April 23, 2025 • 12 mins
Our Australian correspondent looks forward to Anzac Day commemorations and comments on a live cattle export ban going back to court. He also talks about how feral cats (and domestic moggies) are killing native wildlife, before sharing a World War I story about his uncle, who was a farmer.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well we're off to Australia. Now on the country there
we find Chris Russell, our Australian correspondent of over thirty
one years, standing on the show. Chris and that time
you would have covered off quite a few ANZAC services
and ANZAC Days with Jamie McKay.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good afternoon, Yes today, Row and yes we have covered
many and from all over the world, including from Gallipoli itself.
I remember a very astute interview with Helen Clark, your
Prime Minister, in the hotel in Chennaclie, where we were
both staying before we went over for the dawn service,
and a remarkable interview. I found her to be amazingly
(00:38):
responsive and switched on. And of course everyone in Australia
and New Zealand now celebrates this very sacred day. I
think probably even more sacred to Australians than Australia Day,
which is a bit in controversy here. Yes, but we
will be all out tomorrow. Everyone will be out at
the dawn services. I'm going to a lunch and ANZAC
(00:58):
Day lunch as well, and you know, and the young
people attendants at the dawn service tomorrow. I mean I
couldn't get my kids out of bed with a stick
at four o'clock in the morning normally, but you know
they I can guarantee to you that half the people
there tomorrow will be people under aged, under twenty five
or thirty.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, it warms my heart every year. I'm off to
our service in ranfairly tomorrow and the many are toto
here central Otago, small town and really looking forward to it.
Not looking forward to the cool. It will be rather frosty,
but yeah, just an amazing, amazing day. We'll come back
to Anzac later, Chris, but I first want to look
at Australian angry business. Your live cattle expert ban has
(01:40):
headed back to court. What's the latest with this?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
So this is we've referred to this a few times
and this is this battle that's been gone going on
over the fact that the live cattle were banned in
twenty twelve from being exported to Indonesia. Now it's course
to mendus damage because now, of course the Indonesians are
(02:04):
gun shy about getting cattle, and they sought now to
get cattle from India and from South America and buffalo
from India in fact, because they're not one hundred percent
sure that this thing won't happen again. So then Minister
Labor Minister Joe Ludwig just arbitrarily banned live cattle being
export and decimated that industry. It went to court in
(02:25):
twenty twenty and the Minister or the judge ruled that
the Minister had acted illegally in what he did and
awarded damages to the lead claimant, but hasn't yet settled
the damages to all of the kind of class action claimants.
They made an offer of two hundred million between them
and that was rejected as being almost insulting them by
(02:47):
the members. Now the argument's in court with the farmers
saying that in fact, the damage that's been done has
been ongoing since twenty twelve. It's not just the six
week period of the ban, but it's actually carried on
since then, and hence they're claiming one point two billion
dollars in total damages. Obviously he won't get that, but
(03:07):
they're going to get a lot more than two hundred millions.
So the judge is going to take probably some months
to make his final decision. They weren't able to agree,
of course, which is why it's in the court and
there's been a lot of business about this. It was
clearly a sop to the Greens by the Labor Party.
They saw an excuse of being able to get brownie
points with the Greens who hate love of animal exports.
(03:28):
But for the Northern territory it's critical because their alternative
is shipping the cattle one thousand kilometers south at a
huge expense, rather than putting them out through the ports
and straight into Indonesia. Of course, all of the avatars
that they go to and now are all controlled. The
farmers are responsible to make sure they follow animal welfare
practices that are appropriate, and anyone who've discovered that the
(03:51):
where the avatoire has not followed those practices, in fact
their particular license is canceled. So they're very strictly controlled,
much stricter than any other country I think in the world.
