The Chaser Report - 6 Good News Stories To Start 2024

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Dom and Charles are back(ish) for The Chaser Report 2024! Returning weekly for January, enjoy as Charles brings Dom a confusing roundup of the year's top stories so far. And no, even we can't tell if he was trying to be sarcastic or not. 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. Happy New Year, Charles. We've made it. We've made it to another year. And not just any year, Charles. Not just any year.

This year is going to be the 25th anniversary of the Chaser. Oh, goodness. We are all so fucking old. In May, yes, in May we'll have a celebration of 25 years. years of ridiculousness. So that's a landmark, I feel. Most people find new things to do with their lives, 25 years in. What lesson do we teach the kids? If you stick it something long enough, you can grind it into the ground. Yeah, if you stick it something for a long period, you can have a heyday, which, you know, had its moments. Oh, yeah, yeah. But those moments of the

hayday rapidly vanishing into the past. That's the way to do it, kids. Enjoy the heyday while it lasts. Yeah, I wish I'd done that at the time. But no, it was a good heyday. Talking of heydays, this episode is itself going to be a bit of a heyday, Dom. Well, 2024 could be the heyday for the podcast, couldn't it? Well, I think it probably will be because the great thing about 2024 is we're off to a brilliant start. There's just only positive news. And I'm going to run you through half a dozen stories that have happened in the last few weeks, where you just go, I think the world is back on the way up. It's taking a turn.

Yes. All right. Let's find out how that works. And if Charles is being ironic, after this. No, I'm not being ironic. Okay. Because we're going to start with a friend of the show, Tony Burke. Oh, yes.

Who has passed some more IR legislation, including one that criminalises wage theft. Criminalises wage theft. Charles, hang on a sec. Don't you pay wage? Aren't you going to go to jail? Oh, shit. But surely there'll be a loophole for small businesses. That's what the Libs are always doing.

I don't know. Really? Tony wouldn't send me to jail, would he? Yes. Wage theft, though. I mean, that's a situation where basically people are chronically underpaid to a criminal degree. It's terrible. You've been underpaid in your career, haven't you?

Oh, of course I've been underpaid. Yeah, of course. Yeah, my wife has been underpaid. My very first job, as a student, I was massively underpaid in violation of the relevant award. So that was fun. I mean, this is great stuff. I once worked for a union. This is true, when I was at uni.

I worked for a union as a sort of receptionist and filing clerk. I was terrible at it, by the way. Yeah, so you were paid an appropriate amount. Yeah. But they paid, they explicitly paid below award wages. And I confronted them about it. And they said, well, you know, it's a summer job. That's how it works.

Yes. Well, I worked for an organization that paid us below award wages. And then when we complained about it and pointed it out, Sackthasol. And so that was, we went to the union then and the union helped. Yeah. And we got a sort of settlement. That's a, you know, wage theft.

Now those employers could face jail time. Well, as long as the companies aren't punished, I think the middle. managers are the ones who are going to get punished. Okay, so, our legislation. So you really wanted to start the positive chat about how great 2024 was going to be with industrial relations? Well, no, but the IRA is quite wide-riching. They've also got this stuff about equal job, equal pay, I think it's called.

Same job, same pay is the thing. And I suppose that it's gender equity as well, but it's literally like you can't. Previously, you know, people like Qantas and stuff of that could just go, okay, well, we're going to hire this company called Baggage Handling Services Australia, which we've just invented, and we're going to, and they'll do the job, and we'll pay those employees, and we happen to own that company, but it's a separate company, and we'll pay those employees 40% less than our current baggie chandlers, and then suddenly, you know, you've got wage competition, and that's not going to be allowed anymore.

Not allowed to do that. Same job, same pay. That sounds radical. So that's good. Like, good starts at 2024, we've got something happening. Industrial relations legislation, which may transform working lives of many Australians and probably get the government absolutely no political reward as a result. Well, I haven't seen any news about these changes that have been around for about a week now.

It's like, yeah, you're right. You're totally right. So we're the people talking about them. Yeah, we're the only people. That's it's done. Okay. Okay. Next thing is very good news for rents in Australia.

Oh, yeah. Which is that they've gone up 13% in the last year, and they're likely to climb probably an equal amount in 2024, economists say. So if you're a landlord, that is a great start to 2020. Oh, congratulations, yeah. So all those landlords out there, great news. Well, absolutely. And look, when the stage three tax cuts come through later in the year, I'm assuming the Venn diagrams of landlords and people who weren't $200,000 plus, I intersect quite a lot. Those people are going to have a great year.

