New lamb ad pokes fun at border restrictions

Meat and Livestock Australia’s new lamb ad pokes fun at everything from coronavirus to Tasmanians and the PM.

It’s 2031, in a divided Australia where concrete walls surround every state and territory, blocking friends and family from each other.

Life is bleak behind the grey border walls … until an Aussie barbecue comes to the rescue.

The scent of lamb wafting through the crack in a wall drifts beyond borders, and soon security guards, farmers and even Sydneysiders are tearing down the walls to get a piece of lamb.

Meat and Livestock Australia has taken a cheeky swipe at border closures and state divisions in their new annual ad.https://t.co/1E20qZd5HI

— Sunrise (@sunriseon7) January 10, 2021

It’s not a new dystopian drama on Netflix; but the Meat and Livestock Australia’s (MLA) highly-anticipated annual summer ad “Make Lamb, Not Walls”

The ad launched exclusively on Sunrise on Monday, pokes fun at everyone from Tasmanians and West Australians to the Prime Minister.

As the ad begins, a TV presenter announces: “Today marks 10 years since our once united nation was divided by the Great State Walls as tensions continue to escalate.”

A young child in NSW stares fearfully at the wall and asks her mother: “What’s on the other side, Mummy?” The mother responds, “They’re called Queenslanders.”

An elderly man chips a hole in the wall and peers through, before a lamb chop is passed through the void.

An elderly man is handed a lamb chop through the border wall. Picture: supplied via NCA NewsWire

As the scent of the barbie on the other side wafts through, a crowd storms the wall. They breach the defences, piercing the budge smugglers of a Queensland lifeguard depicted in a mural that says: “Nowhere else but Queensland” – a parody of the iconic Queensland tourism campaign “Where else but Queensland?”

The border is breached with a well placed hole. Picture: supplied via NCA NewsWire

After NSW residents bust through, people from all the states arrive: a WA miner digs her way in, saying: “Sorry for trying to become our own country … again.”

A small group of Tasmanians wearing life jackets arrive. When a news reporter asks: “Where are the rest of you?” One of them replies: “This is all of us.”

Media personality and former Australian rules footballer Sam Kekovich bursts through in an army tank, declaring: “I love the smell of lamb in the morning.”

Finally Scott Morrison, dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, lands from a holiday, asking: “What have I missed?”

The lamb ad has been released that makes fun of Scott Morrison’s poorly timed trip to Hawaii in 2019. Picture: supplied via NCA NewsWire

Sunrise hosts described the long-form ad, directed by Ariel Martin from Airbag, as a fix to border tensions.

“The new lamb ad has suggested Mend the border battle with the good old chop,” the hosts said.

Kekovich described the ad as a comical approach to fighting back against COVID-19.

“It’s about this great Australian predator that we’re going to overcome in 2021,” he said.