The Chaser Report - 6 Million Things You MUST Know About the New RBA Governor

Episode Date: July 16, 2023

Charles and Dom help you get to know the new RBA Governor, and celebrate the start of a new world of continuity with change. Meanwhile Dom has some news about a relatable situation Alan Joyce has found himself in. Plus Charles has 'actually good news about the climate this time, I swear I'm not lying for real."For the graph Charles refers to click here! 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 Tom and what a great day. Oh, yes, we've so often had depressing news of late. Don't worry, this episode is going to be delightful, it's going to be cheerful, it's going to be upbeat. Starting with the news, Philip Lowe is no longer the Governor of Reserve Bank or at least on the way out. He's been axed. The news came through on Friday morning.

It will be Michelle Bullock, the first ever female Governor's Reserve Bank. Big progress there in only one sense. We'll get to that very shortly. And great news on the environment front. I think basically the environment's basically fixed. Why do I suspect there's a twist coming? All right, let's get to do it in a moment. So congratulations to Michelle Bullock, who was the Deputy Governorate Reserve Bank to Philip Lowe

and is now going to be the new governor. So they've gone for the deputy, which is what they normally do, thus ensuring a radical change to the institution? No, well, Dom, don't underplay this. It's a new brush. It's not Philip Lowe. I think we need to be optimistic.

I think we need to give her a chance. And the thing that I'm looking forward is just not to have someone so beholden to property owners at the helm of the Reserve bank. Yes, that's right. For so long, it seemed like essentially the Reserve Bank governor was working for the top end of town.

Yes. Philip Lowe certainly didn't seem able to appreciate the concerns of people doing it tough out there. Remember the time he just said, oh, you know, just take on another job or just take on another flatmate if you can't have. Like all these practical solutions, Michelle Bullock, I hope won't do that. I hope she'll be a woman of the people in touch with ordinary Australians. And so when I read on the weekend that she'd, like many Australians,

owns some property. I thought, yeah, this is a woman of the people. She's very down to earth. Well, she probably just owns her own home. Oh, she grew up in a country town. Yes. And she has a $6 million property portfolio. Oh.

Six million dollars. Four properties, including a three-bedroom house in Sydney's inner west with a pool and a bunch of investment properties. But I'll tell you one thing she's done. That's impressive. Well, is it now get a disdemeanor? Discount interest rates because she's the chair of the board of the RBA and you get a discounting interest rate. Oh, we've mentioned this before, yeah.

No, interestingly, she's actually got mortgages with something called the Gateway Bank. Have you heard of this? It's customer owned and it puts people before profits, apparently. So she's not getting the discount RBA loan, probably because she hasn't refinanced yet. But no, she's not beholden to the big banks. She's got some sort of community bank thing, which I'd never heard of. So maybe if we all go and bank with whatever Gateway Bank is, we'll loan. six million dollars worth of the properties.

So you think maybe the Gateway Bank is one of those things where it's owned by the community and the community is four people who own the bank. Yeah, quite possibly. Michelle Bullock. Well, she owns two apartments in Russell Lee. I don't know where that is, but her apartments have doubled in value.

So she's basically done very, very well. Yes. For a very, very long time. So there you go, six million dollars. Well, she's good at accumulating money. Maybe she can do that for the nation. Yes. Yeah.

So when she makes a decision, Do you think, given that she's highly leveraged and owns all these investment properties, do you think that will weigh on her mind? Well, look, I think what we need is somebody in there thinking of the renters, right? That's the people who are doing it hardest in this economy. Well, she can ask the many people who rent from her. Who rent from her, exactly. So, yeah, that's, well, see, we're living up to our promise of having only good news.

Look, I think the first female RBA governor, that's a big landmark, it's an important moment. But it seems as though nothing else is at all radical about this. Feminism really does make progress when women can be assholes too. When women can be insiders, members of the club, are from the same world as the person who we got rid of. Still, that said. But, you know, I actually heard somebody call it on the weekend,

like some pro-Michel Bullock supporter. She was talking on Radio National on Saturday. You will listen to Radio National. I'd never heard of her. And he was saying, you know, I worked with Michelle Condonur. I worked with Michelle for years. She's a wonderful choice. She's continuity with change.

