The Country 27/11/25: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent talks about a possible reimposition of Trump tariffs on Aussie beef. Plus, we talk Net Zero 2050 and the Ashes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's head across the Dutch land of the two day
Ashes test. More about that later. Our Elsie correspondent is
Chris Russell. Chris, we've just had the tariffs off beef
and keyweed fruit taken off here in New Zealand. Great
news for us. Could it be possible that Australia you
could have your tariffs on beef reimposed.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Well, this is the rumor. The thing is what we're
about to pass. They've just passed through the House of
Reps and it's now going to the Senate. But it's
almost certainly going to get through the situation where we're
not going to allow anyone under sixteen to have access
to social media that includes Meta and X and all
of the you know, the old Facebook and so on.

(00:45):
They won't be able to allow to have that access.
And if they're found the begiving access, the fines are
like forty million dollars or something per case. So that's
the first thing. And the second thing there's another law
going through which is going to require companies like Flicks
and Paramount and so on to have a minimum amount
of Australian content in the movies and series that they

(01:09):
put onto their channels. Now once again, the American film
industry sees that, and of course Microsoft and Meather and
X all see the imposition of no Socials as being
a hit against America and anti American, and Trump specifically
said anything anti American, we'll see tariffs in other areas.
So the only two areas really they can hit a

(01:32):
substance is pharmaceutical and agriculture. So the farmers are really saying, well,
you know, we might be out of the woods here,
yet we could still see a tariff being reimposed. I
don't think in beef, and as we've talked about before,
it's going to make that much difference because they can't
get enough of it, but certainly can make a difference
in pharmaceuticals.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Hey, and politics across the dish. This is really interesting
and it has a flow on effect. I guess for
us the National Party is defending their decision and this
is the OP Position coalition to drop net zero by
twenty fifty. And also Barnaby Joyce, who belongs to that party,
correct me if I'm wrong, is going to defect to
Pauline Hanson's One Australia or whatever she calls her party.

(02:13):
How does all this work?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Yeah, one nation they call her party, and yes, I
mean the problem, the problem they've got is that there's
there's a very big polarized community here. One says that
net zero might be nice, but we can't afford it,
and the other one says, it doesn't matter what it costs,
we've got to do it now. The National Party, being
really representatives of the Bush, are very much on the

(02:38):
you know, we can't afford it, we need we sure,
let's do it, but let's do it at a time
and place that suits us. You still consider the amount
of coal that we're shipping, that's all being used as
cheap energy by our competitors. So Barnaby Joyce was completely
opposed to any sort of net zero and here, while
the National Party have now adopted that anti net zero policy,

(03:00):
he still decided to leave the party because he felt
they were out of touch with their electorate. He's now
talking about getting into bed while not literally with Pauline
Hanson and who's incidentally just been thrown out of Parliament
for wearing a burker into Parliament to protest against the
fact that burker's were not illegal in Australia. And you
couldn't see who people were and she's been thrown out

(03:21):
for a week. I think only the third parliamentarian who
ever been thrown out for a week in Australia's history.
But so that's Barnaby's story. He's reputed to be going
to jump ship today. Now we haven't had that confirmed yet,
but you know.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
That's the story.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
We're likely to see that happen and I think Barnaby
will become a one nation person really quickly.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
To finish on first two day Ashes Test since nineteen
twenty one, I think there was another way back in
eighteen eighty eight. Second Test is at the Gabber and
it's going to be the Pinkball Test.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, that's it, and everyone's warming up for that. The
interesting story is that the Fish side decided not to
play any of their test players in the pink ball
game being played against the Prime Minister's eleven in Canberra.
Now you'd think they'd want all the practice they could
get at that pink ball game, but that's not going
to be the case. I'm not a big fan of

(04:15):
the pink Ball game in terms of the quality of
the cricket, but nonetheless it is part of the series
and it'll be very interesting to see what happens. But
the fact that I was in the high and a
low and high and low with that first Test, you know,
we're extraordinary when you look at the number of balls
that were actually battered as well, you know there were

(04:37):
some of the lowest. Three hundred and twenty five balls
were bowld in Melbourne in nineteen hundred and four and
we're only at four hundred and five deliveries you know
in Perth, so you know that's a total number of
deliveries being faced by the pomers is very low. So
it's not voting well for anyone buying tickets on days three,

(04:58):
four and five.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
Joaming okay, Chris, all the best. Hopefully it gets into
day's three and four. I'm not sure I'm a big
fan of baz ball either. We want Test match cricket
to go more than two days. Hey, we'll catch you
next week, see mate,