If you haven’t been paying attention, you may not be aware that Minister for Agriculture Barnaby Joyce recently embarked on the most disastrous PR campaign for Australia since that “awkward situation” KFC ad a couple years back.
It goes like this: Johnny Depp is currently in Australia filming the latest instalment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He decided he needed some company whilst in the country, so he brought along his two dogs, Pistol and Boo.
There’s only one problem: Pistol and Boo, technically speaking, are illegal aliens. See, Depp basically smuggled them into the country on his private jet. They didn’t pass customs or quarantine and as a result, they’re not allowed in the country.
We at Tone Deaf love dogs as much as the next online music outlet, but there is a reason why Australia’s strict quarantine laws are in place. For one thing, Australia is a rabies-free jurisdiction, and we’d like to keep it that way.
As Fairfax points out, we also have kind of a bad track record when it comes to non-native wildlife coming into our country. Yes, these are just two cute little puppy dogs, but bending the rules for a Hollywood star would be a little unfair, no?
While the situation surrounding Pistol and Boo was already enough to make headlines overseas, the Minister for Agriculture took things to explosive new proportions when he declared to the media that Depp had “50 hours” to expel his dogs from the country or they would be euthanised.
Yeah, he said that. Like, he actually said that. It wasn’t the gist of what he was saying, he explicitly stated that he would euthanise Pistol and Boo if they didn’t leave the country. Thankfully, they did and are now safe and sound in California.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world is sort of looking at Australia as though we really did kill Johnny Depp’s dogs. Case in point, comedian John Oliver recently devoted a segment of his show to basically slamming us over the whole incident.
In retaliation, Oliver demanded that we remove everything Australian from the US, starting with Vegemite, which he contended “tastes like a kangaroo took a salty shit in a jar”. Then things got personal.
“While you’re at it, come and get every shitty music album you’ve ever sent over here,” Oliver’s narrator demands in the video below, singling out albums from Jet, Silverchair, and Savage Garden. “Especially Midnight Oil,” he adds, “how do you dance when your legs aren’t moving you Aussie freak?”
