The Chaser Report - 2023: The Lows And Lowers Pt. 1

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Charles Firth and Dom Knight present The Chaser Report's year in review of 2023! It's our special two-part episode where we look back at everything that happened over the year, and fondly remember how everything that starts off on a high can only go downhill! 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 with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. What say we look back on the roller coaster ride that was 2023 with the traditional slash lazy year in review episode. Yes, that's right. And we're going to break it into two episodes. So today we're going to do January to June. This has been a very, very big year. And then we'll do the really depressing July. to December part of tomorrow.

So if you're wanting to leave the year and a high, probably just listen to this episode and not tomorrow. Not the one that covers the period of, I don't know, the voice. Yeah, the voice. And Gaza. Oh, yeah. Like everything. Yeah, and everything.

Yeah. And just the general disappointment that Anthony Alvonezzi has. You know, like just that sort of general malaise where it's like all the expectation. Hang on. Don't have the, don't bring the tomorrow's depression today, child. Let's put it off. It all begins after this. Okay, so the year started, I reckon it was one of the best starts to the year ever.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, like, certainly, you've got to go back to before 2015. Remember 2015 was the year when a whole lot of celebrities died, and we thought, oh, this is the worst year ever. That's right. Well, that was the year I got married, so personally that wasn't a bad year. But admittedly, for those who died, not a highlight. But it was like David Bowie or someone died, and then suddenly it was like, okay, this is the worst. Oh, yeah, and Prince.

And yeah, it was pretty bad. A lot of deaths. And then, and then 2016 was Trump, you know, like, and then it just, then pandemic. And Brexit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was during my honeymoon. But so, 2023 started with George Pell dying. So it was like off to a good start.

It was like, actually, we've turned the corner here. We've got George Pell dead. And you went to the funeral, if I recall. Well, actually, I, um. Well, you know what actually were you there. Well, I was at the funeral, but they didn't let me in. Oh, you were near the funeral. Yeah.

I was carrying a coffin. A coffin of evidence to bury alongside Pell, that's a, you know, Catholic tradition. The weirdest thing is, is that as we sit here in the Chaser report studio, about a meter from Charles's right shoulder, is said coffin. Oh, yeah. Still full of boxes saying evidence. Why are you keeping it? We've failed to bury the evidence. Are you going to do that joke again?

Who's the next person you can do that for? Well, you know, the Chaser has a long history of recycling jokes. You know, and Craig is into recycling. I can't think of it. anyone who's just launched a defamation suit who those boxes marked evidence might be able to be used for. Yeah, but only if he dies. Oh, you never know.

Okay. Yep. We'll keep those props. May I as well hang on to it. Am I props hoarder? Is that what you're... It's getting a little bit haughty in the studio. We'll have to work on that.

That's all right. We've got some time. Over summer. This is our last week of content, by the way. We've decided it's... We're both just absolutely exhausted. So I think a break is in order. But we'll do weekly episodes in January and come back with a vengeance in Feb.

So the podcast. isn't ending. Sorry if you hoped it was. Yeah, that's right. And also, we've got a fantastic idea for a format, which we're going to grow out of the podcast. Yes, lots of good ideas coming in 2024. Okay, so then... Carlos looks through the slides from your stage show, which also did a review of the year.

Yeah, and there was a good joke, which admittedly James wrote, but I see it in the show. That's okay. You're allowed to repurpose shovel material? Who cares? Which is, there's this lovely symmetry in the Catholic tradition where you pay attention to things that don't exist and completely ignore. things that do exist. I think that's a good...

That was a nice observation, I thought. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Turn a blind eye to the things that are actually happening, and yet focus on the mysterious and possibly not even there at all. And then Jacinda Adern died, not died, resign. This is the most definitive. In January, was it really that long ago? Yeah, she resigned in January.

And it was sort of like, oh, okay, well, maybe everything. Because remember, she was completely on the nose. She was about to face re-election later in the year. And for some reason, the rest of the world loved Jacin's. Yeah, Stephen Colbert loved her, but she wasn't very popular back in New Zealanders. Well, I think what she did was she got on elected on the promise of fixing housing affordability. Oh. And then didn't.

I wonder who that sounds like. Ooh. What's the New Zealand accent version of precedent? Yeah, okay. So, Jacinda Arden, wow, that's, I mean, but we'll always have the Colbert interview where she personally welcomed him to New Zealand and drove him around in the car, as though that was actually something she genuinely had time to do on the regular. Is that what she did? She did. Yeah, she welcomed it at the airport.

The best part about Jacinda Adern was the night she got elected, somebody from Australia, one of the Australian journalists, rang up her office to find out how to pronounce her name properly. And she answered the phone because she was in her office. She was only one of the office. Yeah. And presumably picked up the phone and said, hello, Jacinda Ardard. Thanks, that's all I needed.

