The Chaser Report - A Pivotal Moment In Australian History

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Based on the result of the by-election in Farrer, Dom and Charles believe that what we have witnessed is a pivotal moment in Australian history. What does a One Nation win mean for Labor? Will the Nats still get donations from Gina Rinehart? And are the Liberals now a minor party? Listen and find out. ---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] 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 a special edition of The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Oh, Charles, what's special about this edition? The fact that we have an edition in the feed, is that the... No, we've got to talk about the by-election, the Farah by-election. Oh, the thing that happened on like Saturday and it's now, what, Tuesday. Very good, it's a very special edition because it's a landmark, some say.

Well, the thing is the Chase Report, when you listen to the Chase Report, you don't want up to the moment news. What you're wanting is sincere and in some ways genius level analysis. And the only way you can get that, that sort of slow thinking, is to wait until the Tuesday after the Byletion. And everyone else has had their hot take, their quick take, their medium level take, their sort of longer term take. Where, after all that, you get the Chase Report take, which just sort of synthesize. everything into a sort of like the only thing that you really need to know. The slow cooker approach. It's been basting for days.

All right, let me just quickly read up on what happened in the by-election again during the ads and we can get it to it. Okay, so Charles, you were all across this when we last talked about the Farah by-election. You made the point that the One Nation candidate had been trying to join Labor at one point. And that appeared, did you see, in the coalition advertising campaign to try and hold onto the seat? But it was not to be. One Nation won its first ever lower house seat. Because, of course, when Pauline Hanson was elected years and years ago, she did so as a, she was still a liberal on the ballot.

If you know, she'd been kicked out. And so that is it. They have their first ever lower house seat. Is this a landmark moment, Charles? Is this a bellwether for the nation? David Farley is in. after 77 years of the coalition in Farah. I was actually checking our contract with ACAST, who did all our ads.

And actually, part of being a media commentator in Australia is that you are contractually obliged to say that this is a pivotal moment in Australian history. You can't, you can't talk about the Farah by-election. And indeed, actually, if you read the contract, it's actually worded it a bit more broadly than that, that every time a by-election happens, you have to then extrapolate out and basically go, okay, this is the future of Australia for the next hundred years, based on these wildly, you know, small sample size of one by election that was probably won and lost on local issues and local people. Also, Charles, it's worth noting this is Susan Lee's old seat, the former opposition leader. I think it would be fair to say that the manner of her departure from the leadership to Angus Taylor

and then immediately resigning from Parliament made the point that she wasn't particularly happy with her former colleagues. And she was very popular, of course, in Farah. So some might say, but I haven't read it very widely, that fans of Susan Lee were not particularly likely to vote for the Liberals in this by-election. Well, statistically, no one was particularly likely to vote for the Liberals. They got about 11% of the overall vote. But, no, the thing that I think I've got completely, wrong when we last talked about it last week was I said, look, there's rumors going around that David Farley will a nation within the year and end up joining the National Party. And this is a

sort of reverse switcheroo takeover. And it's just the one, you know, it's the National Party being really tricky and clever by sort of having One Nation as a brand. Hang on. I think it's, I see where you went wrong. I think actually what's going to happen is everyone's going to end up joining One Nation because they're the big, they're the major party. Reverse. Reverse switcheroo. You've got a lot of nationals now have said, look, we should have them in the coalition. I think a lot of people are saying that there should be a three-cornered coalition. Or just that the nationals will potentially be taken over. There's talk of other nation's MP potentially doing the same thing. Barnaby Joyce. Barnaby Joyce, as ever, the sort of bellwether of his side of politics.

You know, you can sort of understand how the National Party in One Nation survive. Like I can sort of see them sort of coexisting in an uneasy sort of love-hate relationship a little bit like, you know, some sort of teenage romance or something like that, right? Always a bit dramatic. But, you know, they've each got character. You know, Barnaby used to be with Nationals now One Nation. Maybe he'll go back. Maybe he'll get back together. You know, like, oh, you know, and there's probably a sort of, you know, like there's staffers.

They'll have little spit circles and things like that. But are you saying on, just to be clear, Barnaby Joyce is. not considering going back to his former life. No, no, no, no. No, no. Sorry. Only. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good to clarify. Yes. Good to clarify. Well, Colin Boyce is thinking of leaving as well. He's come out and said, this is the MP for the central Queensland seat of Flynn. He's considering switching himself. He's on the market. He's on the hinge.

So I can see how that all plays out. But the thing that I really cannot, it doesn't fit into my moment is, where does the liberal party fit in in Australian politics? You've got the teals who take up all the really wealthy seats that the Libs used to have. Yeah. The traditional heartland. The traditional heartland. The traditional heartland.

