The Chaser Report - Adam Bandt Tells Us To Google It | BEST OF 2022

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Revisit the time when Adam Bandt was on the show and told us the cost of bread, milk, and weed.TRIPLE J's HOTTEST 100 VOTES CLOSE SOON MONDAYManually vote for 'Coal Makes Me Cum' here: https://hottest100.abc.net.au/voting 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, yes, you are listening to The Chaser Report back again for another one of our weekly best of January, 2023 summer series where we're playing our favorite interviews from the last year. I'm Lachlan Hodson. Charles and Tom will be joining you shortly, and they'll be joined by another one of our favorite guests we had last year. It's one that I was pretty stoked that we actually managed to get on the show. He was a leader, or he still is a leader of one of the national parties. We couldn't get a liberal leader in. We obviously couldn't get a labor leader in, and we didn't want a UAP leader in,

but we got the greenie. We got Adam Bant, leader of the Greens, to join this show. He happily humored Charles and Dom by answering all of their questions. and even the ones that he previously told other journalists to Google. So that was one of our favorite infuse from last year, and we hope that you enjoy listening back to it. But before I pass on to those three, I've got a very important announcement to make. Do you remember this song?

We've all heard that song before, and we all love it. But you know what? it doesn't have the cultural credibility that I think it deserves. Sure, it was top of the iTunes charts, but there's one more chart that it needs to be the top of, and that's Triple J's Hotest 100, which voting closes for on Monday the 23rd of January. So that's a couple of days now for you to get some last minute votes in to make sure that this song is in the hottest 100. There'll be a link in the description of this episode where you can go to and enter our song in. I'll come clean and I'll confess that it's not actually technically in Triple J's shortlists.

You have to enter it manually. You have to type in, Cole makes me come, buy the chaser, yes, this is the song I want to submit, and then it'll show up in your votes for the hottest 100. But if we can get enough of these manual votes in, we'll be, well on our way to conquering Australia's music industry and getting whatever prize money that there is for that. If you're still looking for some reasons to vote, one, you can match fix. We're on sports bet so you can put in a vote and then you can bet on us being in the top 100 and make some easy money. And sports bet's unethical anyway. So match fixing is good.

Number two reason is because Paul Scott Morrison didn't win an election last year. So it'd be really nice if he could leave a legacy this way, because that's what he's always wanted. Number three, if we win, Charles Firth has promised to do a streak in front of Parliament House, fully, the full Monty, is that, is that slang? Is that foot naked? He'll do a naked streak if we win across the Parliament House. Maybe this is going to take away some of the people who want to vote. I told him that. I said, Charles, don't do this. I think he just wants to. So, you know, give him this opportunity. Those are your three reasons to vote. Again, Cole makes me calm, a manual vote, and will win Triple J's oldest 100. Okay, thank you very much

for indulging me there. Have a proper episode of the show. Enjoy. We're joined now by Adam Bant, the leader of the Greens. Adam, welcome. Thanks to having me. Now, this election's turning out to be a bit of a cost of living election. So I do have a bit of a gotcha question to start off this interview, which is how much is the cost of a litre of oat milk? Of oat milk. It's organic or non-organic. I know it's more about this than you, Charles.

I'm going to have to Google it. Organic and virtuous, if that's possible. Cruelty-free oat milk. You don't want those poor oats suffering. Yeah, well, it depends whether it's the oats. have been grown in Fitzroy or imported from elsewhere. I can send you a spreadsheet. All right.

I'm just wondering, Adam, we're very grateful that you're here. Can I just say, I've just Googled it, $47 a liter. Is that true? That cannot be true. Oh, no, that's, yeah, it's for like 12 litres. Sorry, go on. I'm just wondering, Adam, I'm very grateful that you're here, but why did you join the Chase report?

Are your advisors very confident about the election? Isn't this where the election's decided? That's what they told me. Yes. Yes, that's definitely true. Yeah, and there's no opportunity for you to stuff up and go backwards. Well, there's still time. When they tried the gotcha question on you, Adam, you now famously said Google it.

Why would you support a multinational evil corporation like Google? Haven't you just given them more customers? Yes. You think Bing it, mate, it rolls off the tongue better? I'm not quite... Duck, duck, go. Duck, go it? Yeah, well, look, plenty of alternatives.

