The Chaser Report - 2022, The Year That Was (Shit)

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Charles, John, and Lachlan unpack the first six months of 2022. Floods, elections, world wars, how did they writers pack so much into just one year? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. I'm Charles Firth and with me today is John Delmenico. Hello. And Lachlan Hodson. Oh, Captain, my Captain. Hi, Charles. How you doing?

We got a bit of the interns vibe happening. Yeah, I thought we'd bring it back as the year comes to a rap and everything standard drops. It's like, I mean, all. Also, for listeners who are regular listeners unlike Charles, you would already know that for the last couple weeks, Lockland and I have constantly been jumping in when Dom and Charles forget to record episodes and we need one for the next day.

Really? The last three Tuesdays have just been us too. I didn't see you in here. I thought that you were just practicing. Pretend being the adult. Yeah, exactly. I didn't realize that that was being broadcast to the nation. John, I believe you've actually put together a bit of the year's highlight.

Yeah, I went through this year, because there's been a lot that's happened, but it also feels like not much has happened because it's all, like, merged together. So I thought it would be good to actually just go through some of the biggest news stories of this year, because obviously everyone wants to remember 2022 for how it was. Oh, yeah. Well, I do think 2022 is unique amongst all the years I've ever lived in being, I think, the longest year. Oh, yeah, yeah. Fascinating.

Don't you think because, like, 2020 and 2021 both happened in about five seconds. We just can't remember anything from it because nothing happened. They were one year together. Yeah, yeah. But then, like, at the beginning of this year, it was still in, we're still in lockdown. It was still, like, there was so many things, like, the world is so different compared to what it is now. It's kind of like, I'm watching Game of Thrones at the moment, and it's kind of like season one and two, you just zoom through them because they're setting everything. up but season three like it just it it it's fantastic there's a lot to do but it does feel a little

long because of that it's like when scott morris i mean back in the news and it's like it felt like ages ago that he was in power minister and it's like oh no it has only been like six months it just feels like it's been at least a year or two because everything's like nothing has happened but then there's been constant things going on outside the government that you sort of forgot the government was like an underlining plot line of this story but yeah so i thought looking back, what happened at the start of the year. Does anyone remember what the biggest story of January was? January.

That was when everyone had COVID. It was Novak Djokovic, wasn't it? Oh, nice. Good memory. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, everyone had COVID. COVID, Novak Djokovic, PCR tests. Like, they didn't order enough rat tests.

No rats. Is it no rats? Final guess. So, I think January is when rats started coming in. So, like, that would have been, so Charles's right, because that's how, like, we went into January with no rats. And then we started getting them at the end. Yeah.

I mean, in fairness, we've got Novak Djokovic already. In fairness, they'd only had two and a half years to organise the reptiles. Yeah. And it's not like there was one minister who could organise the funding and the health response at the same time with the same power. You're right, because back then it was all like, well, this must be Greg Hunt's fault. But actually, no, it was the health minister's fault, which is Scott Morrison. There's multiple things when I was looking through the year going like,

oh yeah, no, Scott Morrison could have done this all. and no journalist has gone back to think, like, what could Scott Morrison have done that everyone was like, to be fair, it isn't one person's job. To be fair, no one asked Scott Morrison to do any of that. But do you think that maybe it's sort of like the ultimate plot twist in a novel

where, you know how, or like in a movie, you know, where, you know, that final piece of information then changes everything you know. Yeah. And the whole plot line. And you look back and you go, oh, my God. It was all clearly alluding to, whoa.

Yeah, it's great to have this underlining story. Like, in an actual novel, that person would have, like, done things, and, like, it would have been successful. What's the name for a protagonist who doesn't do anything? Like, an agonist. What was it? An antagonist? Emphasis on the agony.

I mean, I would say Scott Morrison was an antagonist. Like, that is an actual thing. But, no, there was one story that overshone that in Australia. What was this? It was the time a woman didn't smile for a fuck whit. Ah, of course. Yeah, and then obviously... But wait a minute.

She wasn't just not smiling for the prime minister. She was also not smiling. The social services minister, the health minister, the resources minister. I mean, it's basically the entire front bench that she wasn't smiling. Yeah, she saw her I had like six different people the exact same time. It was a rampage. Obviously, representatives for the fuckwick community came out, like Andrew Bolton, Peter Van Unslin and stuff.

Yeah. Or really going at Grace for not smiling. Yeah. Which is weird because if they had just smiled and shut up instead, everyone would have respected them more and liked them way more. Yeah. But now, like, Peter Van Nonson's, like, off the project. Andrew Bolt still has no viewers.

Joe Hildebrand has less. Yeah. Something got even less than Studio 10's viewership. I mean, you mentioned all those names. It's not like they could plummet much further anyway. Yeah. Why did she bother to turn up? Or I'm not allowed to ask that.

