely unrelated to the trust.

Colleen Harkin:

The more they deny, the more you question it.

Jessie McCrone:

Look, I would say I have some scepticism while America is busily cutting every element of their government to suggest that the checks and balances on their meats have only improved under those circumstances and that they’ll actually accurately be able to test everything coming through Mexico is a wild idea to me.

Justin Smith:

Doesn’t mean it’s going to taste good.

Colleen Harkin:

No. Even from a market point of view, what I’ve read is that it’s twice the price. I’m not sure that there’s a great market for it here regardless.

Jessie McCrone:

Maybe that has been the equation at the government end that it’s not actually going to impact the market in the sense that it’s more expensive and everyone’s going to keep buying Australian beef.

Justin Smith:

It’s Donald Trump’s favourite food. Are you not listening?

Colleen Harkin:

Oh, I’m with him. I like a good steak.

Jessie McCrone:

That was Maccas. I thought that was his favourite food.

Justin Smith:

Got beef in it. Well,-

Jessie McCrone:

It’s not steak.

Justin Smith:

When you sell Maccas, that’s your favourite food. When you sell steak, that’s your favourite food.

Jessie McCrone:

That’s true.

Justin Smith:

I guess is the way it goes. All right. The childcare continues to be talked about, continues to be an enormous concern to parents right across Australia, but particularly right across Melbourne. The federal government introduced into parliament new legislation, which hasn’t been voted on yet, but looks like the way will be clear because there’s backing on both sides. But part of that is the threat to withdraw funding from childcare centres if they don’t come up to standard. Education minister Jason Clare was on ABC’s 7:30 on Wednesday night.

Jason Clare:

Money talks and unfortunately some organisations have put profit ahead of the safety of our children.

Justin Smith:

Then yesterday I talked to minister Jess Walsh about the National Register for all children’s workers that they were talking about. I asked how long it was going to take to establish.

Jess Walsh:

I don’t have an answer to that this morning. We are meeting again in a couple of weeks and we’ll announce the plans for the register there. We had an urgent standalone meeting of education ministers focused on this issue at the end of June. We’re working on it. We’re coming back together in August and we’ll have more to say then.

Justin Smith:

That was minister Jess Walsh who was talking on the programme with us yesterday. Colleen, there still seems to be here in all of this. There’s still a divide between the Commonwealth government and the State government about who does what. Is there any hope of this all coming together and falling under the one umbrella?

Colleen Harkin:

I mean, Jess Wilson, who’s the shadow education minister in Victoria, had suggested that there was a very quick solution to the registration process was to bring it in under the existing Victorian Institute of Teaching Register. Now, that could happen tomorrow morning. It doesn’t solve the scenario about the federal component to it. But that then wouldn’t be overly difficult for the state registrations to share the information together. I don’t understand really why some of this is, some of this should never have been an issue. Mandatory reporting exists in schools. I don’t know why it hasn’t existed in childcare centres if it hasn’t. But things like using personal devices in the childcare centres, why was that allowed in the first place? Over regulation has the great potential to make it unaffordable. There’s that cost benefit scenario about where are we going with this. Of course, something has to be done about mandatory reporting and the safety of children. There’s no doubt about that. But there is the potential for this to be a knee-jerk reaction, to put in place things that are not going to actually make a good difference in the bigger picture.

Justin Smith:

From what we talked to the minister yesterday is that it’s the federal government that’s got the funding there, the ones that are going to be able to be withdrawing it, but they’re relying on the states to still do the policing. The states all tend to do, Jessie McCrone, they all do it a different way.

Jessie McCrone:

Yeah. This is a real challenge when it comes to any reform across the country. I credit Jason Clare in particular leaning in on this issue. There are federal governments of both Colours previously that may have just said, oh, this happened in Victoria. It’s a Victorian issue. They can sort it out. I think that the response from the federal government to say, this is a serious issue and we have to look at harmonising some of this, cross country is the right call. Harmonising those things is not easy, every state has its own way of doing things, their own different software for tracking things. Even we found during the pandemic that people were using different ways to track things. It’s a big country. States have grown up doing things a different way. I think to speak to Colleen’s points about knee-jerk reactions, it is really challenging to deal with a crisis. I call it crisis because it’s a horrific thing that’s happened, but also the crisis of confidence in the industry.