I now say go to your search engine of choice, so especially when I'm on the ABC. Look, the big policy that you've launched in the last couple of weeks that I have been completely activated by, and frankly is the reason why you're on this podcast, is this whole artist wage policy that you've got, where you're going to just pay artists to create, right? Now, the question I have is,

That's good. Like, I like that idea. I like the idea that, you know, Dom's brother is an artist. Like, he'll get to sort of get some money and, you know, won't have to leave sale to sail. But what about really bad artists? Like, does that, like, how do you distinguish? How do, like, does Centrelink sort of,

you bring around some of your artwork and they judge you? Like, how do you get rid of really bad artists? You don't want to be funding them. I think, you know, the, I don't know, that I want the government to be the arbiter of what's good and bad art. And, you know, I reckon my taste might even be a little bit better than Scott Morrison's when it comes to that. But even so, even so, I think you've got to leave that in the hands of those who know best I am.

Does it? No, I disagree because, no, because my 11-year-old thinks he's a fucking genius when it comes to art, and he's not. There's no concept of how to properly create. perspective and things like that and you're going no fucking wait like he doesn't deserve a time well i i hear you with a five and six year olds who bring home their amazing masterpieces every day i i know you i understand i feel that pain but we're probably going to limit this to people who are finished primary school at the very least all right well you know your other son

charles could do it adam does this notion of a wage for artists does it uh apply It's a washed-up satirists who used to be on the government teed at the ABC. Can we get back on that sweet public money here at the chase? Well, we are talking about minimum wage here, so I'll leave it up to you to work out what that means for you. Oh, it's a huge increase. No, that's a good increase for you. That's not unattractive.

You don't realize we're doing a podcast at it. Yeah, no, you're promising $88 a day, I think, is a minimum. That is much better than most of the podcasting industry. Won't we become a nation of podcasters on your watch? Maybe we need a podcaster's union. Imagine how long those conversations would. Well, actually, talking of unions, the Fair Work Commission is going to have a wage case

just shortly after the election. Yesterday, Anthony Albanese got into all sorts of trouble saying that workers shouldn't go backwards. Do you commit, under a Greens government, to make workers go backwards, and not get proper wage rises so we can keep the inflation genie shut. Yeah, I'm going to say,

I think that was pretty astounding the sort of the apoplectic response to the idea that wages should rise faster than what you spend your wages on and that people shouldn't have a wage cut. That's the ferocious response to that, I think, just shows in many ways how broken the debate is.

So what's your point? policy. We should lift wages even further than the, then as being proposed higher than inflation. Lift them, what they do in the UK, peg the minimum wage to the average wage, so that 60% of the average wage, and that way you reduce inequality and you start to lift wages from the bottom up. So that would be taking it to about $23 an hour, let the Fair Work Commission work out the time frame to phase that in over. But that's more than was. being proposed at the moment, but we have a situation in Australia where you can be working on minimum wage and especially if you've got kids, you'd still be working full time on minimum wage

and living below the recognised poverty line and that's just wrong. So we've got a really strong platform to lift minimum wages, lift it from the bottom up, lift income support from the bottom up and that's how you tackle in part at cost of living but also tackle rising in a quality. You want to reduce. inequality, doesn't that mean that the amazing wealth that trickles down from the nation's billionaires will stop? What are we going to do with that, that sweet trickle down, Adam? I know. And all the donations to the IPA and all of those other amazing non-government organizations might dry up as well. But I mean, I think the rise in wealth of billionaires in Australia

is phenomenal. During the pandemic, billionaires grew their wealth far. faster than billionaires in any other country, which, you know, if, like, when you think about how Jeff Bezos and Amazon would have done during the, during the pandemic, like, for Australian billionaires to be increasing their wealth at a faster rate than billionaires from any other country is pretty astounding. And the mining billionaires more than doubled their wealth during the course of the pandemic. And we're campaigning pretty heavily on a billionaires tax this election. And Joe Biden is even talking about that now in the US.