They're going to have such a good year. Well, the only problem is that negative gearing means that on paper, landlords tend not to earn very much money because they make all those delicious tax losses. So the aim is to be so rich that you're learning over $200,000 even net your negative gearing. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I reckon some people manage to do that. Probably do. Yeah.

Have a great year. But look, if you're not in the position of being a landlord, you might think, oh, that sucks ass. But rents are going up. Yeah, the rents are going up. But hang on it, but if you own more than $200,000 and you're a renter, it's fine, because you'll have all the money from the stage three tax cuts. But I've got good news for people who aren't renters, which is that house prices continue to soar and have actually just reached all-time highs, even more than in the pandemic.

Oh, well, thank goodness for that. So you don't have to just be a landlord. You've just got to own something. Own a property of some kind. And what it means is that if you are a renter, then what you're a renter, then what you're you should have done is buy a house and then you'd be fine. Yeah, so with the IR stuff, you're being straight, and now we're back into this. Okay.

So a great year for landlords and people who already happen to own houses and live in there or not. Great stuff. Okay, now I'm going to go back to being straight, just happy. This is very confusing. Charles, we're a row are you with this? So next thing is, and this just happened this morning, our time, so probably sort of 24 hours ago by the time you're listening to this, which is BP announced that they are blocking oil being exported through the Red Sea or whatever. Yes, because the Houthi rebels have been flying drones into tankers.

Yes. And Rishi Sunak, an hour after BP announced that they're not going to be exporting petroleum anymore from the Middle East, Rishi Sunak suddenly became a pacifist, called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. It's all over. Really? Well, you know, wonderful. Did we also decide to just abandon fossil fuel? and solve the whole problem,

and there are no ships going through. We're just all working off fabulous, you know, electric cars and stuff. Well, I think the point is that if you had a permanent ceasefire, then the oil could flow again and, yeah, we don't have to, we can just go back to fossil fuels. So you're telling us 2024 is a great year. Yeah. In a sentence involving Rishi Sunak.

Okay? Well, I'm just saying, I think that now that it's actually, you know, it's become clear that the oil's now getting a bit stuck. I mean, you can make any story positive. Can't you? The story about the Boeing 737 aircraft, whatever it was. Yes, that's the next thing on my list, which is that they discovered you don't need all the doors to safely fly a plane. All the bolts, apparently.

No one died. No one died. I mean, a guy, a little toddler lost his shirt and a couple of iPhones fell out. But the iPhones survived. The iPhones did very well. Oh, that's very impressive. And then it turned out, you don't need, if you're sitting in 19th seat, you don't need the door. You don't need the door plate.

I find that, jeanne. That's actually really good news. Yes, it is. Why do they bother putting them in the first place? Well, I think this whole sort of overreaction by the authorities in the US, you know, saying, oh, we're going to ground them, we've got to check all the bolts and everything like that. Don't you think that the fact that everyone survived proves that you don't need to check them? Oh, it's the nanny state gone now.

I'm sick of, I'm just sick of them. Yes. Going through all the bolts and checking, oh, is there a door on this egress point? Yeah. Imagine how excited. I mean, the amount of online karma and all the views and just social sort of thing that all the people who posted videos from that plane got, that'll wipe out their PTSD or at least sort of equalized. Fascinating year for aviation. I mean, the flight in Japan that landed on fire, that got, I mean, that was harrowing and some people died in another Coast Guard plane.

But the views that they got on social media were considerable for the aircraft on fire. Yep, great views. And I heard the most racist. The single most racist take on that, which was that the reason why everyone on board the A&A plane survived was because they were really obedient. Because Japanese people are obedient. That is honestly one of the takes. Right, because normally, apparently in the West, if you say to everyone, okay, evacuate now, everyone tries to get their handbags out and take their shoes and everything like that. You're not supposed to do that.

You're supposed to just immediately exit. I mean. And that's what happened. Everyone was very obedient. They got off the plane extremely quickly. and then the plane, 10 minutes later, blew up. Well, there are a lot of Australians on that flight. Yeah, there's 11 Australians.

But they would have been Japanese Australians, wouldn't they? Right, because they're obedient. They would have been Australian tourists for it. They're probably... Snowboarders. People sort of trying to hold up the line. But Charles, I mean, look, I don't want to question the racist assumptions of racists, but do you think that the fact that the plane was visibly on fire might have led to people

evacuated more people? I don't know about you or I would be the kind of person that might try and grab their laptop bag, sure. Yes, you have definitely. The plane was on fire, but I could see flames. I think, you know what, I've got travel insurance. Fuck it, I'll upgrade my laptop on the travel insurance. I think that's another piece of good news is everyone on board got to upgrade all their tech equipment that they left behind.