Government has to balance acting quickly to make sure people have confidence in the system, but also not doing things that create these unintended consequences. I think what would be useful out of all of this is some examination of what we want childcare to be. At the crux, there is a question of, is it about early childhood education and ensuring that our children get that start in life or is it about care? Is it about essentially ensuring that parents have somewhere to leave their child safely while they work? I think that that has been an uneasy tension when it comes to this industry. The Productivity Commission would say, the most productive thing is to make it early childhood care that obviously has impacts about costs and that there are a bunch of different levers in that. I think they have to both act quickly, but also consider the whole system.

Justin Smith:

Should it be taken off the states, Jessie?

Jessie McCrone:

No. I think that this knee-jerk reaction that anytime something happens you have to remove responsibility from the person that has it isn’t necessarily the best way forward. Are we then going to take schools? Are we then taking hospitals and then we’re talking about removing all levels of government. I think it actually more naturally sits with the state, especially if you move to a space where, in my view, childcare should be better connected to schools. I think the idea that parents are doing two drop-offs in the morning is just unnecessarily complicated. I think that it naturally moves more to state, but it doesn’t mean that we don’t need national standards.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. I mean, that issue of basic national standards that’s helpful. I’m with you, Jess. I don’t think it needs to be taken away from the states. Your point about whether it is childcare or early childhood education is a really good one, because that has an overriding impact on the environment and the regulation and the qualifications of the people who are working in that space. We don’t have the people at the moment, let alone if it was actually going to be mandated that it is more of early childhood education. We just don’t have the staff and the personnel at the moment to make that move.

Jessie McCrone:

One of the people that have been exploring this. I hesitate to agree with Peta Credlin on air, but she’s written an interesting article.

Justin Smith:

Well, hang on, hang on. Let me get a photo of this one.

Jessie McCrone:

Look, she has raised this idea that industrial manslaughter is something that people who are working on construction sites and that run businesses have to worry about their workers and if they are failing on the safety standards they could be prosecuted. I think industrial manslaughter arrangements for childcare, I think there’s some stick in that. I think that there’s something to be said for.

Justin Smith:

We’re just getting started. 1300222774, it is the Wrap as we wrap up the big news of the week. It’s 10:17. Justin filling in for Raf. He’ll be back on Monday. We’ve got Colleen Harkin here. Jessie McCrone. Jump in, 1300222774. Rebecca’s in Maldon to talk about beef. Hello, Rebecca.

Rebecca:

Hi, Justin. I’m actually a sheep farmer. I’m out feeding sheep as we speak. We’re not normally feeding sheep at this time of the year, but it’s a very unusual season.

Justin Smith:

No grass.

Rebecca:

One of you mentioned you’re surprised that the NFF hasn’t stormed the steps of parliament. Justin, I’m not surprised because the advocacy in agriculture is so poor. I know it for a fact. My husband and I actually went down to Tasmania only a month or so ago. We met with the Federal Agricultural minister, Julie Collins. People told me I couldn’t do it. I did it. We had a wonderful meeting with her to progress a particular issue of concern to me. Someone mentioned that trading this beef, using it as a trade tool, if we don’t start to support our agricultural systems in this country, if we don’t, these systems are not going to be there to be traded in the future. It is tough. It’s really tough growing food in this country when you’ve got governments that take resources away from us and actually challenge our trade. It’s extraordinary.

Justin Smith:

Rebecca, you’re saying there should be more people fighting for the farmers and the people who have that job aren’t doing a good enough job at the moment?

Rebecca:

Absolutely. Look, my husband and I, we’ve got children who are at the end of their schooling. We went to an open day for an agricultural college and I put my hand up. I said, do you teach your students about advocacy for agriculture? Do you have a subject for it? I mean, my issue as a producer, I grew up in Melbourne. I just hear, consume, consume, consume on the radio. I love the radio. Let’s talk about production and educate consumers about the production chain and the actual grass root stuff because it’s amazing. We look at the native environment with our birds and our lizards and our frogs and everything else, it all has a place. But if we don’t value it as a country and talk about how, there was actually an energy meeting up in Bendigo this week. There was a fantastic cherry farmer from New Zealand who spoke. It’s about seeing this energy resource, bringing country people along on the journey and working united as a community. It’s not urban country and city. Let’s all work together to make this country a better place for everybody.

Justin Smith:

That’s incredibly well said, Rebecca. Very hard to add to that. Thank you very much.

