The Country 27/03/25: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent talks bird flu in sheep, a reduced duck hunting season, breeding from a $40,000 sheep dog and what was in the Budget for agriculture.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Aussie update with Ecolab, solid range, solid products, solid partnership,
solid results.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Our guy across the ditch is Chris Russell. Let's see
what's happening in the Lucky Country or is it the
Lucky country? Chris? You've got no duck hunting season in
Victoria because of bird flu. This is the story we
alluded to last week.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
Yeah, well we have. It's only certain parts of Victoria
which where restrictions have been brought in dues of an
outbreak of this eight seven strain of bird flu. It's
not the horrible H five N one one, but nonetheless
the destructive disease has been found on four properties near Euroa,
and there's six hundred thousand birds have been culled and

(00:48):
all sorts of bands are moving to birds. And one
of the side issues is that they've put restrictions on
the duck hunting system, which which started starts this Wednesday
and until June the ninth, so that's certainly a bit
of an issue. Of course, all the duck hunters are
saying it's conspiracy theory to get rid of duck hunting

(01:08):
in the whole of Victoria and all that sort of thing,
which I don't think there's any sign that that's the case.
But you know this, it's a real worry this bird fluor.
I see in the UK they've just discovered the first
example of H five N one, which is the really
nasty one being found in a sheep. So we've suddenly

(01:28):
had a big biosecurity warning here because that happened here.
That's really going to be a real worry and the
excitess have certainly called for more investment to safeguard sheep industry,
which is currently worth about five billion dollars a year. Now.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
We often accuse you Australians of a bit of inbreeding,
but in the case of your most expensive working dog,
it's true.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yes, well you know it's a lot of money to
pay for a dog. Forty thousand dollars for this female
border Collie called Liz. Do you get that Muster Dog
series in New Zealand jomieh.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Not that I know, but that's not to say we
don't have it about anyhow.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
Carry on, it's an amazing series here. Theft of the
third series here. The first one featured bought a Collie,
second one Kelby's. This third one has been Kelby's versus
bought a Collie's based on pups that are given out
to people and they monitor over twelve months to see
which one more quickly becomes a good working dog. And
the guy who won the first series has actually bred

(02:34):
these dogs using this Liz, which he paid forty thousand
dollars for, and he bought the half brother as well,
whose name was Sid, for thirty three thousand. Now apparently
it's quite common. I wasn't aware of this to breed
within families like that so that they could actually really
concentrate the genes. So they've just had nine pups. So

(02:57):
it looks like you get his money back pretty quick,
and she has hardly done any work yet, so soon
as he gets his money back, I suppose she'll be
out to work and we'll be interesting to see how
she does in terms of how those pups do in
terms of putting them on the market.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Jamie Chris, I remember you and I going to the
first ever event at the new Olympics Stadium in Sydney
back in the late nineties early two thousand. We saw
the Beg's one of the best concert I've ever seen.
Just before the Sydney Olympics. Well, you've got the Olympics
again in Australia in Brisbane in twenty thirty two. It's

(03:33):
on my bucket list to go to the Olympics. Am
I going to be sitting in a very flash new
stadium or stadia?

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Well, and this has been the big question. I mean
they got effectively eleven years notice of this and they've aricaded,
how are we going to do it? What stadiu are
we going to have? Of course they're very strict what
you need to do if you're going to run Olympics.
They just announced this week with the sort of statutory
seven year minimum, so they've wasted a few of their
notice years that what they're going to do. And the

(04:02):
new Olympics stadium is going to hit total in cost
it sounds like about five billion dollars now three billion
of that is the stadium itself, but they've also got
to put a whole lot of public transport infrastructure to
actually get the people the last kilometer across to the
stadium from where the where all the transport finishes. At
the moment, the stadium is going to be sixty three

(04:24):
thousand seats the one that we had in Sydney, remember
was one hundred thousand seats when it was originally built,
and then they knocked the back on the top off
the two stands at each end to bring it down
to eighty five thousand after that. So it'll be a
tremendous thing to have in Brisbane, no doubt about that.
They're also building a new aqu aqua stadium or a
swimming stadium and all this will be finished in time.

(04:47):
So everyone's sort of saying, Sydney greatest Olympics ever. Can
we do the same thing again at Brisbane. Well, they're
east going to put their money where their mouth is.
Christoph Fooley, the Premier, says it's going to be probably
a break even Olympics. Well they all say that. I've
yet to see one where that actually happens. But what
it does for the country and the state. I still
think that Olympics in Sydney was the best I've ever

(05:09):
seen Sydney. Everyone talking to each other, just a wonderful time.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
So that leaves the issue of just paying for it,
and on that note, very quickly to finish. Chris Russell,
you've just had your budget. Anything in it for agriculture.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yeah, very little. There's money which is good for bio security,
that's a key issue. But in terms of infrastructure for
the bush, you know, fixing up the potholes and the
roads and better rail and so on, virtually nothing. Twelve
million worker is going to get a tax break of
two hundred and thirty six dollars after twenty twenty five

(05:43):
twenty six, but you know, really that's it. So it's
been a pretty ordinary budget, not one we're expecting, and
I hopefully will help mister Dutton a little bit because
we really need some change here in Australia.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Hey, good on you, Chris Russell. Will catch you again,
same time, same place next week.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Look forward to a jamming