BtN: Episode 20 Transcript 31/7/12
On this week's Behind the News

It's the Olympics BtN style. We'll tell you about the tough rules on who can
show the Games.

A big problem getting bigger. What happens when fast food reaches
developing countries?

And why new technologies mean our coins and notes could one day disappear.
Hi I'm Nathan Bazley, welcome to Behind the News. Also on the show today we check
out a competition where kids show off their skills at handling cattle! Before all that.
Gun Control
Reporter: Nathan Bazley
INTRO: More than a week ago, the world was rocked by news of a horrible
shooting in a movie theatre in America. 12 people were killed and 58 wounded. But
while the alleged killer has been arrested, attention has now turned to his
accomplices in the crime some very high powered weapons. Should people be
allowed to own guns like that? The answer for many Americans might surprise
you.
KID: We need to stop this from happening again.
NATHAN BAZLEY, REPORTER: It's a natural response to a horrible event, to want
to learn from something so sad. But stopping people before they commit these crimes
can be difficult. So attention often falls on the tools they use to carry them out; guns.
It might surprise you to learn that before most of you were born, Australia had its
own tragic moment like America is experiencing now. It happened at Port Arthur in
Tasmania in 1996. 35 people were killed. The public's sights fell onto the guns that
made the attack possible. And the Prime Minister of the day did something about it.
He banned the weapons used in the attack.
Hundreds of thousands of them were handed in voluntarily and in return, the owners
were compensated. All of those weapons were destroyed. That left Australia with
some of the strictest gun laws in the world.
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JOHN HOWARD: It means that this country, through its governments, has decided
not to go down the American path.
But how is the American path any different? Well here, owning a gun is seen by many
as a right.
CHARLTON HESTON, FORMER NRA PRESIDENT: From my cold dead hands!
NRA AD: Never fight if you can avoid it. But if you must fight, don't lose.
It's estimated around 100 million people in the US have a gun. That's about 45
percent of all households. In Australia, it's closer to 5 percent. You can buy guns at
the supermarket and as this documentary famously showed, even get one free when
you open a bank account. And any one that dares to speak up against it faces this.
NRA AD: Don't let Barratt recall your gun rights!
The National Rifle Association, or NRA, is one of the most powerful groups in
America. And their aim is to protect the Second Amendment to the American
constitution; the right to bear arms.
But arms have changed a lot since then. When the Second Amendment was written,
the most lethal gun available was a musket. In the time it takes to reload one, a semiautomatic weapon can shoot up to 15 bullets. An automatic weapon can shoot up to
255. Both of those types of weapons are banned in Australia. But in most states of
America, you can pick up either with little trouble. And that's exactly what one young
guy did in Colorado.
WITNESS: He was shooting for, like, about a minute and a half, two minutes. I felt
like it was going on forever. He shot, he shot, shot, reloaded, keep on. He kept on
shooting.
Now, some people here have started speaking up for some form of gun control.
CHARLES RAMSEY, PHILADELPHIA POLICE COMMISSIONER: I don't know why
people need to have assault weapons. There needs to be reasonable gun control put
in place.
MICHAEL MOORE: This is not the America I'm going to live in. This is too great a
country to let this happen again.
But considering gun sales have soared 40 percent since the attack, it seems America
is still unwilling to bite the bullet on gun control.
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Online Poll
OK let's make that our poll this week.
The question is:
Should the US have stricter rules on gun ownership?
To vote just head to our website.
The Wire
New figures show the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat is
higher this year than any before. Six-thousand, seven hundred and sixty five asylum
seekers have arrived by boat this year. This breaks the previous record set in 2010.
*****
There have been big protests in Japan. People are unhappy with the government's
decision to reopen two nuclear power plants. Up to ten thousand protesters formed a
human chain around the parliament building.
All of Japan's 50 nuclear reactors were shut down last year after a nuclear disaster at
the Fukushima power plant.
*****
And an 11 year old boy has gone on a joy ride flying from the UK to Italy without a
passport or a ticket. The boy was able to get past several security checks by tagging
on to another family.