Justin Smith:

1300 222 774. Jess, you were nodding during that, that’s okay.

Jessie McCrone:

No, I think that they should recruit her to be an advocate for farmers.

Justin Smith:

That’s what I think.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, I think people in the city don’t really have a great grip on what’s going on in regional places, particularly with the energy transition rollout. The Victorian government’s national electricity amendment bill is causing enormous amounts of grief in regional Victoria. They’ve sort of got a situation where authorised personnel will be able to walk onto farmland unannounced with force, land being to taken over. I direct people to the IPA’s faces of net-zero as a quick 20-minute documentary on some of the stories about the young farmers and what’s happening to them and their Livelihood.

Justin Smith:

Yeah, we’re going to talk about the amendment in a moment. Keep the calls coming please as we wrap up the week, 1300 222 774. It’s 21:10, 774 ABC Melbourne.

ABC Voiceover:

Ali Moore.

Ali Moore:

Friday flashback. We choose the best headline, the best quote, and the most valuable person of the week and you join the conversation with your own nominations.

ABC Voiceover:

Drive from 3:00 on 774 ABC Radio Melbourne.

ABC Radio Melbourne.

You’re with Justin Smith filling in for Raf Epstein.

Justin Smith:

Just before we get back into the rap, some awful news has come to light. A group of grade five students were verbally abused while on a school excursion yesterday at the Melbourne Museum. They were students from Mount Scopus Memorial College, a Jewish school. Mount Scopus deputy principal, Greg Hannon says the group of 10 and 11-year-old students were verbally abused by other students from other schools. I’m sorry, from another school. He told us that high school students said phrases like “Free Palestine” and used anti-Semitic slurs. He said the students were distressed and upset and they were working with parents on making sure those students are okay. That was yesterday at the Melbourne Museum. 23:10, 1300 222 774, as we wrap up the news of the week, and Colleen, you were talking about the national electricity amendment bill.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah, so the scenario at the moment is that there will be a single regulator in the state with increased powers to enter farmer’s land and basically take it by acquisition, by stealth. And there’s a lot of dilemma and hurt and anger going on in the regional communities, and those of us who live in the city don’t really know what’s going on there. The equipment that they’re not allowed to use, the reduction in the value of their land, people who’ve got decades of their lives invested in this and it is the food from the farm to the table. We don’t really have a very good understanding of that process. And this sort of renewables is only ideological. It’s reckless, what’s going on. And so as I said, the faces of net-zero, the IPAs put it out. There’s some stories there of some young farmers who will tell you their story about what’s going on in those communities and I think we need to have some transparency and oversight, what’s going on.

Justin Smith:

What do you think, Jess?

Jessie McCrone:

I think that I’m happily going to disagree with Colleen on this one. I think that when we look at the transition, I think that it gets unnecessarily, everyone gets ideological about it and sort of says it’s net-zero or it’s this or that. Coal is leaving. It is a power source where the private companies that own it no longer want to invest in its upkeep, and we have power sources that are beyond their natural life. So it’s not a question of ideology. Coal is no longer going to be the power source, so we need to replace it. Whether that’s with fossil fuels or whether that’s with renewable energy, we will need the transmission to ensure that power can get to people’s homes. It is a matter of national importance that we do not let the lights go out. Now I can understand farmers’ concerns about what that means for transmission lines going through their land.

The best way to deal with that is with clarity, speed, and to stop changing the plan. So once farmers understand the root, and that may impact particular farmers and they should be well compensated for that. But I do think part of the challenge in all of this is this ongoing uncertainty, this changing of plan all the time, which means that farmers can be ongoingly concerned that there may have a transmission line where if we just go and work out where the lines are, which unfortunately or fortunately will mean going onto some farmer’s land and scoping it out, that’s a good thing because we need the lights to stay on and coal is not going to be the way to do it.

Colleen Harkin:

But it is ideological or we have more coal, gas and uranium than we could poke a stick at. We have an abundance of these resources that we could be using. The more we invest in this renewable-only pathway, the worse off we are, the more expensive it becomes. And 79% of people say that affordability and reliability is what their major concern is, not net-zero. And amongst younger people, like 18 to 24 year olds, 58% of them said that they wouldn’t be prepared to pay more than $50 a year to meet net-zero. So this push of making it more expensive, less reliable, to what end?

Jessie McCrone:

Oh, I agree.

Colleen Harkin:

We have all of these resources that we’re just simply not using.