And that's the silly part about it from animal welfare
point of view, that if we didn't supply it, they'd
get it from countries where they don't really give a
hoot about animal welfare or the condition of the animals
(04:11):
or how they're slaughtered when they actually get to Indonesia.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Ray we have that with pork here in New Zealand,
we input pork from countries with far lease animal health
and welfare standards than we have in New Zealand. Of
course it's much cheaper to produce, and then our own
producers who are meeting those stringent health and welfare standards
are priced out of the market. It drives me crazing,
Chris ro.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
The other thing to remember is that just replacing it
with beef is not the answer because they don't have
refrigeration a lot of these islands and villages up there,
so it's all hot meat markets. Plus there are whole
industries revolve around the local abatoires. You know. There's one
man who makes his living out of selling all the hooks,
another one sells all the horns, another one sells all
(04:55):
the guts, things that they wouldn't get if they were
just buying the beef. So it's much bigger than just
saying well we can sort of them here in Australia
and then just send them the meaf because that's not
going to work in the Indonesian scenario. They are going
to get it from elsewhere, and of course then the
outcomes for those animals from elsewhere will be worse.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Chris Russell, our Australian correspondent, is with us. Chris, wak there.
I've got a lot more I want to ask you,
but we need to take a break here on the country.
Back with more tales from Australian next. Welcome back to
the country. Our Australian correspondent. Chris Russell was with us
on the eve of the Anzac Day. We've covered off
the live export, cattle band and Australia. Chris. Another issue
(05:36):
that you've got across the ditch there as feral cats.
We've had an issue with them here in New Zealand.
We had a school that actually had a feral cat
killing competition. It went viral. People were up in arms
about it. I had to go on UK talk television
to defend our country and say we're actually still a
nation of nice people who still help old ladies across
(05:58):
the road. We just also the reality of feral cats
that are doing a lot of damage. You've got some
stats in Australia that are really eyebrow raising.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well they are, and I think one of the problems
is in our very urbanized society is that all of
those lovely people who have their cats who they love
and enjoy as pets. Just forget the fact that these
animals are naturally hunters and unless you're going to cage
them in roofed cages in runs in your backyard, they
will get over that fence and they will go and
(06:29):
kill other native animals. And they're now this latest testing
that they've done at the University of New South Wales.
The lady called doctor Catherine Moseby said that DNA has
been swabbed from various radio transmitters fitted to areas they've
met to animals that they've been trying to reintroduce back
to conservation areas, and they determined that cats are responsible
(06:50):
for most of the deaths after release. In fact, they're
now saying that about two thirds of Australia's mammal extinctions
since European settlement occurred are due to cats, not such
a big contribution from boxes as they have previously thought.
So you know, they're talking billions of animals that are
slaughtered by cats every year, and some of these animals
(07:12):
are getting huge. There's tomcats running around they're capturing that
weigh over five kilos. They've got teeth on them like
small jaguars. And they're vicious killers. And of course these
ones have gone completely feral, but even the animals that
live at home during the day and smile sweetly and
purr in front of the fire by night, they become
stalkers and vicious killers of some of these native animals,
(07:35):
particularly the nocturnal ones. So they're asking the farmers for
another sixty million dollars from the government to increase the
level of baiting and try and have the institution of
a National Feral Cat Plan, and that's going to be
run by the Invasive Species Council because cats are increasingly
been seeing as probably the worst pests that we have
(07:56):
in terms of native animals in Australia.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Right, yeah, absolutely, And as I keep saying to people,
you know, if you're twenty k's from the nearest home,
the cat that's out there isn't the adjustice sun itself.
It's out there to try and cause a bit of
a hassle because it's and it's nature, it's not the
cat's folk, but it is an issue and it needs
to be addressed. Chris. Obviously, tomorrow Anzac Day an amazing
day for both Australians and New Zealanders to remember those
(08:21):
who have gone before us and the freedom we now enjoy.
What does Anzac Day mean to you?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, I think for me is the time when you
reflect on how lucky we are as a country and
you increasingly look around the world. And we're having an
election in a couple of weeks and we went and
voted in the pre polls yesterday. There's no soldiers standing
around with machine guns. It's a civil democracy process. You know.
(08:47):
This is a freedom. This is a country which has
been defended by people who have given up their very
existence in order that we can have that freedom. And
that's I think what Australians are celebrating. They're not celebrating war.
War is a terrible thing, but and young people of
course increasingly are probably less inclined to want a fight
or have anything to do with that, but that doesn't
(09:08):
stop them respecting the people who defended our country against
those invaders years ago. And I particularly reminded of my
uncle who was my grandmother's brother. He was just a
farmer from Claire in South Australia, a little town. I
talked to you from there last year and we were
traveling through with the caravan. He immediately with his mates
(09:30):
went down at the age of eighteen, when soon as
the war started the First World War, signed up to
go overseas, was sent into the Battle of the Somme,
and very quickly, from having no military background, was awarded
the Military Medal because he was very good at cricket.