Koo young and Wentworth and all that sort of socially progressive but economically conservative, you know, don't want their negative gearing to be abolished but still like to worry about housing and stuff like that. So, yeah, for their grandkids. For the grandkids. But just, you know, their main form of, you know, a solution for housing is around. making family trusts even more tax beneficial to them so that they can pass all their property on to their grandkids.

So, so there, that's gone to the teals, I don't think, like it'll be a generation before that, you know, yeah. And then, the teals are embedded. And there's no strategy. There's no strategy to win them back is the other point. There's no, the liberals don't have a plan to try and get in that space. They want to go on a sort of, they want to appeal to racists, you know, Angus Taylor has come out and made a very racialized set of statements about.

immigration. So, so, and that is, so, but then rural has gone to Nats and in particular one nation, right? So the only place that you can plausibly see them sort of existing is that sort of urban fringe, you know, those, Western Sydney, except Pauline Hanson says she's coming for Western Sydney. She's very keen to get into that space. Do you think she's aware, Charles? Do you think Pauline Hanson is aware that there's a very high, migrant population, yeah, migrant population, which is where you go in Western Sydney? Well, even if the Libs can maybe win a couple of seats. here and there around the urban fringes, that doesn't make it a major party. Like, that sort of makes it, like, that's certainly not a big enough base.

And also, I just question, would those people be the heart and soul of the Liberal Party? Like, can you actually put together a coalition of people who are essentially running on fairly incoherent populist local issues and sort of oppositional issues rather than some sort of coherent, you know, nation-building platform. Like, I just... But it was also the Liberal Party. I mean, if you think about the leaders over the years, and Angus Taylor is very much from this mould,

despite having a kind of a rural seat and so on. It is a party of the urban elite, really. Most of the leaders in the past, and Malcolm Turnbull, your phrasing, your phrasy, your peacocks, your shoes, and they're all blue bloods from the city. And so those sorts of people are not necessarily going to play in Western Sydney. I mean, when Jackie Kelly had the seat of Lindsay as a local, she was a little bit of an odd fit within the Liberal Party back in those days. That was a new sort

of liberal. And there aren't many of them anymore. So I don't know, who are the people from Western Sydney, who are from those communities who are in the Liberal Party looking to broaden their base, looking to broaden the ethnic diversity in a way that we've seen in, for instance, the Tories in the UK. Who is the vanguard of the new coalition, and particularly the new Liberal party that's going to win those outer suburban seats. Well, Angus Taylor. He's got the heft, the intellectual heft to. Look, I don't know.

So the point is, like, this is no, but this is my point, Dom, is I can't actually. I know. Like, if anyone listening has any ideas about what the actual strategy is, I don't understand it. I don't understand why, if you were the Libs, like, wouldn't you be running hard against one nation rather than preferencing them, wouldn't you be doing your all to keep them out, even if it meant getting another fucking independent in Inferra? Wouldn't you, you know?

Well, Angus Taylor's ex-McKindy, so don't worry, he's got the strategy all sewn up. Again, not necessarily going to play particularly well in Western Sydney. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. But, Charles, the same questions you ask of where the lane is for the Liberals, and we've talked about this before. We talked about this with Susan Lee when she was trying to have a clear point of distinction from Peter Dutton's party, which proved so unpopular last time. It seems as though Angus Taylor is in many ways going back to the Dutton line on things like immigration, perhaps even further than Dutton was willing to go.

So that question of where the liberal sit is still going, but where do the national sit now? I mean, they have a lot of safe seats traditionally, but what's to stop them going to If you look at the last few elections, Dom, no. The National Party just always win exactly the same number of seats, right? They don't go up, they don't go down. Their margins are pretty tight, aren't they? But you don't think they'll have the same wave against the happening in Farah?

Because the National Party is not about some sort of coherent ideological coalition. What it is is, it's just a front for mining interests and so therefore well funded. But their business model is electing local candidates who genuinely are oddball but charismatic people who, yeah, you sort of go, oh, well, I kind of hate him. He's a bit of a fuckwit, but yeah, I mean, he's our fuckwit, so we always put him in. And so that's, that's the positive reason that people vote for him, vote for nationals. And then the negative reason is that the national party is essentially a little bit like a sort of mafia style operation, where if you exist in a local community

whether that's a predominant and then you dare to put, you know, say you're the news agent and you want to put the Labor sign out or a green sign out and things like that, you will be blacklisted and blackballed in that community and you'll suddenly find that nobody wants to buy from your store anymore. So there's huge sort of social pressure.