and we fund a lot of policies. There's a problem with the billionaires text, because aren't there sort of goody billionaires and bady billionaires? Like, what about, so are you including like Mike Cannon Brooks and things like that? Or do you just give him a free pass and say, oh, it's all right, you can still be a billionaire? Well, the thing with our across the board tax proposal applies to everyone, no favourites here, but it's like there'll still be billionaires afterwards. they were talking about a 6% tax on their wealth and what's the point of a 6%

surely why don't they what no that's a terrible why don't you just get rid of billionaires just take all their billions well we say that plus also make them pay a a Bernie Sanders style levy on the profiteering that they did during the pandemic so make them pay back half their profits that they raised during the pandemic that would be a a fair approach and then do that and you start to raise some serious money to fund things like dental and to medicare. So we think if we especially find ourselves in a minority parliament situation, we can't see why a new government wouldn't be prepared to put a tax on billionaires.

Like it's not really going to affect, I don't know, I don't know if it's going to affect you. It's not probably not going to affect most people who vote unless you're a billionaire. It'll affect Craig. The chase will only affect cranes. Isn't there a risk, though, Adam, that if you go around taxing your billionaires, some of them are only going to be multi, multi-millionaires. Some of them might only have 900 mil after this tax comes in.

Aren't you supposed to be about protecting things, Adam? This is class warfare. Well, yes, I think, again, it just shows how far things have drifted in this country that when you're talking about attacks on billionaires, that it sort of strikes this, this court of fear amongst some who's saying, oh, you can't do that. It's like, well, hang on, you know, they're making obscene and enormous amounts of money and it's time that they paid some of it back.

I was looking at the Greens website the other day, just on this point, Adam. And look, there's lots of things that are free in your plan, things like education, health, and even dentistry. I don't know how anyone can afford to pay for dentistry, not even you. And then there was a link to us a page that said, our plan to pay for this. and the link was broken. Is that fixed now?

Send it through. I'll have to Google it. I don't know. We'd be very, very clear about paying for it by making big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of tax. There's a significant amount of money to be paid, to be made just by closing loopholes. I mean, we're giving $10 billion a year, for example.

Anyone who pays taxes is contributing to getting $10 billion a year to the fossil fuel industry to do things like buy cheap diesel fuel. Now, I would much rather that Clive Palmer pay the same tax on his petrol that everyone else pays and that we use it to fund getting dental into Medicare. So we've run the ruler over it, got it costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, and you can fund things like getting dental into Medicare by stopping the handouts to the big corporations and billionaires and making them pay tax.

I mean, like, we're in a situation where one in three big corporations in Australia pays no tax at all, right, and pays no tax at all, and that's wrong. And they're the kind of loopholes we want to close. But they're the companies that keep Australia going at it. Like, why do you hate Australia? Well, there's these, in many instances, they're these massive multinationals who send their profits offshore tax free. I mean, we, to take the gas industry, for example,

There's 27 companies that in one year bought in $78 billion of income and paid no tax. Shell bought in $5 billion. Exxon bought in $12 billion. But won't these companies go offshore if we start taxing? They're already doing it. This is my point, is that there in many. No, but they'll just shut up shop. You won't have any wealth creation in Australia at all.

I think you will find that the minerals and the resources will still be under the ground. under the Australian oceans and there'll probably still be an appetite to get it out and we're saying look make them pay for it and make them pay a fair rate for what they suck out of the ground and their tax before they send the profits overseas well let's go to the other side of this equation which is then okay if you do all this tax then you get a whole of free things now one of those free things is free unit uni free education right now isn't there a risk that that people will just abuse that privilege to learn stuff for free

and then just learn a whole of the stuff that they don't actually need to know? You're sounding very much like the Liberal Minister for Education at the moment. Like that, you know, they routinely get up and they read out topics of ARC grants that they don't like or PhD topics that they think are offensive and then say, therefore, you shouldn't fund it. I mean, I just think, you know, we should be a society. the values people getting education and if you make a good income out of it then you pay it back through a higher progressive tax rate like the more money you earn the higher the tax rate

should be that you pay it's called a progressive tax system and you could use it to fund things like free education but if alba had if alba had to pay for his economics degree and don't you think it's more likely he'd know the unemployment right he'd value it more the i don't know you had to talk to people who are going through education at the moment with it being user pays where they're paying through the nose for it and ask whether they think they're getting a better quality of education as a result. Half of our interns are at uni and they're hungry for work. They've got to work here. They're so desperate. Yeah. Like they they need every dollar they can get. This is good. This is, you know, a good system. Keep them.