He was sitting there catching the bombs that the Germans
were throwing from their trenches into the Australian trenches. He
(09:53):
was catching them and throwing them back before they blew up.
Sounds like an inherently dangerous thing, nearly as dangerous as
facing the Poms in the ashes, but anyway, he won
the Military Medal for that, and then he was promoted
in the field to lieutenant and put in the intelligence
score and went over the Battle of Darrencourt, where because
he spoke fluent German, he was given the job of
(10:13):
crawling under across dead no man's land, underneath all the
dead bodies, to try and listen in to the German
Orders Group meetings at night where the Germans were deciding
what they're going to do the next day, and then
come back again across the same territory and report to
the British generals about what was going to happen, and
he was single handedly given a very significant part of
(10:36):
the responsibility for the victory that they had at that
particular battle, and for that he won the Military Cross.
The Military Cross could only be awarded officers, Military Medal
the ordinary soldiers, and so he is one of only
five Australians to be awarded both the Military Medal and
the Military Cross. Look where as a family, of course
very proud of him, and yet he was never really
(10:56):
proud of himself. I don't remember him well. I was
only ten when he died, but he came back and
went back to his farm, continued to grow. Wheat died
at the age of seventy nine in nineteen sixty two
and just became an ordinary citizen again, citizen again. My
grandmother said, he never really spoke much about his war experience.
It was just something he did with his mates. And
(11:18):
yet we, I think today, celebrate people like him, the
fact that they've given us these freedoms. They were prepared
to drop what they were doing defend us through the
mother country, as they then had in England, from being
being taken over by countries who would have run this
place completely differently. And we should forever remember that, because
(11:38):
that is a sacred, ultimate sacrifice these men made, and
I think anything we can do to recognize that, go
down and have our own memories round the cenotaph on
Anzac Day morning is a very special time.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Row absolutely, Chris Russell, our Australian correspondent, always love catching
up with you around that Anzac time, a very special
day for both of our countries. You out your time
and all the best at that service tomorrow, No worries.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Thanks Roe, same to you.
Well we're off to Australia. Now on the country there
we find Chris Russell, our Australian correspondent of over thirty
one years, standing on the show. Chris and that time
you would have covered off quite a few ANZAC services
and ANZAC Days with Jamie McKay.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good afternoon, Yes today, Row and yes we have covered
many and from all over the world, including from Gallipoli itself.
I remember a very astute interview with Helen Clark, your
Prime Minister, in the hotel in Chennaclie, where we were
both staying before we went over for the dawn service,
and a remarkable interview. I found her to be amazingly
(00:38):
responsive and switched on. And of course everyone in Australia
and New Zealand now celebrates this very sacred day. I
think probably even more sacred to Australians than Australia Day,
which is a bit in controversy here. Yes, but we
will be all out tomorrow. Everyone will be out at
the dawn services. I'm going to a lunch and ANZAC
(00:58):
Day lunch as well, and you know, and the young
people attendants at the dawn service tomorrow. I mean I
couldn't get my kids out of bed with a stick
at four o'clock in the morning normally, but you know
they I can guarantee to you that half the people
there tomorrow will be people under aged, under twenty five
or thirty.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, it warms my heart every year. I'm off to
our service in ranfairly tomorrow and the many are toto
here central Otago, small town and really looking forward to it.
Not looking forward to the cool. It will be rather frosty,
but yeah, just an amazing, amazing day. We'll come back
to Anzac later, Chris, but I first want to look
at Australian angry business. Your live cattle expert ban has
(01:40):
headed back to court. What's the latest with this?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
So this is we've referred to this a few times
and this is this battle that's been gone going on
over the fact that the live cattle were banned in
twenty twelve from being exported to Indonesia. Now it's course
to mendus damage because now, of course the Indonesians are
(02:04):
gun shy about getting cattle, and they sought now to
get cattle from India and from South America and buffalo
from India in fact, because they're not one hundred percent
sure that this thing won't happen again. So then Minister
Labor Minister Joe Ludwig just arbitrarily banned live cattle being
export and decimated that industry. It went to court in
(02:25):
twenty twenty and the Minister or the judge ruled that
the Minister had acted illegally in what he did and
awarded damages to the lead claimant, but hasn't yet settled
the damages to all of the kind of class action claimants.