Which was literally the Veep slogan that was satirical. So that's, yep. So the whole thing is a giant satire. She's actually renovated any of her $6 million worth of hires. I've got the information here from the Daily Telegraph. Well, I think... Or does she just... Could have been.

Is she just a Rontier landlord who doesn't even bother fixing up any of them? I can't see any sign of major renovations going on, but maybe she added the pool. It's nice for her, isn't it? She can just go and call off after a hard day of considering the needs of impoverished Australians. Well, I'm just thinking because the RBA has that whole renovation going on in Sydney, which is hugely blown out hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. You know, maybe she'll be good at that.

Oh, she can refinance that, all that loan. Through the bank that she owns. Yeah, fantastic. What a good idea. So there you go. Progress in only one sense. Now, is it really good news? Philip Lowe's not there anymore,

and I think a lot of people are happy about that. The government was very keen to pay credit to the job that he done and said they had no beef with him individually. Yes. In fact, I think Jim Sharman's exact, words were, I come to praise Caesar not to bury him. He said as he kicked him out.

Yeah. There you go. Anyway, no more Philip Bo. Who are we demonised now? Well, no, no, I've got more good news. This is the good news podcast, remember? Oh, yes. We decided to do only good news.

Just before we get to the environment. I just want to, um, to congratulate you want to, you want to demonise somebody else. No, there's another person who I just, I saw some news about this weekend, who, just a friend of the show. Oh, yeah. Someone we always enjoy talking about. Congratulations to Alan Joyce, the CEO of Qantas.

I am. He's put his $19 million Mossman home on the market. Now, basically what happened was he bought the house, never lived in it, just sort of sat there. He was going to move into it. And then the funniest thing happened, Charles. You're not going to believe it. What?

The other half penthouse in the apartment building called Cove in the centre of Sydney with amazing water views that he owned. The other half of the floor became available when he just had to buy it. And so it consolidated and it made an even more massive apartment, meaning that the other house that they owned, they didn't even need to use anymore. Don't you hate it?

I mean, that is, that happens so often where you buy a $19 million house. Yeah. And then you find you don't need it after all. Whoops, surplus to requirements. Oh dear. Opsie daisy. Didn't even move into it. I mean, I think that happened to me last, just last weekend, I think.

I've lost track of the number of houses I've owned and just not to, not moved into. So four bedrooms and four bathrooms and agents are accepting expressions of interest until 2pm on Wednesday, August 2nd says domain.com.au. There's a listing for it here. It has a pool and a wharf.

It's got its own private wharf. Charles, are you going to put in an expression of interest for that one? Ah, yeah, might as well. Do you think it comes with membership at the chairman's lounge? I'd certainly hope so. Kick the tyres.

But, you know, it's one of those things where, you know, do I need another one? Do I need another? That's true. I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I mean, like, whatever Alan does, I might just buy it and sit on it as well. I'm not sure, like, do you tell the wife before you buy it or do you just mention it afterwards? Or the husband, if you all enjoy it, yeah, no. I don't think, it's a, it's a minor purchase.

You think maybe he'd have to, you don't have to. I mean, I say as long as it's below 20 million, it's just, it's just a bit of shopping. I wonder whether he forgot the owner. Oh, you think maybe what happened is he bought it. You know how you do that sometimes? You buy peanut butter at the shop. Yeah, yeah.

You get home and you go, oh, hang on, I bought peanut butter last weekend. Yeah, I put on my jacket the other day and forgot I had bought a chocolate bar at the shops yesterday. Oh, my gosh, a surprise chocolate bar. Or you've got, you know, glasses on your head and you don't know where they are. Yes.

Yeah. And it's a bit like that with buying $19 million houses. You bought it and then you go, oh, well, actually we should buy the, property next door and knocked down the wall. And he goes, oh, fuck. Oh, we bought that $19 million house as well. And you know the other thing?

Yes. He probably then went to Mossman and realized it's horrible. And he decided not to move. This is a very Sydney reference, but I mean, it's got the zoo there. Yeah. But it's not a nice place. You don't want to. It's very dull.

Yes. Yes. I'm just trying to think of an equivalent. Well, it's like if a Turok was on the harbour. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's a little enclave. You don't really want to be there. Yeah.