I don't eat properly, I don't think. You've also got a plan to build one million homes I see here. Won't the boomers just negative gear, 999,000 of them on day one? Yes. Well, the element of our plan is that the government retains ownership of these. So the boomers won't be able to get their hands on them, I'm afraid. So basically communism. Well, when I was explaining our policy to one journalist the other day, I said, look, we want over the next 20 years government to build a million

homes that it can, people could rent for 25% of their income or you could buy and two for 300,000 and then sell back to the government, you know, a big public build of affordable homes. The journalist said to me, you mean like Menzies did. And it's the first time that I've ever been compared with Menzies or our policies been compared with Menzies. But again, it's like this used to be something that we did in this country. And I don't think people, as far as I'm aware, Australia wasn't ever run by climate. communist Menzies government. This used to be something that was fairly straightforward.

I think that's why Menzies wanted to get rid of the communists was because it was competition to steal their policy. They do this in Singapore, I think, Adam. But isn't it true that Singapore is a socialist utopia where there are no rich people? Aren't you going to turn us into Singapore with this plan of yours? I don't know. It's some very unique lines of attack coming on this policy. but it's the way out because, I mean, we do need to reform negative gearing.

Like, our plan is to limit it to one investment property and to start to withdraw all of those. Why not zero? Why should anyone own a house to make money out of it? Well, there's lots of people who've decided that their investment strategy for their retirement or whatever will be to own a unit or invest in a unit. And that's not where the bulk of the subsidies are going. The bulk of the subsidies from negative gearing and capital gains tax are going to the very top income earners who often own multiple, multiple properties.

Also known as the federal cabinet. Yeah, you've got to hurt a lot of parliamentarians with this plan of yours. Peter Dutton must hate you. He is about six. I know. There's some who've got a lot. And it may not be popular. but it might go to some way to explaining why it hasn't been reformed so far.

So you're on a parliamentary, sort of, you're on a good parliamentary wage because you're the leader of a party. So you'd probably be on roughly similar to Peter Dutton. How do you afford six homes on Peter Dutton's wages? I've never understood how he managed to get all that money. Well, I don't know about him, but we're giving about $6 billion a year in handouts through negative gearing and capital. gains tax exempt discounts to the very wealthy and people who've got more than two homes right so

six billion dollars a year is what it costs to basically push up the price of housing and subsidise people who've already got two homes to go and get their third or fourth or tenth and the money overwhelmingly goes to the top like goes to the top income earners and the our plan like you said a million homes over the next 20 years that costs about a third of that, right? So for about a third of what we are currently paying every year in handouts to people who've got multiple homes, you can build a million affordable homes instead. Now, you've got a plan to legalise cannabis, but I can't see in that plan any details about how you'll cope with the surge in the demand for convenience store snacks. The shelves will be

wiped and we like toilet paper all over again, Adam. What's the plan? Well, I think that's one area where the market will step up, I think you'll find. Well, no, I think you'll find that it didn't step up during the pandemic. You're going to, this is a logistical nightmare. Well, maybe we do need to put a bit of further thought into that. You raise a very good point. What will the price of weed be under a Greens government? Can you commit to putting downward pressure on pot prices?

How much will the 25 cost? Well, it's, there is, Sadly, it is under our model, it's going to be regulated. So there will be the opportunity for it to start to be taxed. So I can't give you the exact tax rate at the moment, but it's certainly going to be more available under our model. And in the ACT, they've already taken steps towards decriminalising personal use and personal possession.

and the world hasn't ended there. And as far as I'm aware, the 7-Elevens are still doing all right and have stepped up and filled that void that you're talking about. So I think it's working in the ACT. It'll probably work in the rest of the country as well. Can you commit, though, to your artist's wage being sufficient to afford pot? Yes. Minimum wage.