They made an offer of two hundred million between them
and that was rejected as being almost insulting them by
(02:47):
the members. Now the argument's in court with the farmers
saying that in fact, the damage that's been done has
been ongoing since twenty twelve. It's not just the six
week period of the ban, but it's actually carried on
since then, and hence they're claiming one point two billion
dollars in total damages. Obviously he won't get that, but
(03:07):
they're going to get a lot more than two hundred millions.
So the judge is going to take probably some months
to make his final decision. They weren't able to agree,
of course, which is why it's in the court and
there's been a lot of business about this. It was
clearly a sop to the Greens by the Labor Party.
They saw an excuse of being able to get brownie
points with the Greens who hate love of animal exports.
(03:28):
But for the Northern territory it's critical because their alternative
is shipping the cattle one thousand kilometers south at a
huge expense, rather than putting them out through the ports
and straight into Indonesia. Of course, all of the avatars
that they go to and now are all controlled. The
farmers are responsible to make sure they follow animal welfare
practices that are appropriate, and anyone who've discovered that the
(03:51):
where the avatoire has not followed those practices, in fact
their particular license is canceled. So they're very strictly controlled,
much stricter than any other country I think in the world.
And that's the silly part about it from animal welfare
point of view, that if we didn't supply it, they'd
get it from countries where they don't really give a
hoot about animal welfare or the condition of the animals
(04:11):
or how they're slaughtered when they actually get to Indonesia.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Ray we have that with pork here in New Zealand,
we input pork from countries with far lease animal health
and welfare standards than we have in New Zealand. Of
course it's much cheaper to produce, and then our own
producers who are meeting those stringent health and welfare standards
are priced out of the market. It drives me crazing,
Chris ro.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
The other thing to remember is that just replacing it
with beef is not the answer because they don't have
refrigeration a lot of these islands and villages up there,
so it's all hot meat markets. Plus there are whole
industries revolve around the local abatoires. You know. There's one
man who makes his living out of selling all the hooks,
another one sells all the horns, another one sells all
(04:55):
the guts, things that they wouldn't get if they were
just buying the beef. So it's much bigger than just
saying well we can sort of them here in Australia
and then just send them the meaf because that's not
going to work in the Indonesian scenario. They are going
to get it from elsewhere, and of course then the
outcomes for those animals from elsewhere will be worse.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Chris Russell, our Australian correspondent, is with us. Chris, wak there.
I've got a lot more I want to ask you,
but we need to take a break here on the country.
Back with more tales from Australian next. Welcome back to
the country. Our Australian correspondent. Chris Russell was with us
on the eve of the Anzac Day. We've covered off
the live export, cattle band and Australia. Chris. Another issue
(05:36):
that you've got across the ditch there as feral cats.
We've had an issue with them here in New Zealand.
We had a school that actually had a feral cat
killing competition. It went viral. People were up in arms
about it. I had to go on UK talk television
to defend our country and say we're actually still a
nation of nice people who still help old ladies across
(05:58):
the road. We just also the reality of feral cats
that are doing a lot of damage. You've got some
stats in Australia that are really eyebrow raising.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Well they are, and I think one of the problems
is in our very urbanized society is that all of
those lovely people who have their cats who they love
and enjoy as pets. Just forget the fact that these
animals are naturally hunters and unless you're going to cage
them in roofed cages in runs in your backyard, they
will get over that fence and they will go and
(06:29):
kill other native animals. And they're now this latest testing
that they've done at the University of New South Wales.
The lady called doctor Catherine Moseby said that DNA has
been swabbed from various radio transmitters fitted to areas they've
met to animals that they've been trying to reintroduce back
to conservation areas, and they determined that cats are responsible
(06:50):
for most of the deaths after release. In fact, they're
now saying that about two thirds of Australia's mammal extinctions
since European settlement occurred are due to cats, not such
a big contribution from boxes as they have previously thought.