“The boy was mixed in with a large number of children and other family members,
clearly our staff didn't count the right number of children versus the right number of
boarding cards."
He wasn't noticed until the flight was already on its way to Rome. He was flown
straight back to his worried mum in London.
Olympic TV
Reporter: Sarah Larsen
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INTRO: For the next few weeks the news is going to be full of stories from the
Olympic Games over in London. But unfortunately you won't see much of the action
here on BtN. That's not because we don't like sport it's because there are restrictions
on the pictures we're allowed to show. And it's not just TV that's affected. Sarah
finds out about the business behind the games.
SARAH LARSEN, REPORTER: It's the most watched sporting event in the world. A
chance to see the best athletes performing feats of strength, speed, accuracy and
agility, right there on your TV screen. Unless, of course, you're watching BtN.
REPORTER: Hey!
Yep, it's Olympics time. And for us here at BtN that means coming up with different
ways of showing what's going on in London, whether it's with toys or you guys.
Because, as big as the Olympics are, you won't see them on every channel.
TV stations only get the right to show the Olympics if they pay for it. And they pay a
lot. Channel Nine and Foxtel forked out 120 million dollars to be able to play the
London games in Australia.
They see it as an investment. Lots of people tune in to the Games, which means lots
of people watching ads which earn the TV stations lots of money. But for the
channels that don't have rights reporting on the games is a tricky business.
The ABC is funded by taxpayers so it can't afford to spend hundreds of millions on
the Olympics. It does buy rights to the Paralympics, which are broadcast after the
games but in the meantime there are tight restrictions on what it can show.
The news is allowed to report on the games but it's only allowed to show a little bit of
vision and it can only do it three times a day.
That means a lot of programs miss out including BtN. It's not just TV stations that
are restricted. Companies pay a lot of money to be official Olympic sponsors. So
they're the only ones allowed to link themselves to the Games.
All merchandise has to be official and anyone selling souvenirs without permission
can get into big trouble. Even the Olympic rings are off limits, as Muriel Butler found
out when she knitted a display for a craft-shop window. She had to cover it up when
the torch relay went through.
JILL BAKER-TOPLIS, MURIEL BUTLER'S DAUGHTER: I thought it was absolutely
disgraceful. We're all worried that we're going to get sued here, because we've got
'Olympic' mentioned in the window.
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Even using words like London," "summer" or "gold," along with "Games" or "2012"
can get you into trouble, although some businesses are finding ways around the rules
with some interesting changes to the logo and spelling.
There are also restrictions on social networking. People with tickets to the games
have been warned not to share vision of the events on the internet. Some say the
rules have gone too far and they're stopping ordinary people from getting involved in
the Olympic spirit.
But putting on an event this big is really expensive and others point out that without
sponsorship the games probably wouldn't exist. For most athletes and spectators the
Olympics isn't about money, it's about a different type of gold and coming together to
celebrate the best in sport and that's worth watching, however you can.
Presenter: OK, let's have our first quiz of the day.
Quiz 1
The question is:
Which of these events is in the modern pentathlon?
High Jump
Show Jumping
110 metre hurdles
Answer: Show Jumping
The other 4 events are pistol shooting, freestyle swimming, fencing, and a crosscountry run. It's a strange mix isn't it? OK, now onto a story about the food we eat.
Globesity
Reporter: Nathan Bazley
INTRO: There was a time when some developing countries struggled even to feed
their own people. But now some of those same countries are suffering from a
different problem - obesity. Let's take a look.
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NATHAN BAZLEY, REPORTER: The fast foods we know and love are spreading
across the globe. In the past 20 years they've hit developing countries where not so
long ago, food was scarce for some people. Where they used to crave a feed, now
they're craving fries. Here's a quick world tour of the damage.
It's Mother's Day here in one of the poorest areas of Mexico. Celebrations are
underway at a local school, complete with free drinks provided by Coke. In fact, for
the kids at this school they don't get water in class, they get soft drink. This is just
one of the reasons that Mexicans drink more soft drink per person than any other
country on earth. But how can people from such a poor area afford a luxury, like soft
drink? Well it's always kept affordable - 70 cents for 2 litres in this area.
