The Country 04/07/25: Chris Russell talks to Jamie Mackay

Our Australian correspondent talks biosecurity, and Trump ignoring Albo!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the country. Here's the Chris Russell interview
minus a small letter around the Lions test rightio ridiculously
inadequate penalties for illegal food imports. And this always irks
me when I'm coming in and out of the country
that people get caught up at customs because they've stupidly,
absolutely stupidly brought food and sometimes on purpose, sometimes not well.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
And you watch those shows on TV, Jamie, I suppose
you get them too, where they bio security shows and
people turn up with the suitcase and the customs ATA
said they the clear are not nothing, declare they say
in broken English? And when you open it up, it's
completely full of funny frogs, legs and.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Fried meat and pork and you name it in there.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Well, this is a case I thought was ridiculous. It
was almost what planet are we on? Sort of idea here,
But because this one was caught bringing sixty two tons
of meat and produce and Thailand to distribute on Sydney's
black market, including raw and cooked port frogs, edible insects, beef,
chicken fish, raw prawns, and insect infested fruit. And it

(01:08):
was tipped off, so they declared she didn't declare obviously
it was tipped up. She was put in jail and
the goods had traces of African swine fever, Newcastle disease,
and white spot disease. And yet the judge lets her
off with a twenty two month intensive corrections order and
one hundred and fifty hours of community service. I just

(01:30):
think it's absolutely ridiculous. We make all these noises and
we argue with Trump about bringing his beef in, and
when someone's caught blatant be ignoring it all, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
We just give them a slap on the wrist with
a wet lettuce sleep. It's so pathetic.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yep, she should be on the slam of for ten years.
That's endangering your country quite literally. Right, let's talk about
Trump and Elbow. Never the twin shall meet.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Well, we've just had our Foreign Minister Penny Yong, Penny
Wong over in America meeting up with Marco Rubia, her
equivalent in the.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
US, and he's said.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
That Albow is on the list to be met with.
But of course, the deadline on the tariff measures, of
the delay in the tariff measures runs out on the
ninth of July, and at that point, we go to
ten percent on all of our imports and fifty percent
on our aluminium and steel imports. And there doesn't to
be any rush by Trump to meet up with Albou.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
I don't think he likes Rudd.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Who is our commissioner in the US, who's quite openly
been criticizing Trump.

Speaker 3 (02:33):
So he's just put elbow on the back.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Burner, and so it looks like we will start paying
these but of course they're only going to help hurt Americans,
as we talked about before, Jamie, because they have got
to have the meet.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
And they're just going to pay the extra for it.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
We haven't put any reciprocal tariffs here for the same
reason that we don't want to hurt our consumers in Australia.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Jomie