The Country 17/04/25: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent talks about a boring leader’s debate, the Sydney Royal Easter Show and the state of Aussie rugby.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
His a guy across the ditch, Chris Russell, their Australian
correspondent Chrystal. I was going to start off by the
second leader's debate Elbow v. Dutton last night, but like
a lot of Australians didn't bother watching it. What have
you heard?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Oh? So these are so lackluster. They're both so gun
shy about got stuck in a little bit more into Albanezia,
particularly about the aucast thing. But yeah, they're very gunshy.
The much more interesting discussion came between Dutton and the
Australian newspaper, one of our major national newspapers here after

(00:34):
the debate. I don't know whether he was saving up
for them. I don't understand why he didn't release out
of the debate which would have been seen by more people.
But nonetheless he announced that one of his policies is
going to be to start indexing the different tax brackets
you fall into, so you know whether you pay thirty
percent tax or thirty two percent or forty percent or

(00:55):
whatever changes at certain levels of income. And they haven't
been index for years, so we've been suffering from what
they call bracket creep. Where as you get more wages
you suddenly duck into the next tax bracket. Well, he's
going to actually index those to match the waging greases
and therefore avoid that problem. Now, that's been tried about
twenty years ago by John Howard and it didn't succeed.

(01:18):
They started it, but they just never finished it off.
It was all sorts of cry from Treasury and the
costs and so on, so it never happened fully. But
that's something I think would be popular. And it's certainly
at last we've got a little bit of a point
of differentiation, rather than each of them announcing something, the
other one saying they'll do the same thing or slightly differently.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
I reckon it's a great policy we could do with
it here something that's also very popular. And I remember
the time you took me to the Sydney Royal Easter Show.
It's going to be huge, or more huge than ever
because the way the holidays have fallen this year with
the ENZAC thing happening.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yes, look, it's always big. I think the Sydney Royali
is the showground is the last just purpose built showground
in the Southern Hemisphere, as my statistics are right, and
it's a big event always they always expect to get
about seven hundred thousand people through, but this year, and
this is despite the costs being around about forty dollars
for an adult, so it's not cheap to go in.

(02:18):
But this year, because of the fact there is two
long weekends and the school holidays completely encompassing the period
the show is open that they're expecting many more people
on that and they've really gone over the top to
try and make it worthwhile for people to get in there.
All the normal things rides and showbags and so on,
but the evening event they have a bison stampede with

(02:42):
bison climbing up on the top of semi trailers. They
have other cowboys sort of acts, motocross, a fantastic fire
works display which is on every night goes on for
about fifteen minutes, so they've really gone well. And of
course all the normal things the wood shopping and so
on which everyone attracts. So I just noticed a hue.
I was there on Tuesday and I just noticed a

(03:03):
huge number of people. One of the starlight things I
think for it is the district exhibits as well, where
each section of New South Wales come and display their
produce in a big display would be about maybe fifteen
twenty meters by twenty meters on a sloping stage where
they display all their goods and it's judged both for
the quality of the goods and for the actual display quality.

(03:26):
And that's always a big attraction for me. It's just
lovely to be able to see all those goods on display.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Jamie, Well, on Tuesday evening you were of there. You
were there, of course to present the Chris Russell Middle
awarded to the top what tertiary graduate an egg.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yes, that's great, you know, unfortunate name, I suppose, but
I'm just one of the things I really value. And
each year the top graduating undergraduate student, this is at
bachelor degree level in New South Wales. They all submit
the honor students submit their thesis for their final year
and they're judged by an academic panel and the top

(04:05):
graduating student then we present their final presentations. The panel
decides and then we actually award the medal to the
top student. A nice medal again, a nice check. They
also get a twelve months membership of one of the
top agricultural think tanks in Australia called agrimines where they

(04:25):
get to mix a match with some of the leaders
of society in agriculture, the agriminds, if you like, of Australia.
So it's a much valued prize and I really value
getting to meet all of the young graduates. There's such brainiacs, Jamie.
You know, I don't even understand the titles of some
of their thesis. Unbelievably good and sophisticated work that we

(04:48):
were even looked at till you've got to at least
PhD level. So it's a joy to see such talent
being attracted to agriculture. None of them really off farms.
They are all city people who have discovered agg The
worthy winner this year, you know, young Harris. She did
a fantastic, fantastic thesis looking at using artificial intelligence to

(05:09):
model growth patterns in wheat based on data. I think
all the farmers get data overload almost well, she's found
a software system being able to feed all that data
into and predict what growth patterns are going to be,
where the big harvest is going to be, when it's
going to be, and so on, and a very exciting
project that she did.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
To win that pro Chris Russell enjoy the Royal Easter
Show in Sydney.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
No worries, thanks Jamie