The Chaser Report - A Good Old-Fashioned Shellacking | THE SHOT

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Jo Dyer is joined by Dave Milner, Cheryl Kernot, and Michael West did not wait even 12 hours to start unpacking the election result, so in the absence of our timeliness, please take theirs as compensation.Listen to the full Shot Podcast episode here: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/63869282ff767000110e7b82Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us your bank account details: [e-mail] complaints to: [e-mail] our caviar addiction: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Charles and Dom. My name is producer Loughlin and I have one piece of bad news, but two pieces of good news. Bad news out of the way first? No, Charles, Dom and I, none of us could record an episode today. We apologise profusely. Good news is there was an election on Saturday and the spectacle of the

result has me still on an energy high, more than if I drunk four bottles of red cordial, no water for dilution. That's the amount of energy I have right now. And I'm not the only one, because my second piece of good news is our friends at fellow iconoclast podcast, The Shot, Joe Dyer, Dave Milner, also had some feelings about the election, which they shared the morning after. That's why Dave sounds a bit groggy and totally not hung over. In what you're about to listen to, which is 15 minutes from the shot podcast's immediate reaction,

Joe and Dave were joined by Cheryl Kernow and Michael West to unpack why the result was such a catastrophic loss for the Liberal Coalition. Further on in the episode, they also talk about the impact of culture wars and a certain Donald J. Tray. It is very good listening, and if you want to enjoy the full episode, there is a link in the description. I recommend you go and click it. All right, that's enough from me. Please enjoy the shot gang right after this. Well, hello everyone. And welcome to the Sunday shot post-election special, Dave. What a night we had last night.

What a night. Not at all hungover. Very awake. Happy to be here. Talking about politics. But yes, what a night. They kept saying, and Peter Dutton has lost his seat. And it just kept feeling good.

Yeah. It never got old. We're delighted to be joined for this political nerd out this morning. by the indomitable Cheryl Kernow, who will have a particular take, I'm sure, on the seat of Dixon, which we will come to imminently. Welcome to the Sunday shot, Cheryl.

Thank you. It's fantastic to have you. And we will have the cynical overviews coming from the man from Michael West Media. Michael West himself. Welcome, Michael. Good to be on the show, show. Now, oh my God, it was a night.

I don't even know where to begin with it, and we've got a lot to get through, but I think it's fair to say that the absolute shalacking, the scale of Labor's victory was a surprise. Cheryl, what was your first takeout from last night's results? Yes, yes, it was a surprise. I don't know what Liberal internal polling was telling them. Some of them looked shell-shocked to me. But I was really happy that Australians,

because I wasn't sure what was going to happen, I was really happy that they rejected all that cultural politics that dominated our media for too long, just far too long. And the subtext of that is they repudiated the Murdoch part of that. Well, I think that's the other part of the story. And wasn't it so nice to see, on the ABC coverage, and we will criticise them a bit later, but Laura Tingle was addressing that very directly to Jim Chalmers

and said, can we play a different game? People are so sick of this shit. Yes, yeah, I agree. So I was happy about that. I was a bit disappointed for the community independence, because I think they play a very constructive role, and if they had been in a position of more balance of power position, I think Labor would have been happy to have been pushed,

but they're not really in the position to do that now. So I hope Labor doesn't misinterpret the result. They will. I'm sure. That's what the Labor Party does. Well, we're stuck with Orcas if they do. I also think that Australians, no matter what some analysts say, we did sort of recoil

from the Trumpism overarching specter. I don't think it was the only thing, but it was definitely there. And finally, I would say, the stark contrast between the competence of Labor's team,

not just the campaign team, but the front bench, how could you compare a Chalmers and Gallagher with a Taylor and Hume? I mean, in the last week, week, that was disastrous for the Libs. And they thought they could get away with it, I think.

I think they did. And we're going to dive into each of the, the implications for each of the parties and the sectors, including the community independence, because I think it is fair to say it was probably, it was a disappointing night for them in some ways, although there are still a few seats in play where the AEC did the wrong preference count originally. So there's yet votes to be counted there. But Michael, your overall takeout on last night before we dive into the now very much dead entrails. Joe, I think Peter Dutton lost as much as Albo won,

although it was such an emphatic victory and it sort of confirmed how, you know, Albo's political instincts to go to the centre. I mean, he's naturally of the left, but he's gone to the centre. He knows what Australians wrote from the centre. independence up 4.5%. I thought

that was further vindication of the two parties. There's something wrong with the two party system. So overall we got a third a third, a third coalition, labour and independence. That trend is now set. The teals are set. They're not a one-hit wonder. It's corroborated

how good they've been as representing their own communities. You know, all the wealthy Sikhs and so on. But Your point, I think, Cheryl, that overall, that is Alba going to use this emphatic victory for good, for some progressive reform, for some vision, rather than just tweaking around various policies at the edges, that's going to be seen, yet to be seen. But liberals, yeah, some soul-searching to do there.

They've really, they've gone to the right, as one of you guys said, it's a repudiation of Murdoch because he barracked so hard for the coalition, the Murdoch media. And the Greens went nowhere. They were smeared heavily. There's a lot of dark money smearing the Greens, fossil fuel money and so forth. So that was disappointing for them. But I think overall a positive result, unless, as Dave, you pointed out, they don't use it for real reform.

If they don't start attacking the systemic issues, and there's no evidence they will unfortunately there's a lot of money in politics and those electoral reforms last year which cement the duopoly are a real problem so who knows if they don't do enough there'll be a teal

labor movement I just want to touch on the dark money against the Greens I walked around I went to I think I went to five polling places yesterday and obviously everyone's advertising for themselves but in terms of the anti-attack ads

on billboards and fences. There was so much stuff by advanced attacking the Greens directly, almost as much as any other single political party had, which I think, you know, is a sign that their policies are basically on the money and they're targeting the right people, like the people that are capturing politics.