What do you do with your spare time? Well in China, kids are signing up to classes
like this. But they don't just go for an hour. They stay in camps like this for months or
even years. China is a big country with an increasingly big problem. Fast food chains
have been opening up, in a place that used to be closed off to the outside world. That
means foods high in both sugar and fat are now taking the place of traditional
healthier meals. That's a recipe for problems.
This is the Nestle boat, a floating shop that visits all the small villages up and down
the Amazon, in Brazil. It brings with it all the chocolate, biscuits and other processed
foods you could want. And it visits many of the poorest areas of Brazil, to make sure
they don't miss out. Convenient, but far from healthy.
Here in this diabetes clinic, they're seeing more and more Indian people diagnosed
with the obesity related illness. Research suggests that because their bodies aren't
used to a high fat, high sugar diet, diabetes is an even bigger risk. Half a billion
people here are poor and hungry. But as with many developing countries, they are
now joined by a growing group of obese people too.
Two opposite problems living right next to each other. So there you have it, a world
tour of the new frontier for the obesity epidemic. Of course, western countries are
still the overweight champions of the world. But the rate at which these developing
countries are catching up has researchers worried.
The most worrying thing though, is who's having to shoulder this weight of unhealthy
temptation. In most cases, it's kids. A growing problem among the world's smallest
people. So how did it get this way?
Cashless Society
Reporter: James Bartold
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INTRO: It's hard to imagine a world where money doesn't exist. But some people
think that the coins and notes that we call 'money' will eventually disappear. That's
because the way we pay for things is changing. Here's James to explain.
JAMES BARTOLD, REPORTER: No matter how you like to pay for things, you'd
have a pretty tough time trying to buy anything in the world without money.
We use it wherever we go to buy all kinds of different things. But over time how we
pay for things has changed quite a bit. Back in the old days, money was all about
trading precious metals like gold and silver for things you wanted to buy. But it was
an expensive way to make money so they started making it out of less valuable things
like copper and nickel and paper and cloth.
Like in the old days we've also found ways to reinvent money. Cash got its first real
competitor with the invention of a piece of plastic with a magnetic strip.
EFTPOS and credit cards popped up in Australia 40 years ago and nowadays if you
think about it there are very few things you can't buy with card - lunch or even
parking metres. And that's got some people saying the old fashioned cash could be
on the way out.
REPORTER: What do you have in your wallet at the moment?
VOX 1: Only cards. I don't even have any coins at all.
VOX 2: Mostly coins and cards.
VOX 3: Right now we've got 5 dollars stuck in here and a few coins and that's about
it.
REPORTER: And why not so much cash?
VOX 3: Credit cards baby, credit cards.
Money is now digital. It's all about quick, fast transfers using the power of
technology. And credit card companies are making it even easier with the invention
of tap and pay. But it's not just cash that could be waved goodbye. Cards could follow
sooner than you might think.
REPORTER: These cards are just the start. The tap and pay technology is now being
moved to mobile phones too, turning your phone into a mobile wallet.
Inside your phone is a little chip that stores all your details a lot like a credit card
does. All you have to do is press your phone up to an electronic reader. It'll
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immediately recognise you and you've paid. So no need for cash, cards or a wallet.
Just your phone!
But all this money flowing through the digital clouds has some people worried. Some
think having all our details on a device could make us easy targets for cyber
criminals. But others say there are always fears when new technology comes in.
Cash isn't that safe itself. It can be stolen from banks and unlike with this new
technology you can't easily track it if it goes missing! The tap and pay companies are
so confident in the new technology they're even insuring their clients money. So
anything that's lost or stolen will be paid back to you.
Cash isn't out of fashion just yet. It's still the most common way to pay. But with the
mobile money train moving so fast. A cashless society will soon be available if you
want it!
Quiz 2
OK, let's have a quiz about money.
The question is:
Which of these is a unit of currency in China?
Yuan
Yen
Dong
Answer: Yuan
You'll find Yen in Japan and Dong in Vietnam. OK, enough of all that money talk.
