The Country 04/06/26: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent talks Pauline Hanson, the "Unlucky" Country, and how to get rid of rabbits.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's our Ossie correspondent based out of Sydney, Chris Rouss.
Are you looking forward to Prime Minister Pauline Hanson?

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Well, it seems that a lot of Australians are a
must fay because you know, not only are the under
fifty fives now coming across to her, which hasn't happened before,
but also females may be less surprisingly, really seemed to
be coming towards Pauline Hanson. And she's really knocking out
of the park with the polls going on. We're looking

(00:29):
at her now score she's only four percent behind the
Labor Party, which is in government. She's three percent ahead
of the current opposition, so she's recording twenty four percent
of the primary vote. And she said, and she's the
opposite of what she said before, she's ready to be
Prime minister and she's now considering a move into the

(00:49):
Lower House to get there. You know how things move.
She had seven percent in the last and twelve months ago,
seven percent of men and six percent of women, and
now she's got twenty two percent amongst women and twenty
four per men and twenty four percent amongst women. So
you know, a year is a long time in politics CHSS.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I'm not sure whether the cure is worse than the disease.
I e elbow. Look, the lucky country. You're often referred
to as the lucky country, but it would seem to
me financially at the moment, as and as an economy,
you're not that lucky.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
Well, we've certainly got some problems ahead of it. We're
just seen the latest report from the Bureau of Agricultural
Statistics come out, and they've predicted the broad acre of
farm profits are going to drop about seventy percent this year.
So that's partly a fall of twenty one percent in
winter crop production, but also of course the extra cost
of fuel and fertilizer and so on and so forth.

(01:46):
But we topped one hundred and seven billion in total
agricultural value last year, which was a record. That's going
to fall back to about ninety eight billion this year.
But when you look at the individual farms, that's where
my arm bells start sing, because a lot of them
are now forecasting losses. Whereas last year we were looking
at significant profits six of two hundred odd thousand dollars,

(02:11):
we're now looking at profits dropping to fifteen thousand loss
up to sixty five thousand profit as the rain. So
you know that's of course, farmers are used to droughts
and flooding rains, as they say. But if we see
these business profits drop by that amount, that's not sustainable
in the long term, Jamie.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Like New Zealand your wine industries facing challenging tough times, Yes,
well it is.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
And it's interesting. One of our biggest wine producers here,
Tailor's Wines, are so annoyed about the changes in the
budget to particularly the use of trusts to get succession
in their industry as the family owned company there, that
this major producer is considering movies entire business internationally. Maybe
it's in New Zealand, even because he said a thirty

(02:59):
percent minimum tax on discretionary trusts and on capital gains
just doesn't make it sustainable. He says that we've got
the highest level of taxes in Australia twenty nine percent
wine equalization texts GST. On top of that, there's forty
two percent wholesale tax even on the start and then
they're going to start taxing the profits another thirty percent,

(03:19):
he says, just not worth it. We've also got the
major wine retail of the Endeavor Group, which owns some
of our big stores here like Dan Murphy's and so on,
saying that they're going to get rid of their actual
wine producing part of their business and just buy grapes
for other people and rather than have their own vineyards.
So you know, there's a lot of changes happening. I'm
not sure the government really for saw such a massive

(03:42):
backlash against there this year's budget, which is hardly received.
There's hardly a good word for it.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Jamie, rabbits, you reckon, you might get rid of them
within six years, to quote the Castle Chris Russell tell
them the dreaming.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yeah, well that's it. Well it's I was really interested
in this rabbit control. But they're running around now trying
to get this genome sorted out. And if they can,
because rabbits have this amazing ability to reproduce, you know,
female producing about sixty rabbits in a year, they think
they can turn that against them and very quickly. Once

(04:17):
they put these sterility genes in, they can actually get
the whole production, whole population of rabbits to self destruct
simply because the spread of the infertile female rabbits. The
rabbits will breathe, but the next population of female rabbits
will all be completely sterile and won't spread. So they've
got to identify the genes first in both males and

(04:40):
females that determine fertility. But once they've done that, they
call it the selfish gene. They say it spreads really
quickly through the population because of their high breeding rate. Well,
you know, we are sitting there. I think it's to
some extent dreaming because phero rabbits cost us about two
hundred million dollars every year.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Jamie, Okay, Chris, out of time, Thanks for yours. Next
week we're going to talk about how to get rid
of cunning foxes later.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
That's an interesting story.