It's sort of the Adelaide of Sydney. It's like a little suburb that's the Adelaide, that's right. Yeah. If Adelaide had harbour views instead of just a little bit of river, it would be Muslim? So I guess the moral here is, A, keep track of all the houses you buy, will you people? And B, if you buy a $19 million house in a suburb, just go and check it out and see if it's not a bit shit.

Yes. Before you settle. It's just due diligence, Charles, in this market. Yes. The good news continues. Good on you, Alan. So happy you managed to find the penthouse next door to your other penthouse and make a mega penthouse. It's a, listening to that for all of us, I think, with our investments.

The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. So can we get on to the environmental, yeah, sure. Environmental, good news. And this is honestly true. This is honestly good news. I'm not actually lying this time. I'm skeptical. Which is three years ago, news.

New international rules took place to affect the limiting of sulphur in heavy fuels that are used by ships. So ships are a terrible, terrible consumer of fossil fuel. So essentially almost everything that we buy, which is shipped into Australia from China or wherever else, almost everything we ever buy has a massive pollution toll. Yes. And not just carbon. Because I think it used something like 12 or 15% of the world's fuel goes on. shipping, right?

Because we never talk about this, do we? No, no. We never think about, we think about the carbon footprint, but never the other things. And whenever I go to Kmartin and buy some, you know, five dollar piece of crap that I don't need.

Yeah. It's probably used a massive amount of sulphur. That's a shocking thing. It's not going to make me change my behaviour in any way, of course. No. Good to know. Yeah. But it's not just carbon.

It's sulphur, because they use really dirty fuel. They use, like, the worst quality fuel to power these ships. Sure. So they went, three years ago, they went,

sulfur in fuel causes sulfuric acid in the atmosphere and leads to acid rain. So it destroys, you know, crops and everything like that. There's a whole lot of reasons why it's just terrible for humans and for all life on planet,

including things like, you know, sulfuric acid in the ocean caused the depletion of life forms. You know, it's just a horrendous chemical, right? But as against that, we really need little... Have you seen Squish mallows? They're the cutest little toys in Kmart.

They're $20. Yes. And they're basically made out of the most flammable plastic imaginable. So you get them for your kids because you want them to have the most flammable thing. Yes. And they're giant. And they're $20. They're probably...

They're about the size of a backpack. Right. And every kid needs like 10 of them. That's just the rules of parenting in 2023. All right. And imagine the sulphur footprint of those things. Yes. Well, no, but this is the good news, Dom, which is they eliminated.

They got rid of it. Seriously? Sulfur is now banned from fuels that go into shipping. Really? And as a result, practically overnight, marine sulphur pollution has dropped by 85%. Are you serious? Yes. Hang on, show you this is.

Are they now using nuclear fuel or something like what? What's going on? No, they just got rid of it. They didn't need the salt. They realized that it was optional. So someone, some genius went, oh, what if we tried not using sulphur? And it still worked.

So it was, yeah. So as I say, it was killing humans, a whole lot of unintended consequences, right? So those rules took effect a few years ago. That was January the first 2020, right? So look at the graph. Look at, literally, it completely drops. Yeah, marine emission, sulfur emissions,

just completely colloquially. It's tanked like the chance of an ordinary Australian owning their own house. So, and because sulphur dioxide is removed by rain, it actually took only a few weeks to basically get rid of acid rain throughout the world, basically. Seriously? Yes, it got removed from at least the atmosphere very, very quickly. That's wonderful. Right.

But. But. Oh, I knew you were going to do this. Why do you do this? So. Oh, the graph even looks. Look it up yourself. You want to feel cheerful.

Oh, no. Sulfurm is, as you know, yellow, right? It's quite light. It's a very bright chemical. Yeah, they use it for yellow paint. Or they used to back in the day. Yeah. And so it was creating a protective layer of whiteness in the atmosphere, right?

Oh. And which was reflecting a substantial amount of sunlight. Right? Oh. So you know how the planet's warming up? Yes. Right. What was happening was that warming from the carbon was being mitigated slightly by the sun not being able to get through from all the sulfur pollution that we were created.