But yeah, that was very, very interesting. And the Liberal Party themselves were funding advance in order to facilitate those very attack ads. So it is this sort of, the way the money sort of washes through to allow a bit of distance between the major parties and, or in this case, particularly the Liberal Party and these really kind of pernicious and, you know, nasty ads

that were going. But I mean, pernicious and nasty is probably two good words for the Liberal Party in its current form under Peter Dutton. Cheryl Dixon was your old seat and I think we all dared to hope But none of us, I must say, I did not really think that Peter Dutton would lose his seat. No, 24 years is a long time to wait. I can tell you. And they kept returning him. And the boundaries did change a little bit, but not to the effect that it would have really hurt his vote. So I was like you.

I was thinking, this is not looking good for him, but he's come back before. and it's been close and I only won it by 176 votes but when I won it we didn't have the massive pre-poll that happened and we had massive postal votes then and there was no way

when they started looking at the pre-poles in Dixon there was no way he could come back and so I was allowing myself to believe that it was really going to happen and of course you couldn't get a greater contrast and Peter Dutton and the empathetic Ali France whose own life experience

has been so challenging and she's managed to have three goes at it and delighted for her. I mean, you know, the loss of her son, the loss of her leg. Yeah. How many politicians bring that kind of lived experience

to our parliament these days? Well, Peter Dutton has a very different lived experience He's been a cop, a property tycoon, and a racist politician. Like, those are three, they're probably the three worst things. I'm surprised it took this long for him to get the resounding boot, to be honest. No, no, no, that's, no, Queensland likes, we have a different, well, I'm not there anymore, but there's a different relationship with authoritarianism. I mean, Joe was there for so long.

There's a relationship in Queensland. And being a cop, even though it was only 10 years, that's like. like, you know, feather in your cap. It's a different perspective from Victoria, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, I think it is extraordinary that here we had Peter Dutton, who was the LNP leader, who had tried to kind of forge the party into his own likeness. Exactly. And then it was repudiated throughout Queensland, which hitherto had really been kind of a bulwark for the right-wing parties.

Michael, I see you consulting your phone there and getting some results. But Queensland, that was unexpected, I think, the extent of the swing in Queensland. There were some surprises there, no doubt. And as you say, Joe, there's still a couple to come in Fremantle. But this, it was a route. I mean, 11% swing, last time I looked, to Ali France, away. from Dutton. It's dramatic, very dramatic, but it really, it just, the Liberal Party now has to really, you know, if they want to survive, they're going to have to really start, you know,

moving away from the world opposition because the moderates have gone. And my take on it really is that Australians, we talk about, or because of various things, which are incredibly important, but really people vote on hip pocket mostly. And I think there wasn't anything that I was particularly attracted to in housing policies and cost of living things. It was all a bit itsy-bitsy.

But you know, that I think probably economic management Labor proved to be sound, if not spectacular economic managers and people felt more comfortable as repudiation of Peter Dutton as a person as you say, Cheryl. The culture

war stuff, you know, it just goes on and on and on. And I think Aussies just aren't buying it. We're not Americans. And this whole war on woke thing. I mean, what is like, you know? It's just... Michael, this stuff's clearly coming. It's a push from the far right.

Why have we been slightly more resistant to fall into succumbing to this bullshit? Is it the higher levels of education and media literacy? Well, I think there is greater media literacy, the younger demographics who are voting in increasing numbers at this election and I think the young people there's a distrust,

there's a rising distrust generally in institutions Dave whether they be political or corporate or whatever and that's a problem for all society and, you know, social media and so on there are other narratives out there and people are feeding on them

and the mainstream media loss of control issue is will play big in this next three years because they control the 24-hour news cycle by leaking the gallery and then controlling what happens on breakfast TV and radio and so on

that has to be challenged surely this year with the proliferation of social media but it will be interesting I just think people in the end just went well Alba's you know he's got he's more authentic and Australians can pick that up

I think authenticity I mean Donald Trump I mean we were called in horror it was only six weeks ago that Dutton was leading in the polls. Then you saw it all start to blow out, sports bed odds last time I checked last night or 950 against the coalition. So the books picked it.

The Resolve poll picked at 84 seats, although they're looking four short at the moment on the landslide perspective. But I think people, there's an element of Australians picking up authenticity, which you don't get in the US. We couldn't have a demagogue like Trump here

because higher education, also the Australian culture of I think being sick of that you know war on woke culture wars you know xenophobia and so on all those things conspired to give Albo I think people just went well he's not perfect but he's better than the rest and we don't want Dutton coming in the lips actually lost it and that slide in the polls was incredible and I think Trump when Trump got in and did he tariff, his bizarre tariff, trade war, and the markets went south and so on, people

and all the stuff he's doing, locking up people for free speech, sending them to El Salvador, all these things. People are picking this stuff up, particularly the younger demographics, and going, well, these guys have tied themselves a bit to the Trump bandwagon and, you know, just enterprises make Australia great again comments. Those sort of things didn't help. So that, what could have been a virtue for them politically, at least, strategic terms, turned into a nightmare for them as the chaotic Trump administration sort of soldiered on. And I think that lost them a lot of votes because he was ahead in the polls literally a few weeks ago. And then just, they made bad strategic decisions. And nuclear was never

fed income. That went as a, I mean, when you think about the size of that, unfunded, $600 billion is light. You know, we've got serious analysts out there saying trim. and nobody bothered the press galleries that were well let's not bother asking too much about it as to the details of how they got to this puny 331 million and nuclear you know it just didn't stack up and I think people saw through that