Well, no. So that was, that is literally the question that Peter Valencia put out. My favorite thing about that whole story was when they're like, oh, why would you show up? It was like, because it was the Australian of the Year event. She was the Australian of the Year. I mean, it was pretty rude of her to not smile at Scott Morrison who saw himself in as the Australian of the Year. Yeah, that's the same time. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's why Scott Morrison was there. She didn't need to be there. The Australian of the Year was there. So what happened after January? Yeah, we're up to February. So February, that's the first of many, many, many once in 100 year floods. The thing that I remember from that period was, you know, like, Scott Morrison didn't do anything for days. Like, he was just absent.

And you're going, oh, no, he's absent again. And then they sent all those army photographers up there. Oh, remember that? Yeah, and they said they couldn't. With tripods and cameras and, like, professional, but military camera people. Camera people. Yeah. And they were, like, cool.

People taking photos of them at food trucks standing in the way of the people helping. Yes. And then they were putting the food back into the food trucks when they were done with the photo shoot. Like, oh, well, no one needs this. Well, there was also that great thing of Peter Dutton launching a GoFundMe to help out, specifically people in one area of Queensland who are homeowners who might have damaged their houses, where he coincidentally owned multiple houses. And his excuse at that at the time was that,

that you need people who can act quickly and no one person can send troops, change the budget and allocate funds, which again, Scott Morrison could have done. Like, this is, it's so good because all these shit excuses that everyone knew were shit excuses because they're like, just talk to the other cabinet ministers. And I remember there was like this whole thing for the first four months of the year. Everyone's like, how is our cabinet so shit at talking to each other? But our entire cabinet was just one person. Yes.

Looking back, though, there is a decent reason why Scott Morriss. Morrison might have struggled. Because something I completely forgot is at the same time as the floods and Peter Dutton's GoFundMe, Scott Morrison was recovering from a welding incident where he blinded himself. Oh, my, gee, this man really gave us a lot to do in the first two months of the year. But then in a more serious note, February also saw internationally the biggest disaster that has caused revocations and traumatized millions. Scott Morrison playing the ukulele.

Ah. And then also Putin invaded Ukraine and has completely fucked up Russia. Yeah, but that still sucks because, like, now when I do it, I mean, play ukulele, sorry, now when I play ukulele, I look like a wanker. Oh, yeah, because you didn't look like a wanker before Scott Morrison did it. It's not like he did it because it's a wanker's instrument. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. Because the Russia thing was like, oh, he's actually doing it.

Yeah, yeah. And then there was this sort of assumption that Russia would definitely, definitely, definitely win. And it was, you know, will it be one week or two weeks before he takes over Ukraine? Well, I remember when we were in the case of, no, there's no way that this war could happen. And we wanted to do like some dumb, like song parody about World War III because we were like, yeah, well, it's fine. We're joking about the fact that there's a World War III, but it's not going to happen. And then as we sort of finished writing the thing, the first bomb started getting dropped. And we went, oh, well, this probably isn't going to go as well now.

Yeah, we did much better than the American analysts, who if you don't know, like American analysts, they were giving analysis like an hour or two beforehand because that was their nighttime news going like, oh, there was just never going to happen. Because reports have just come out that he doesn't have a plan for what he would do if he invades. And there's no way Putin's that dumb that he's just going to like risk everything. think for Russia by invading for no reason and definitely losing. And then within hours, those reports that the bombs had dropped. So all of those analysts who, to be fair to them, that is not that dumb of a reasoning of

like, you would have to be one of the dumbest leaders of all time to just go, we're just going to send everyone over there and assume we'll win. And then it's exactly what happened. Of course, because of time zones, all these American analysts now have, Like four hours between when they were saying it's not going to happen and when they're announcing the bombs dropped. The best analysis I heard during that period was somebody who said Putin helped Trump get installed. Like he wanted Trump to be there.

But then as soon as Trump was there, he had a real problem on his hands because Trump was the ultimate irrational actor. Like you just could not predict him. And that used to be Putin's shtick was like, well, you don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll do up a nuclear bomb. maybe I'll give everyone Novotronk in the underpants. And so he was sort of relieved when Trump left the stage because he could go back to being...

Theoretic, irrational actor. And it's classic Putin, you know, bringing out the big guns going, I'll invade Russia without a plan. That's what an irrational person would do. I still think we should blame... Hold my beer, Trump. There's one guy who predicted this 15 years ago

and said he was going to shirt front Vladimir Putin to stop it from happening. and then never did, obviously this is Tony Abbott's fault. Yes, I agree. So isn't everything Tony Abbott's fault? Yeah, March, that's when the cost of living crisis. We're only up to March? Yeah, February.