So you know, they're talking billions of animals that are
slaughtered by cats every year, and some of these animals
(07:12):
are getting huge. There's tomcats running around they're capturing that
weigh over five kilos. They've got teeth on them like
small jaguars. And they're vicious killers. And of course these
ones have gone completely feral, but even the animals that
live at home during the day and smile sweetly and
purr in front of the fire by night, they become
stalkers and vicious killers of some of these native animals,
(07:35):
particularly the nocturnal ones. So they're asking the farmers for
another sixty million dollars from the government to increase the
level of baiting and try and have the institution of
a National Feral Cat Plan, and that's going to be
run by the Invasive Species Council because cats are increasingly
been seeing as probably the worst pests that we have
(07:56):
in terms of native animals in Australia.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
Right, yeah, absolutely, And as I keep saying to people,
you know, if you're twenty k's from the nearest home,
the cat that's out there isn't the adjustice sun itself.
It's out there to try and cause a bit of
a hassle because it's and it's nature, it's not the
cat's folk, but it is an issue and it needs
to be addressed. Chris. Obviously, tomorrow Anzac Day an amazing
day for both Australians and New Zealanders to remember those
(08:21):
who have gone before us and the freedom we now enjoy.
What does Anzac Day mean to you?
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Well, I think for me is the time when you
reflect on how lucky we are as a country and
you increasingly look around the world. And we're having an
election in a couple of weeks and we went and
voted in the pre polls yesterday. There's no soldiers standing
around with machine guns. It's a civil democracy process. You know.
(08:47):
This is a freedom. This is a country which has
been defended by people who have given up their very
existence in order that we can have that freedom. And
that's I think what Australians are celebrating. They're not celebrating war.
War is a terrible thing, but and young people of
course increasingly are probably less inclined to want a fight
or have anything to do with that, but that doesn't
(09:08):
stop them respecting the people who defended our country against
those invaders years ago. And I particularly reminded of my
uncle who was my grandmother's brother. He was just a
farmer from Claire in South Australia, a little town. I
talked to you from there last year and we were
traveling through with the caravan. He immediately with his mates
(09:30):
went down at the age of eighteen, when soon as
the war started the First World War, signed up to
go overseas, was sent into the Battle of the Somme,
and very quickly, from having no military background, was awarded
the Military Medal because he was very good at cricket.
He was sitting there catching the bombs that the Germans
were throwing from their trenches into the Australian trenches. He
(09:53):
was catching them and throwing them back before they blew up.
Sounds like an inherently dangerous thing, nearly as dangerous as
facing the Poms in the ashes, but anyway, he won
the Military Medal for that, and then he was promoted
in the field to lieutenant and put in the intelligence
score and went over the Battle of Darrencourt, where because
he spoke fluent German, he was given the job of
(10:13):
crawling under across dead no man's land, underneath all the
dead bodies, to try and listen in to the German
Orders Group meetings at night where the Germans were deciding
what they're going to do the next day, and then
come back again across the same territory and report to
the British generals about what was going to happen, and
he was single handedly given a very significant part of
(10:36):
the responsibility for the victory that they had at that
particular battle, and for that he won the Military Cross.
The Military Cross could only be awarded officers, Military Medal
the ordinary soldiers, and so he is one of only
five Australians to be awarded both the Military Medal and
the Military Cross. Look where as a family, of course
very proud of him, and yet he was never really
(10:56):
proud of himself. I don't remember him well. I was
only ten when he died, but he came back and
went back to his farm, continued to grow. Wheat died
at the age of seventy nine in nineteen sixty two
and just became an ordinary citizen again, citizen again. My
grandmother said, he never really spoke much about his war experience.
It was just something he did with his mates. And
(11:18):
yet we, I think today, celebrate people like him, the
fact that they've given us these freedoms. They were prepared
to drop what they were doing defend us through the
mother country, as they then had in England, from being
being taken over by countries who would have run this
place completely differently. And we should forever remember that, because
(11:38):
that is a sacred, ultimate sacrifice these men made, and
I think anything we can do to recognize that, go
down and have our own memories round the cenotaph on
Anzac Day morning is a very special time.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Row absolutely, Chris Russell, our Australian correspondent, always love catching
up with you around that Anzac time, a very special
day for both of our countries. You out your time
and all the best at that service tomorrow, No worries.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Thanks Roe, same to you.
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