The Country 12/02/26: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian Correspondent comments on fruit cooking on the tree in a sustained heat wave across the ditch, and the depletion of the Great Artesian Basin.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's there, Ossie correspondent Chris Russell, based out of a
very hot Australia where they've been suffering a bit of
a heat wave. Chris, so much so that forty five
degrees sustained heat has seen fruit cooking on the trees
and the vines. You can get a stewed apple straight
off the tree.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
That's it. Well, I don't have had apples. I don't
think they grow apples in that country, but certainty bananas, mangoes,
all those grapes and up in the West Australia's Gascoyne,
which is just below the top, up near where all
the iron ore comes out of they reckon. It's costs
the fruit growers about a million dollars in crop losses
because they had sustained weather up the highest was forty

(00:40):
seven point nine degrees. Now, I was down in the Murriers,
you know, which is right down in Vicnerity in Victoria.
Those New South Wales owns the Murray. But nonetheless, and
I was sitting up from my neck in water because
we had eight days in a row where the temperature
didn't get below forty three degrees. Well, they've had this
massive crop loss up there, and literally they are watching

(01:02):
their bananas, their mangoes just cooking on the tree, and
of course the trees themselves are very succulent. They go,
We've had limes, avocados, melon crops, pumpkins, just you know,
completely useless, and no one's ever seen anything like it.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Jomie, I see. There's a rush on to get beef
to China, so much so that you've used up a
lot of your quota already.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
The calendar quota is actually not as good as your
quota for reasons which escape me, but we're looking at
two hundred and five thousand tons is our quota. And
then after that, unlike previous you were had quotas, but
they've never really enforced them. Well after that, they've now
announced there's going to be fifty five percent tariff on
the on the beef going into China, so people have

(01:50):
been unlike Argentina, which has sort of voluntarily restricted their exports,
everyone's been rushing to get beef in ahead of when
the tariffs might start. So there's about a third of
our quota was shipped out in January and early February
trying to jump in early. So we're about forty five

(02:14):
percent more shipments than we saw in previous years. And
I think we're going to see we're running into that
quote a time, you know, probably around a third of
the way through the year. So that's that's going to
be a problem. What happens after that, well, of course
it effects not only Asked, but America, Argentina and so on.

(02:35):
It'll be interesting to see what the Chinese do is
suddenly they had to pay a lot more for their
beef if they still want the beef.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Talk to me about the draining of the Great Artesian Basin.
That's part one of the questions and part two of
the question. Would you better answer? First is where is
the Great Artesian Basin?

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well, the Great Artesian Basin gets a lot of its
water out of the tropical parts of New Guinea and
so on, where the water goes then underground and fills
the aquifers, and it's been thousands of years. Sometimes the
water takes to filter down underneath Australia and it's basically
under the Northern Territory and the northern part of Australia.
It's a massive area and they've been very careful to

(03:16):
make sure that we don't drain it. Like the Americans have.
You look at the American artesian basin. They're dropping that
at a massive rate. And any of you who have
flown over the top of Nebraska and those Midwest states
and see all those big irrigation circles, all that water
comes from underground water and the rate is going down. Well,
we've been careful not to do that. And one of

(03:37):
the ways they've done it is by saying, well, on
all that leasehold country Northern Territory, which isn't owned, it's
actually all LEAs from the government on a ninety nine
year lease, you can only use that water for stock purposes.
Now a couple of the growers are trying to cheat
a bit on that and say, well, we're going to
grow cotton for the cotton seed rather than for the cotton.

(03:57):
But nonetheless there is can't be proposal on a station
up there three and a half thousand hectares of development
on Singleton Station to be used for horticulture. It was
approved by the Northern Territory government, who are very keen
to get more business and more productivity into the Northern Territory. However,
the native title holders have actually been given permission to

(04:19):
go to the High Court to appeal that decision on
the grounds of native title breaches and they're not considering
the sacred nature and the significance of the water for
the occupants of arid lands and so on and so forth.
So that goes to court this week. They will be
decided on the merits of that case. However, I'm much

(04:40):
more thinking about what's going to affect if we see
this as a precedent. We start seeing horticulture popping up
right through the Northern Territory, but we're going to see
the same problem with draining that basin because we can't
just replenish it because the water is sitting within porous rock.
It's not just a case of filling it up like
a big water tank, and that's going to take a

(05:01):
long time. So I'll be watching with great interest what
the High Courts view is going to be about that.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Jomie Chris Russell, thanks as always for your time from Australia.
I hope it caols down a bit. We'll catch you
next week.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
No worries