It's great. Then we had that strange scandal in January of Dominic Peritay admitting that he'd, admitting that he dressed up as a Nazi. Oh, that's right. Trying to obviously get ahead of a story where there were photos and terribly incriminating photos. You're not going to remember who that is. That was the former Premier of New South Wales.

Yes, he was this sort of person who, he looked like a 14-year-old. He looked like that Leo Paglizzi guy who does Channel 6 News. If you looked in a sort of visual dictionary for young liberals, kind of middle-aged, you would find a picture of Dominic Perot. Or admittedly, you know, Hitler youth. But the picture would not have him in the Nassi. We never found the photo.

No, no, this is the whole thing. It was the best scandal that never happened. But it's so embarrassing because you know how it's like, remember when Paul McLeigh, the Labor politician in New South Wales got up in Parliament admitted to using porn, like visiting porn websites using the New South Wales government IT system. And it was assumed that that's because his internet searches were then going to come out. And they never came out. And so he admitted this porn thing.

No, I think it was even worse than that. It was actually that he was not like, it wasn't him that was being, like, you know, was the problem. It was actually some other person and he admitted it anyway. This was what happened with Dominic Peridae. He admitted to these photos existing of him dressing up as an artist. Like at his 21st, which we have to remember was a uniform theme party. So he'd constructed the entire event in order to wear the uniform. But Charles, you know.

And you've got to also remember that Dominic. Peritay when he became New South Wales Premier, was 22 years old. Like, or he certainly looked 22 years old. He also had 22 kids. You're forgetting a key detail about that story, though. Yeah. Which is that it wasn't embarrassing because he dressed up as Hitler. It was because he dressed up as Prince Harry.

Yeah. See what I did there? Yeah, I love it. Yep. All right. So that was January. Then we had February when Titanic, the movie, turned 25. Yes.

And so Leo DiCaprio lost all interest in it immediately. And this set the scene for another event that would happen later in the year involving the Titanic. Yes, it's been a good year for the Titanic. It has been in the news quite a lot, both in terms of commemoration and also a fresh story, which we'll get to. A fresh story, which actually happened to be our most listened to episode of the year. It did, we should probably re-publish that and try to get some, squeeze some more juice out of the lemon. This is the one where Charles, we'll get to it. But I'm just hoping that there'll be more catastrophic collapses of submersible things.

good for numbers involving billionaires, because that really drives our numbers. Oh, people love that, loved that. Yeah. That's good content. The Chardon Freud is submersible, that was. Then Ryle Dahl books were censored, remember they did that? That whole palaver, that's right. Yeah, they changed various words and, I can't remember, maybe, whatever it was.

There was sort of, but what they didn't do was change all the anti-Semitic undertones in his books. So it was like, they sort of, it was political correctness, not gone mad, it was just like gone wrong. Well then there was the Ian Fleming one And I've read a lot of those Trans Bond books And there are quite a few Look I've got to say There are a few little slurs

That you could probably do with that They take you out of the story I mean I'm just going My position is Occasionally if you just read A massively racist word It goes you kind of It's disbands the disbelief somewhat

But isn't that Aren't you as a reader aware That there's a context And there's a time in which that was written Well maybe it's better Maybe it's better to think Oh yeah Ian Fleming was pretty fucking racist Maybe it's good to have it transparent

It gives you an insight into how far we've come as well. Like, I think if you sort of start changing text, you end up in this never-ending. All right, well, then I dare you to republish all the Chase and newspaper articles. No, no. No, I'm not saying you've republished them. I'm saying you let them be what they were,

and you choose to sort of quietly... But, Charles, you've been republishing the same jokes we used to do forever. Sure. And changing the words to make topical. You know that on the Chase's internal WhatsApp group, there are complaints occasionally. about the overuse of certain types of gags. Remember when Chris sent around that?

Yep. But what was it for? It was, oh, the idea that such, you know, Mark Latham turns out to be a chaser stunt or, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah, there's been a lot of those ones. Yeah, there's. We don't do that anymore. But also observation with ironic twist. I think that's about 70% of the headlines these days.

Anyway, so we have that discussion on the WhatsApp group rather than on the podcast? Okay. Okay. Then we had, oh, we had the spy balloons being shot down. Remember Biden? That was great. Loughlin did a stunt on that, didn't he? Yes, that's right. I was there. Yeah, we went to the China. Well, I don't think I ended up filming the Chinese embassy part. No, you don't want to go to me near that. No, Lachlan's the one that can't go to China now. But they, what Cam and Loughlin did is they got a spy balloon and they tried to fly it over the Chinese embassy. Yeah, it was a genuine national security incident. Very, very, very well done.