Jessie McCrone:

Of Dutton’s policies the last election, I actually thought gas reserve was one of the ones that deserved more time because we do produce enough gas in this state and if we weren’t sending it elsewhere, that would be a good thing. And I think that is actually the Victorian Government’s position.

Justin Smith:

1300 222 774, jump in if you like. Alana’s on the phone from Yarra Glen to talk about beef. Hello, Alana.

Alana:

Yes. Hello. How are you going?

Justin Smith:

We’re great. Go ahead.

Alana:

Good. So I recently graduated from Uni Melbourne. I’m doing an ag science degree and I work as an agronomist in the Yarra Valley. And we’ve got a lot of younger or hobby farmers coming through that are struggling at the moment and let alone the bigger farmers. The biggest thing in terms of the splice chain issue that the previous caller was talking about, which I completely echo every sentiment that she was speaking about, I think education’s the way to go and advocacy, is the rising cost across the entire sector. So for me as an agronomist to ring up my long-term client with the shop that I work at and say, “Actually, you’re going to have to fork out more money for paying for your grain and supplementing your fees and things like that,” I think it’s heart-wrenching because you get the pushback on yourself.

And I think there should be a little bit more done to mitigate because obviously the seed companies and the hay suppliers, they have to improve and increase their prices because there is a supply shortage and obviously you can’t foresee drought conditions. But I think especially in Victoria and South Australia, this kind of situation has been relatively unprecedented, whereas in Queensland and Northern Territory there seems to be a little bit more support and a little bit more foresight.

Justin Smith:

Alana, thank you very much for sharing that. Alison is in Mount Waverley, also wants to talk about the same thing. Go ahead, Alison.

Alison:

Thank you. Well, my comment is that it would be good if students at secondary schools could spend one hour every week watching Landline.

Justin Smith:

Ah, Alison, thank you. Actually, maybe not just watching Landline, but spending a bit of time on agriculture, where it comes from, where it goes, how the process works, who’s getting what and when, where it’s going wrong, the weather.

Jessie McCrone:

I’m sure there’d be no controversy if it was stated in schools that they had to have an hour watching ABC every week.

Colleen Harkin:

I’d like to see them-

Jessie McCrone:

I think that would just sail through.

Colleen Harkin:

I’d like to see them be littered and numerous. A third of the nation’s 15-year olds that don’t meet minimum benchmarks academically and literacy and numeracy, so [inaudible 00:08:45].

Jessie McCrone:

I think it can help them.

Justin Smith:

I agree. Something that made you laugh. I’ll start with you Jessie McCrone. What made you laugh this week?

Jessie McCrone:

Look, I must admit all the MPs returning to Parliament and they’ve all got their new MP Instagram accounts and they are making varied attempts at being engaging online. And I am laughing, sometimes not with them.

Justin Smith:

Are you saying they’re not being engaging and witty? Come on.

Jessie McCrone:

I think some of the reels, I would just remind some politicians that engagement is not persuasion and sometimes you go viral for the wrong reasons, but I’m laughing.

Justin Smith:

Colleen Harkin.

Colleen Harkin:

Yeah. Speaking of going viral, I just thought it was incredibly amusing. I think I’ve got the person’s name right, is Mia Zulu or something Zula, who is not real. It’s like this was an AI thing. It was put forward in Instagram as a person travelling around the world with 55 posts, got 160,000 followers really quickly. And it’s not real. It’s not a real person. And so he’s got all these followers and people’s thinking that she’s amazing and fantastic, but it’s just AI. And so how readily we get sucked into that sort of influencer mentality and the fact that she’s a good-looking girl and travelling around the world, how quickly people just sort of followed and not realising it’s not actually a person at all.

Justin Smith:

Well, you said good-looking, so man, we don’t care. No, fair enough too. Thank you very much to both of you. Wonderful to see you. And next time you’re here, Raf will be here.

Jessie McCrone:

Been good to be with you.

Colleen Harkin:

Good to see you, Justin.

Justin Smith:

Thank you very much. Colleen Harkin, director of schools programme at the Institute of Public Affairs. Jessie McCrone is managing director at FMRS Advisory and former senior advisor too. She’s looking at me to see if I say it correctly. Premier Daniel Andrews.

This transcript with Colleen Harkin talking on The Weekly Wrap Mornings ABC Radio Melbourne 25 July 2025 has been edited for clarity.