Like, it's minimum wage. And so I guess we don't like dictating how people want to spend their money. So if you can make ends meet, then go for. for it. Oh, now, we should go, but there is one last policy that we should probably talk about. Oh, yeah. Have you heard about this thing called the climate change? Oh, no, the green do you have a policy about that? Heard a bit about it. It hasn't really cropped up much during the election campaign, which is pretty, pretty distressing. Are you a bit disturbed that the major parties have stolen your action on climate change brand?

I'll be, you know, if only, like, that would be a pretty good scenario. I mean, we spent most of last year saying, oddly, that we found ourselves in agreement with Boris Johnson, which is, again, not a place I'd ever thought it'd be. But at least in the lead up to the climate summit, he was there saying we need to get out of coal. Joe Biden was going around trying to get the world to sign up to cut its gas usage. And there's just crickets from Liberal and Labor here. I mean, it's even worse, like they're now saying, we'll open up even more coal mines, more gas and more gas projects.

And just the one gas project like the Betelieu Basin in the Northern Territory would increase Australia's pollution by 13%. So we're having this debate about these targets that are sort of too little too late from Liberal and Labor. And they're trying to bury the fact that they want to make it even worse by opening up more coal and gas. And that, to me, in a climate crisis, is pretty distressing. and we're doing our best to sort of get it on the agenda. You're against, you know, digging stuff out of the ground. That's the only stuff we do, Adam. Like, you're literally, I don't think you quite understand how Australia works.

We don't have anything else. It's tough of the world. We dig stuff out of the ground. We don't process it or improve it. Sell it off and then have a few billionaires, which you want to get rid of in tax. Like, you just don't know, like, you just, I think you should go to New Zealand or something. I think it'd be much more successful over there. Yeah, well, you know.

I've actually spent a bit of time this election campaign in the coal sort of areas in Hunter Valley and going to Rockhampton, going to Townsville, going to Gladstone. And our message has been actually there's Australia is pretty lucky. We've got a stack of the minerals that are going to be needed for, you know, building batteries and electric vehicles. And, you know, why not process the iron ore here instead of shipping it off and buying it back in as expensive steel? and we're getting a pretty good reception. I think one of the one coal miner said to us when we're in the Hunter Valley

that it's just the worst kept secret in the valley. Everyone knows coal's got to use by the date, but no one's talking about it, whereas at least we're going there to have the conversations. And I think increasingly things are shifting, and people would be up for a national conversation, including people in the coal areas, about what a transition out of it looks like.

Now, don't use the word transition. I was told very strictly by a Labor insider, you're not allowed to use the word transition because it polls really badly in the coal areas. Yeah, well, it's because Labor doesn't want a transition. Labor's going around saying we can still dig up coal in the 2050s, just like the Liberals are and still meet our climate targets, and it's just rubbish, right? People know that they're being lied to in these areas, and, like, there's a hunger there for a bit of a conversation about it, but you have to start, I guess, with the first

But the first point in the fork in the road is do you accept that coal and gas have a use-by date? And if you accept the climate science, the answer is yes. And so you've then got to have a conversation about what the pathway is out of it. But at the moment, neither the labourer or liberal are there. And that's one of the things we're trying to push. So look, final question from me, Adam. On the Greens website, there are an awful lot of policies more so than usual.

I'd say you've got them costed. There's a lot of work that's gone into this. What are you going to do if Anthony Alberteensi becomes Prime Minister, are relying on the green support. These are policies and targets. He's not going to commit to any of those, is he? I think there's some pretty popular things there. Like when we were in balance of power last time,

we got dental into Medicare for kids, for example, and it's one of the things we would want to put on the table and balance of power this time is getting dental into Medicare for everyone. Now, I don't think that the next government's going to lose votes because they agree with the Greens to put dental into Medicare. and make Clive Palmer help pay for it with a billionaires tax.

I think people would love that. I think their vote would go up. So I think the toughest one, the toughest thing that we'd have to have discussions around would be around coal and gas. And what are we going to do about stopping, opening up new coal and gas projects? That's where I'd imagine we're going to find the most resistance. But the other things like getting dental and mental health into Medicare areas that I reckon would be pretty popular for any government.

So you may not be able to protect the environment, but you will be able to protect our teeth. That's a start. We'll do both. We'll do both. Thanks for joining us, Adam. Yeah, thanks for having me. As always, Gary is from Road Microphones. We're part of the Acast, Creator Network.