And then, actually, I've known. One of our top-selling pieces of merch on the Chaser's Shop is still the T-shirt. Because he put on a T-shirt which said, not a spy. And then he went around. And he was acting suspiciously around the Chinese Embassy. And that T-shirt still lives on. Like, we still get orders every day for that T-shirt. Well, that's the thing.

When you're not a spy, you're not a spy every day. That's what I've found. No, but I'm just thinking, do you think the spy community has latched into it? Absolutely, they have. They love it. And they've gone, oh, this is a spy. good t-shirt to wear because I'll be incognito. I reckon that's

what they've done. Good stuff. A lot of orders coming out of Canberra. Our metadata would be very useful. Oh then in March you look back and you go lots happen this year. Labor, Labor won the New South Wales elections. They did didn't they? Yes. A wall-to-all labour on the mainland and there was quite a nice joke in the

stage show actually about how it was reported in the Australian. Yeah, which is the, you know, Tasmania that which is a visual gag. It was much larger than the mainland. You had to be there. That would just tell you to book the tickets for next year. So, no, we're also all labour, which means that basically we're in a socialist utopia, where Labor's fixed everything.

Yeah, this is as good as it gets. This is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Great. And as you can see, it's not like Peter Dutton is completely driving national policy from opposition or anything like that. John Delmanico, the editor of the Chaser, had a good observation the other day, which is Palishei resigning just the other day, means that we're literally in the era of nobody knowing the names of any premier. Yes.

That was the last premiere that we knew. The last COVID era premiere, they've all fucked off. Yeah. So New South Wales is Chris Minns. What's the name? I don't know. Jacinta Alan is Victoria. I should know.

Stephen Miles is Queensland, friend of the show. He's been on the show. What we really want is people who have been on the show? We could probably get Chris. Who's Chris? Oh, Min's. Who's that again? He's the New South Wales premiere.

Are you sure? It doesn't sound very. likely. Wasn't that someone called Dominic like me? And then Perth, I wouldn't have a clue. No.

But it doesn't matter. You don't need to know. Yeah, it doesn't. Until they shut the state down again. South Australia doesn't matter either. And then, well, Tasmania,

it's a minority. It was Jeremy Rockcliff, wasn't it? Is it still? I don't know who it is. And Tazzy? Yeah. Premier is just email us

podcast at chaser.com today. If you want to come on the show and everyone can find out who you are. Yeah. Then we had Earth Hour. Really?

Is that still a thing? In March. Seriously? No, it was very different this year because we've got a federal Labor government. And so they paused all fossil fuel approvals to commemorate at Earth out for 60 minutes. For 60 minutes, yeah, big move. And it is still Jeremy Rockcliffe. I knew one.

Oh, nice. Okay. Yeah. See, don't say, we've got to listen to comment this morning saying that our research was half-assed. We're going to make it three-quarters last next year. That's what we're going to do. That's the big change. And I took offence of that.

I said, at most, it's quarterized. There's a tiny bit of buttoe perching on the chair there. Okay. So let's keep going. Let's keep going after this. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. So then we had the cost of the Orcus submarines was unveiled in March. Yes.

And that was $368 billion. It's still hard to believe that that number is even possible to think of, let alone commit to spending. Well, you've got to remember, you know, they're getting a good finance plan. Oh, yeah. No, it's on the old interest rates. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

And they've spaced their payments out over 3,600 months. Yeah, there's a balloon. Unfortunately, it's a Chinese spy balloon payment. But also, it's important to note that for that money, we're not just getting submarines. We're also getting the right to completely surrender our national sovereignty when it comes to defense. So it's a big deal. Because the thing is that it's one of those dealership offers where you're locked into servicing it with the dealership. Yeah, that's right.

Including, and it's sort of almost like you have to buy all your petrol from the dealership. Yeah, because they give you the nuclear core. And the nuclear core is a black box. You're not allowed to open it. Well, I want one of those for my car. Yeah. Like, I mean, as nice as electric cars are, these things can run for decades off the one nuclear core. Why aren't we using them in our cars?

Peter Duttonwood. I just can't understand why we don't have, you know, millions of nuclear reactor vehicles driving around. I don't know why. It seems that Peter Dutton will fix that if he gets in. Yeah, I am. There'll be a million reactors and they'll be safe, I'm sure. Well, actually, it was around this time that Dutton announced his nuclear policy, which is they're going to build 71 nuclear power reactors to save the world from climate change. We've got to do an episode on this soon, actually, because he just reiterated this at the climate summit, didn't they?

the coalition. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's total coalition. They've gone all in on nuclear, which is actually quite brave of them. Remember that they were unable to build a single commuter car park. Yes. And the swimming pool that they commissioned in North Sydney is now into, I think it's 11th year of reconstruction. But I'm sure they'll be able to whip up 71 nuclear reactors.