They've got a carrot and a stick that they use very effectively, which is why they never get unelected, but it also makes, because it's such a sort of tightly organized little scheme, it makes it very hard to expand. Well, they need to be in coalition. Yeah, they're in those particular. Well, look, the local influence networks,

I mean, that's not really in dispute with the nationals. That's what they do, and they've done for a long time, often between the generations. But when you talk about the mining side of things, I think you'll find Gina Reinhart has shifted in the form of a plan. to Pauline Hanson, which I didn't believe when you first said it, but it was absolutely true that she'd actually just given a plane. I wasn't sure you could do that in Australian politics, but it turns out you are allowed to give a plane to Paulian Hanson if you want.

So where does this then leave the Nets? If Gina Rinehart's gone over, why would the upings? The Nets are about to get a plane from Gina Rinehart. That's what I'm wondering. Like at any Grian heart's going, oh, well, I've got to be loyal to the people that I'm giving plans to. Yeah. But so how will this, if there's a three-cornered, opposition, which is one nation's only chance of actually doing,

unless you think they'll win the federal election and win a majority of seats with their platform. How do they get anyone? What's the point of all of this? Like, it would be death to the leaves to ever say, oh, yes, we will accept. That's why on Monday, they came out and very, I think as Taylor was very strongly, he went, no, no, no, we'll never open the door to One Nation, right? We would never do it.

And it's because they've realized maybe, say, you know, know, 48 hours too late, that actually giving one nation, even a glimpse of daylight, is fucking death to their party. But, oh, I hadn't, I hadn't read any of the news. So that's really interesting. So he has actually said, here we go. We're going to have a point of difference. Susan Lee's come out and said, the liberals need to change or die.

So she's saying. But I suppose what I'm saying is. But there's now talk about the leadership again in the liberals. There's internal rumblings again about the coalition leadership. And you just change leader every five seconds. What I would say is at this point, the prognosis is not good. I think that they've got the hantavirus and, you know, the incubation might, yeah, the Hanson virus. The Hantzen virus.

But the incubation period has taken a long time. It's taken like 25 years or whatever to 20 years. Well, Paulin's certainly been plugging away, hasn't she, for this money, pretty consistently with the policies on migration. No, I mean, Susan Lee, did you see Susan Lee's statement? I've got it here. It's quite something. On the day of the leadership spilled in February, the new leader, doesn't name him, Angus Taylor,

said that the Liberal Party needed to change or die. Three months later, the results in Farrow demonstrates that statement to be far true it today than it ever was then. So this is, Susan Lee is probably the happiest. I mean, I know that I started this episode by saying that, you know, always wait until the end and be the last to call it. But I think we should be the first to call this one, which is, I think it's the end of the Liberal Party. I think this is why ACAST had in their contract that we have to make a sort of

ridiculously large prediction every time there's a by-election because it's true. There's one more. So the Liberal Party, according to Charles, are done. There's one more thing that is always said about by-elections that we can't say this time. The other great by-election cliche is, well, you know, it's always hard for the government of the day to win, you know, and people always say, oh, it's, you know, if Albo loses, the by-election, but by not running at all. They comprehensively won. Labor has sort of avoided that whole discussion, haven't they?

Which actually, that's sort of true the last four years of the Labor Party, isn't it? They literally have just ducked every fight and then walk away going, well, I won that one. Well, in our recent episode on negative gearing in CGT, we've been discussing ever since the start of the podcast, whether or not Labor will actually, in government, would Labor actually tackle any of these issues. But we concluded, do you remember, that they'd gotten,

so kind of middle of the road now because the demographic changes. They don't need to fight it. They just wait until everyone dies. It wasn't so particularly bold move. That's what they've done. Yeah. All right. Well, there we go, Charles.

This poises things very interestingly for the budget. Will we come back with the Budget Special Edition bright early on Wednesday morning, making, ripping through the details of what Jim Chalmers says? Of course. Because when you turn into the Chase report, the one thing you can get is the latest, greatest breaking analysis. None of this few days later thing, it's always, we're always first to the story. None of this slow cooking.

But don't let it stew. None of this slow cooker. We want breaking news. Who knows? We might even publish it straight after the budget on Tuesday before we've had any time. Yeah, of course. See, Charles, are you going to the budget lock up on Tuesday? Why don't we just call?

I'm happy just call it. I'll tell you what. I won't go to the budget to lock down. And we'll just do it like in real time. We'll do it while. In real time. Jim Charm is making the boring. speech.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we can get a feed of him and just talk over the top. That'll be very classy. Yes. All right, Charles, thank you for your insights.

I love the idea that no one actually goes back through the podcast archive to see how many those calls of yours are right. There's no need. Just assume they all are. See you. We're part of the Archon Class Network and we'll catch you for the budget.