We're going to have to make this a two-part thing. I think we do two-parts. There we go. Yeah, everyone would want to listen to the first half. Yeah. So March, we had the cost of living crisis go up, and the government's response was to tell renters who are struggling to pay rent to buy a house.

buy new houses, yeah, no, because that was, I've often said that. At that time of the year, when, like, we were restructing things in the company and the cost of living crisis was hitting, like, us pretty badly, my rental got sold from underneath me. So that, like, direct, like, I was in the middle of, um, I can't say losing the job on the, we were in the middle of all of what happened at the start of the year to the chaser. And then, uh, our landlord was like, oh, yeah. Yeah, by the way, I need to sell the place at a good price before everything drops.

But it's all right. You would have got the government's one-off, one-off $250 payment. Yeah, which I then used to buy a house. Oh, to buy a house. So April now, because not much happened in March. Remember broccoli cost us? Oh, my, for a shrub. Iceberg lettuce.

Iceberg lettuce cost a ton. And then avocados, ironically. went down. Yeah. And then everything started having avocado. Remember, you go to the cafe and it'd be like, our special treat for today, avocado on avocados. Avocado in a smoothie weird, but it's just the nut, yeah. We're going to April. That's when the election launched and obviously Anthony Abernesey fucked it up with a disastrous flub on the first day. That was definitely going to lose him the election as long as Scott Morrison could wipe all our memories of everything about the last three years. But for me, you know, like, Alba at that moment, sort of became pro-minister

because he showed himself to be incompetent, got across his breathe, sort of lazy, clearly very lazy, didn't do the work properly. This guy's going to be pro-minister, this is what it takes in Australia. Well, that's the thing. We've got all of these prime ministers who know all of the answers off the top of their head. Oh, I can't relate to that. What I really want is a guy. who gets up on the day of his first day at work and goes,

I don't actually know. Ask me something else. That's why he got in. My favorite thing about that was that, like, two days later, he was on the Today Show. And he was like, and he was like, I'll get you.

There's very clearly pre-planned bit where he was like, what's the price of bread? And he was like, well, the local sourdough at my bakery cost like $5.20. And he just started raffling up everything on that bakery list down to like the dollars and cents and it was really stupid and then one of the co-hosts was like

all right what's the price of tampons just like froze which is such of like and then I remember some analysts like oh that's stupid and it's like is it more stupid than asking the price of bread like really pre-planned bit because like tampon costs are a policy issue

that went into the rest of the election in May where Scott Morrison did everything he could to win an election including creepily fondling a woman's hair and bulldozing a child at playing soccer. Ah, the bulldozer statement. Like, when he pummeled that kid, we were all in the office, like, late that night.

I remember seeing it and thinking it was one of those creepy AI-generated images. It did kind of seem too, like, too real. It was too good to be true. I remember I went to the toilet at the time, while Pam, Loughlin and Zander were in Cam's office, just making an image for something else and I ran back in

and I was like guys Scott Morrison just tackled a child everyone was like what do you mean I just showed them a photo on that was like five

that was like five seconds and I'm like fuck we need to come with jokes right now stop the press whatever it was doing and it was a lot of fun obviously

that was the other way that Scott Morrison tried to win was through Catherine Deves just if you really play up bigotry then you're going to win so

Labor won obviously and No, John, it was a masterstroke. That was the thing that was going to win the Outer Suburbs. And the only flaw in the plan was that actually people in the Outer Suburbs do not give a shit and are actually really quite tolerant, as was proven by the plebiscite to his beforehand. Then we go on to June, where the biggest story was the US Supreme Court announced that fetuses have the right to live, either up until the point they get shot at a school,

or they become a woman old enough that they can give birth and they lose their rights. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Which then there was, I remember there's so much reporting at the time being like, what are the ramifications for Australia? Will Australia lose abortion rights?

And then like a month later, a journalist was like, so I've looked, not every state has abortion rights in Australia. Like, W.A., it's still illegal. And in other states like Tasmania, you can only get them in private hospitals. And in some states, you just have to fly to like three different hospitals. that can do it and no one else can and it's like oh we were just already at that point

there was so much stuff being like and there's like lawyers being like well what's going to happen to Australian law it's like oh we were already there we just didn't talk about it I mean you can't get abortion on Medicare even to this day like it's not a Medicare thing really yeah that was a green's policy that they brought to the election it was like well we should fix that like that's a very obvious thing that we should fix and that became a weird talking point there has been I I mean, in fairness to just to sort of place it in context, there has been proper abortion rights reform in both New South Wales and Queensland in the last three years.

So, but yeah, you're right. You're totally right. Like, we sort of literally the handsmaid, handmaid's tail style. We were in a living. But looking at America going, ah, I'm the idiot. Let me just drown this. Yeah, yeah. I think that what we should do

is we're already about 20 minutes in We're only halfway through the year. We're only halfway through the year. Yeah, it's gripping staff. What will happen next? What will happen next? This is a bit of a cliffhanger episode, isn't it? Stay tuned tomorrow to find out what happened

six months ago. Who knows whether the world will end or not. See you tomorrow. Our gears from road and we're part of the ACARCREATTS creator network. Cliffhanger.