For a technology that doesn't exist. Safely. Yeah. Oh, anyway, it's worth discussing that in the new year that we'll look at that in a bit of detail. Yeah, yeah. Well, we should get an expert on it. Let's keep going. Let's keep going.

Okay, sorry. Yeah, because this is... Then we had... Oh, we had all those new tax on Super. Oh, yes. Which hits people who have over $3 million in cash. I'm still... Still haven't gotten over it.

I know. It's a huge slug. All my podcasting millions are just... The government's taking them. Hands off, Albo. Then we had the Nazis turning up to that anti-trans rally. Which one? There's so many Nazis turning out to...

You mean the ones in Victoria? Yeah, which one listener has said, we shouldn't call them anti-trans rallies because they were, they're actually let women speak rallies or something. Oh. It's the, it's a, I think feminist or sort of a certain type of feminist. I mean, nice to have JK Rowling in the country, though. But the problem is the gag that we made in the show was about it being an anti-trans rally because the neo-Nazi thought he was turning up to an anti-trans rally.

Oh, yes. Did you get fact checked? Which wouldn't have worked. It wouldn't have worked, no. If we'd actually call it by... You could have had an anti-turf rally and had a joke about grass, but it wouldn't have been as good. Oh, yes.

But it wasn't, it was a pro-turf. Pro-terf, oh, that's true, yeah. Oh, well. Then... War on 2024, you'll get that, right. Jerry Springer died. Oh, yes. Which caused absolute pandemonium in heaven

when he revealed that Jesus had two daddies. Oh, my God. Yeah. And that Mary claimed she was still a virgin. That didn't make him to the live show. No, it didn't make them to live. It was a good. No, we tried it in Gosford.

It didn't work. Oh, if Godfurt gets to veto the show, of course it does. We had a lot of, we had a lot of religious content in the first few shows. Oh, right. Okay. Scaled back. Yep. The cost of medicine got halved, you know, and then the Pharmacy Guild had that world-class sook about it.

I don't get twice as many prescriptions for the same price. Yeah. Albo's done nothing for me. Yeah. It's a mug. What's you doing about the cost of living? And then the pharmacy guild tried to. tried to run this populist campaign

going, you will pay half. How dare you? It will cost you half the money. Albows making you pay half. And we'll run out of supply, they said, which has yet to happen. But other than that, yeah, good on your pharmacists. Then we had generative AI.

This robot had to outsource all his menial labour to a low-paid human, just so he could concentrate on his art. 100%. It was revealed that Peter Dutton uses chat GPT to write all these speeches. Is that what?

Is that how it works? That explains why they're so good. Yeah, to bring it's to bring a human touch. Oh, I see. Yeah. Yeah. Rolf Harris died.

See, it was a good first half of the year. There was some interesting deaths, yeah. Well, coronation was in May. I think segueing from Ralph Harris

directly to the royal family makes all kinds of sense. They were... He painted the queen. It was a TV show where he painted the queen. They were mates. He's got a lot of,

I mean, between Roll, Prince Andrew. Yeah, no. There's some questions to ask there. Well, the main question is, why aren't we a fucking republic? Stuart Robert, remember that, you know, guy who... Brother Stewie.

Who charged his internet bills to the... Yeah, so strangely high internet bills, yes, that's right. Yeah, and who oversaw Robo debt for a while. He resigned to spend more time... A lot of people resigned. With his family companies. With his family companies. Yes, indeed.

And then we had Pride Month in June. Where Sesame Street, because lots of corporates got into Pride Months. It was good to see lots of rainbows around. Yep, Sesame Street got into the action by letting Bert and Ernie fuck. That got a good laugh in your stage show. The problem is I've already heard all the jokes in the stage show, but it was a good stage show. And then, Bert was devastated when he discovered that Ernie had somebody else's hand up his ass. That's probably a good night at which to end this first episode of our year-in reviews.

That's the first half of 2023, all neatly wrapped up. It's been in a momentous year, hasn't it? No, I think it's been, it's been a mixed year. I think we're back to sort of like a year where it's not all bad. I mean, the cost of living, like, second half of the year is definitely worse than the first half. We should do it like a topical podcast that talks about these issues, Charles. Nah, let's just do the half-ass, quarter-ass, research-based podcast where we talk about AI. Every second episode, right?

Let's go on the downward spiral into the second half of 2023 in tomorrow's episode. Our gear is from Road. part of the Iconiclass Network and Merry Christmas. Yeah, yeah. Not that you can afford presents. And just don't listen. If you're happy now, don't listen to tomorrow's episode.