I'm so confused at this point in the podcast. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Welcome back to 2024. Look, we said we do one a week in January while on holiday. Maybe we shouldn't. I'm questioning that plan at this point. But we've covered a lot of news. We've also covered, in a sort of meta sense,

the fact that it's been a slow news here so far. Not much has happened, isn't it? Tons of happen. All right, keep going. Which is Trump. So Trump has been eliminated from the ballot in Colorado. Colorado. And Maine.

And Maine, right? Which means it's over. Trump's gone. Which means that the Supreme Court's about to rule and say that he has the right to be on every ballot and that the people can decide. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, that's, I mean, if you're a sort of glass half-empty type of guy, then, yeah, maybe.

But you think he needs Colorado? I think Donald Trump, isn't he inevitably going to win this year? Like, in a year's time we're sitting here going, well, Donald Trump's being sworn in in a few days. Yeah, probably true, which means comedy's back, baby. Comedy is back. For the chase is 2050 year, Donald Trump winning a victory. This could be a very positive development for a satire. I can tell you, 2016 to 2016 to 20.

2020 was the heyday of Chaser Online. Like, social media engagement was that, because the comedy rights itself, you can be as late, because, you know, we're generally lazy. Trump does thing. Yeah, Trump does thing. You just do it. You may be slightly exaggerated. There's your headline.

Actually, Charles, that, that leads me to one genuinely positive observation about 2024. I think social media is kind of done. Yes, definitely. I mean, Twitter slash X is terrible. Dumb stuff. In fact, I have been going on to it. Because I gave up a few months ago. But I've been going on to it in the last sort of, you know,

week and a half, you know, during the holidays. And it's just been so enjoyable watching how shit it is. It's terrible. It is boring. Blue Sky's worse. MasterDons for idiots. Are you on Blue Sky? I've signed up to all these things, but there's nothing, isn't it?

They're all different ghost towns. What's your thing on Blue Sky? Oh, they've changed their, they've changed their logo. Oh, I can't. Dom Night or something. It's normally some version of Dom Night. But Instagram is incredibly boring. He's just people on holidays who I hate.

But you know the most shocking one, I realized that at the end of 2023, I hadn't added a single new person on Facebook in 20203 at all, which means either that I didn't meet anyone new and that I'm totally boring now or that we just stopped adding people on Facebook. It's just the platform is desiccated and died. It's gone.

Well, actually, I haven't used Facebook for a number of years, but guess what my news resolution was this year? Did it delete Facebook? No, is to get back on Facebook. Why? Nothing's happening. So it's finished. No, because it's, well, because I was enjoying watching how shit ex-nees.

Oh, okay. Well, we'll definitely get back on Facebook. And so I'm thinking, you know, like, I should actually, like, because I always think the way to do news resolutions is to do the opposite of what, you know, wellness gurus. Swim against the tides. You get fast. So everyone always goes, oh, I'm quitting Facebook is my news resolution. I'm going to stop exercising.

Yeah, I'm going to quit social media. Nah, I'm going to lean into social media. Well, Charles, there is one social platform. There's only one that I can tell. that is actually active and busy. There's a lot of engagement. TikTok. Well, OK, TikTok's definitely still alive, right?

But I'm too old for TikTok. It's embarrassing thing on TikTok. No, exactly. The one that's getting traction that we should look at is truth social. Truth social. Truth. You don't retweet. You read truth.

No, you read truth. Just by the, anything you write on there, it's the most Trumpian platform imaginable because anything you say is defined. It's defined as a truth. Like, you can write anything and it's just automatically a truth. What's your... username on truth social.

I don't have one yet. I don't have one yet. That is the truth. We're going to have to sign up. We will. That's the only way to find out what's happening in the world. That's good. I'm going to get all my family and friends to sign up to.

On truth social. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll make it for a very happy social. We should set up a Chase Zero Board account. That should be our platform of choice. There you go. It's already a better 2024.

Happy New Year, Charles. Yep. Okay. So we'll be back in a week's time. Or thereabouts. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like a week and a bit of time. They're about is-ish sort of thing.

With more good news. Last year, we didn't even bother to make any episodes in January, and frankly, that was probably a good decision. But we'll stick with that, what we said we'd do. Catch you next time. Our gear is from Road with part of the iconoclast network, and more soon-ish. Ish.

Ish. Right.