Right. So even though it was destroying oceans and marine life and so on, it was actually kind of an umbrella. Yes. In terms of... And if you look at where the sulphur, the main shipping routes are, if you see here... Yes. They're actually in the sort of main populated parts of the world. Well, you'd imagine so, yeah.

So in the northern hemisphere, like where actually most people live, right. And it also is where the main sort of, like, there's all these ocean currents that are created that are incredibly necessary to sort of make parts of northern Europe habitable and stuff like that. Anyway, what has happened is without all the... this protective layer of pollution, they reckon it's having a substantial effect on accelerating global warming. Oh. And could well be an explanation for why, particularly this summer at the moment, like, you

know, in last week or two, we've had the four hottest days in recorded history. Yes, in the Northern Hemisphere. Yeah, in the Northern Hemisphere. People have been going across the world. Well, no, across the world. of the world where it's hot now. Certainly not here. The people have been going to Death Valley, apparently, in the States,

because they want to feel what it's like at 55 degrees. It's never been that hot before. They want to go to the future, the future, yeah, absolutely. But so now I'm going to show you another graph. I know this is not very audio. Can you put the link to this in the audio description for the show? Yeah, sure. I'll do that.

But you can see, so in 2020, they cut off the sulfur thing. And if you look at the graph of ocean warming in northern shipping lines, it's going up, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the blue line is what is expected to happen, right? So, I mean, it's still warming. There's a red line that shoots up. It shoots up the moment they get rid of the solver. But is that correlation or causation?

Because there have been so many other ways at the same time that we've been destroying the planet. Are we sure it's the sulfur or is it just our general neglect? Look, you can read yourself, like I'm sure everyone's going to click on the link. But basically this scientist, his name's Robert Road, is saying he reckons it's at least a half degree bump for the temperatures just by removing the pollution. Dom, we've got to get the solver back in that fuel. Get it back. Let's get this acid rain happening on the forests. Let's kill a few more humans and get those temperatures back down.

We don't need marine life anyway. I mean, let's just have a sense of proportion about this. Although, Charles, that said, I have one more breakthrough for you, just to leave it on a positive note. I think you tricked me and you put it into a negative note. Which is, I don't know whether you saw this news a couple of weeks ago. But scientists have developed the whitest ever paint. It is the Mark Latham of paint.

This is an incredible thing. It reflects 98% of sunlight, and it stops heat radiating. So what it does is, apparently, if you put this paint on, buildings, it makes them so cool that they don't even need air conditioning. They can cool surfaces by 4.5 degrees below the ambient temperature. It will need probably need to be even whiter because we probably need it to be 10 degrees below the ambient temperature. So, even though the planet will be completely cooked and all the wildlife will die and it

will be essentially a desert everywhere, we ourselves will be able to live in these nice white buildings. If you want, you have to be anything other than white, you should out of luck. But we'll have these lovely white buildings within which we're relatively warm and safe as the planet explodes into heat, the balls of heat. I don't know if it's fireproof. We probably need it to be bushfireproof as well. But yay to the white paint.

That is great news. So the future is white. There's a lot of American politicians who would agree with that right now. I was wondering why all those climate scientists and paint experts were coming and doing tests on my skin. But I now understand. Yep. well there you go like we break the planet

we don't do anything about it but then we come up these little solutions that only benefit us the wealthy people who can afford to paint our houses with this very expensive white paint

and the fact that you know the solution is white is there's something deeply symbolic and metaphorical about that it's almost as though it's white pride I feel like it wasn't as sort of

optimistic as we'd hope this episode. No, no. I mean, reality of life in this awful period of history has to be filtered through sometimes. But look, give us a review. We haven't had any Apple podcast reviews for a while. Jump on there. Tell us how happy you are about the positive direction of the podcast. Give us five stars. And there have been

some very funny ones recently actually. Someone congratulated us on our sixth download. We're very near the 6 million mark. It'll probably go off later in the week. So we'll pick the person to win the prize very, very soon. Indeed. Thanks for being with us, Aguirre is removed. We're part of the Iconoclast Network and get that white paint, people.

And the solver. We're going to put the solver back as well. I hope Michelle Bullock can afford to paint all of her 600 resin properties white. I suspect she can.