He worked as a senior solicitor at Colin Biggers & Paisley, and as a barrister for Edmund Barton Chambers in Sydney.
[3] He was elected to the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly in 2016 in the electoral division of Fong Lim, previously held by Dave Tollner, who did not recontest after losing preselection for the new safer seat of Spillett.
The seat had been significantly redistributed before the election, losing all of its area near Palmerston and all but erasing the Country Liberal majority.
Amid the CLP's collapse in Darwin at that election, Collins won the seat for Labor on a swing of over eight percent.
In 2017, Collins chaired a Select Committee on Opening Parliament to the People which resulted in a fundamental change to the way bills passing through the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly were scrutinised.