The Country 20/03/25: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pussie update with Ecolab Solid Range, solid products, solid partnership,
solid results. Thursdays on the Country we hit across the
Tasman catch up with our Ossie based correspondent Chris Russell. Chris,
the ten richest people in Australia are worth two hundred
and fifty billion dollars. Gina Reinhart, the mining magnate, of course,

(00:23):
leads the field. Any farmers in there.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, look, I think Gina righter in her own right
you could call a farmer, but certainly all of them
have farming interests. And I suppose Andrew Forrest who appears
in there as well, she's split with his wife Nicola
and they're both in the top ten now richest list.

(00:47):
But Gina ryan Hart certainly has put a lot of
money into farming, and she has her own brand of
beef that's sold in China, and she's top of the
list with around forty five billion as her claim to Fay.
And then if you look at people like Cliff Palmer,
he's a Clive Palmer. He's there with twenty two billion,

(01:08):
Andrew Forrest fifteen billion, and all of them have got
interests in farming around Australia. Gina Ryan Hart of course
owns Rossy Boots, Twiggy Forrest's own Rim Williams. They're all
now being turned into real boutiquy brands, and so it's
certainly a list of people who don't have to worry
or neither the next fourteen generations of them have to

(01:31):
worry about where the next dollars coming from.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well, selling those Ram Williams boots as good as they
are for seven or eight one hundred bucks, you'll get
rich pretty quick, i'd imagine. All right, talk to me
about the idea of diverting some of your US beef
to China. One spit and twice shire, is it? Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So this license system that they have in China, we
should automatically, he knew for shipping advatise shipping their meat
in quite predicted. The Chinese have not automatically renewed the
most of the American licenses, and they all lapsed from
last month they all started to lapse, and so the

(02:11):
pork one has been renewed, interestingly, but the beef one
has not. So they're very much opportunistic about what they
ban and what they don't ban. But of course Australian
exporters were saying, well, we'll b that's great, We'll send
our grain fed meat over to China now and we'll
take up the gap. But there is some caution, very wisely,
because any decision to shift and divert beef we're currently

(02:34):
selling elsewhere into China is fairly short sighted. Number one
is the approvals could be granted next week if it
doesn't see China. And number two is we've fallen into
that trap before when they Einstein say the definition of
insanity is doing the same thing again and especially yet
different result. And in this case, we remember when China
fell over and they were buying seventy percent of our

(02:56):
meat or whatever it was. It just did I have
our wine and our wall. You know, it just causes
grief when they drop it over. So we have now diversified,
we have now sold to other markets. So I think
Australia is going to be very cautious about jumping in
and saying yes, well, you know, we'll take all the
beef we were selling to America or elsewhere and start
sending it to China because we know it have fallen

(03:17):
into that same trap. But it's going to change the
way beef is sold, and certainly like once again it's
going to become a tool in the armory in the
little war going on between China and US.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
Did you pick up on the story on working cats
being text deductible, Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
And of course, as you know, no great love for
cats here. I mean, guess the most tactical inductible thing
about having a cat, O would say would be the
twenty two said bullet to get rid of the bloody thing.
But they are effective form of rodent management on farms,
and you can claim working dogs, you can claim working horses,

(03:57):
but you've never been able to claim working cat. And
there are some farmers that are saying that their cats
have saved them in terms of rats chewing through wiring
in their dairies and the sort of rats and mice
running around raiding their supplies of grain and so on.
They're saying that they're really important. And while they used

(04:20):
to use rat poison, they said it's less effective than cats,
expensive and of course the rat poison expensive and also unsafe.
So they want to be able to claim for the
cats and the costs of running the cats and the
vet costs. So in the United States and the United Kingdom.
They allow people to make deductions for keeping working cats,

(04:42):
but they'd have to change some work rules here, and
I would suggest that the best thing they could do
is just not have any Chris.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Russell, thanks as always for your time. Next week we'll
have a yarn about duck hunting band and parts of
Victoria due to bird flu. As opening weekend loans. I
think it's in mid April and Australia first Saturday in May.
Here in New Zealand something to chew over next week.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Take care, no worries