Let's move onto some sport now. Here's Tash with this week's Score.
The Score
Casey Stoner has won the US Moto GP.
“Stoner wins”
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Stoner was able to take the lead early in the race. Jorge Lorenzo finished second.
Stoner's teammate Dani Pedrosa came third. It was Stoner's fourth victory of the
season but he's still 32 points behind Lorenzo in the overall world championship
standings.
*****
Cadel Evans has pulled out of the Olympics. The Aussie cyclist was supposed to race
in the Olympic time-trial but says he's too tired. Evans came into the Olympics in bad
shape after suffering through the recent Tour de France with a stomach bug.
*****
And check this out. It's called wheelchair rugby although it's better known as
‘Murderball’. Our Australian team is training hard for the upcoming Paralympics.
The Aussies are currently ranked number 2 in the world behind the USA. But they
say this year's team is the strongest they've ever had!
Kids & Cattle
Reporter: Sarah Larsen
INTRO: For some kids in the country being able to handle cattle is a way of life. It's
also a kind of sport, believe it or not, and there are competitions around the country
were young cattle handlers show off their skills. Sarah had a look at a cattle show
that's just for kids.
SARAH LARSEN, REPORTER: They weigh as much as a small car. They're stronger
than a rugby player and they can be kind of scary.
But that doesn't stop kids like Emily from getting up close and personal with cattle.
EMILY: You just need to get yourself up quickly and just get on with it.
Emily and her cousins and friends have come here to Bundaleer Stud to get ready for
the annual South Australian Junior Heifer Expo.
WILL & FERGUS: I'm Will Southon and I'm Fergus Southon and I'm 10 years old,
and I'm 11 years old turning 12 in November.
KATE: I'm Kate Ashby and I live on this property Bundaleer near Gulnare.
TOM: I'm Tom Filmer. I come from a place called Callington not far from Mount
Barker.
This four and a half thousand acre property has been in their family for five
generations and heifer handling is a bit of a tradition.
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In case you were wondering, these are heifers. They're cows that haven't had calves
yet.
Each kid has their own heifer that they've been getting ready to put on show in the
city. They'll be judged for the quality of their animals and also for the way they lead
them.
MATT ASHBY: Right, listen up everyone. Today we're going to groom our heifers, get
'em looking half presentable and we'll take them for a walk up to the machinery shed.
Cattle shows are a chance for breeders to show off their best livestock. They’re also a
way of getting kids involved in the industry.
GRAHAM: And if we don't train you young people when you're going and get the
passion early, well we're just running out. They're all going to the mines to work and
we're getting short of people to work the land.
In Adelaide, the Bundaleer team are joined by kids from all around the country with
heifers of all shapes and sizes.
JESS: This is Jo Mclauchlan’s little Angus Heifer who was unfortunate enough to get
stuck with me so we clipped her yesterday and I think she looks a bit funny. I sort of
shaved her head and didn't do a very good job so poor thing doesn't know how silly
she looks, thank God.
While the look of the animals is important, so are the kids' skills and knowledge. In
one event they have to judge the heifers themselves, testing how well they can speak
and how well they know cattle.
KID: She has a good behind and a lovely udder structure.
KID: I put the Murray Grey, it was a nice long straight back, feminine head and good
pins. Nice 45 degree angle on her neck.
In the ring it's about confidence, style, and understanding your heifer.
JUDGE: The young lad the junior parader here he really hasn’t put a foot wrong all
day. He's got their heifer on a string. The affinity between heifer and handler is
amazing and I congratulate him for that.
In the end 9 year old, Lauchy was crowned junior Champion handler; just points
ahead of his older sister.
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REPORTER: How does it feel Lauchy?
LAUCHY: Feels good to beat my sister.
The Bundaleer kids also picked up their share of ribbons. But win or lose, they say
they'll be back next year and the year after that. Carrying on the family tradition and
helping to shape the future of Australia's cattle industry.
Closer
That's it for the show. You can jump onto our website if you want to get more info on
any of the stories. You can send us your comments and don't forget to vote in this
week's poll. I'll see you next time.
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