The Chaser Report - Albo All The Way Down

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Charles uses his degree in political analysis to uncover REAL reason everyone in the Albanese government seems to get along so well. Meanwhile Dom shares how the state of Queensland has failed the war on waste. Plus a genuinely sweet moment to start the episode off with a response from one of you lot. 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 Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. Dom, we've got some listener feedback. We do. I'm sorry or not sorry. It actually refers to an episode that we recorded as a bonus.

So what we do is we have the subscription, $5 a month. You get no ads. And you get the occasional bonus episodes, such as I'm only put out this week. dealing with the very sad, very sad death of my dog. During which I mentioned that, some pet owners choose to put the ashes of their dog in a teddy bear. Yes. And I said in the bonus episode, if anyone has actually done this, email us because we want to hear the story. And I must say, Charles, there is egg and also possibly a little bit of ash on my face today.

Yes, because Edward B emailed us a few hours ago. saying, hey, Charles and Dom and whoever else may read this message, I don't have a pet's ashes in a teddy bear. So I don't know why he's emailing. But I do have part of my mother's. She battled breast cancer for 16 years, passing away 10 years ago. She chose to buy and put part of her ashes in this teddy bear,

and he's attached to a photo of the teddy bear, so that family and friends could say goodbye after she was gone. It still gets cuddled and is part of commemorations and celebrations. That is so touching. I mean, who am I? Who am I to have been reflexively appalled by the notion of little bits of deceased loved ones in teddy bears? If that floats your boat, I'm not going to judge that. That's absolutely fine.

I just think they should be clearly marked, okay? Yes. I think it should be very clearly marked. So if a child hugged a teddy bear that says something like, you know, cuddle me in remembrance or something, you can identify that one, because it's going to be an awkward explanation for a young child, it's possibly going to terrify the living crap out of a young child as well, learning a little bit of great grandma is, you know, inside Ted.

But that's okay. No, that's right. I'm glad that this person who contacted us gained solace from that. It wasn't too offended clearly by my remarks. And it's obviously a little bit different from a pet, but it is a beautiful thing to have to represent a loved one. Okay. So I think I'm going to, I'm going to do that when I die. I'm going to, because I've always thought I should be buried, but I found out the other day because...

You can't do that anymore. You can't do that. It's incredibly... Bad for the environment. Bad for the environment, incredibly expensive as well. And there's not many cemeteries that do it. Like, you've got to actually travel well out of Sydney. Yeah, we don't have land for this shit anymore.

I mean, frankly, with all due respect to grieving people, any future plot of land used for cemetery, we just need that for housing. We just need that for your descendants housing. Oh, okay. I mean, that's just true, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We just need to build apartments on it. Let's just get honest about this.

like Waverly Cemetery in Sydney has the most stunning water views in the world like it's sitting on this stunning cliff Oh yeah and so you've been You've been eyeing it off for years Yeah I've always found it very emotional to think Well I've always liked that of all these People who were buried with the wind

It's like Wuthering Heights It's stunning, it's beautiful But you're wanting Kerry Packer to be able to build his next mansion on it I don't I'm not saying disturbed the cemetery Charles Not at all because that would be that would be desecrating the sacred ground What I'm saying is with stilts

You could build apartments It's on top with incredible what it is. The dead are not going to mind. They still get their plot. It just gets a little bit less sun. Well, as long as it's social housing, I don't suppose I mind. Yeah, yeah, in Waverly. Yeah, definitely be social housing, Charles.

Four people will definitely get those houses. So, but I'm thinking what I will do is when I get cremated, I'm going to, but instead of a teddy bear, what I'm thinking is, you know, get it put into a something a little bit more me. You know what I mean? Like, you know, Teddy, I'm not Teddy, I'm not a cut me fella. Yeah, I'm... My niece and nephew found this stuffed toy kind of poo emoji.

Yes. Yes, exactly. That's really fitting. Cut all this and remember, Charles. Lots to talk about today. I've got this extraordinary recycling scheme from Queensland that went fairly, should we say fairly awry? Oh, okay.

We'll get into that in some other news after this. And thank you for indulging I'll plug about the, the bonus. episodes that people who pay us five bucks a month get on ACAST Plus and via Apple. So, I mean, the Australian does like to rip into Labor states. Of course they do. But sometimes it's kind of justified. So good on you, the Australian, for reporting this. Queensland has had a scheme for a while.

It's kind of a lovely scheme for kids where you know that kids create a lot of waste for things like poppers, right? You could just pour yourself like a glass of juice from a lot, much larger bottle. But instead, poppers and so on. They don't do this with our kids. The state of Queensland had a thing called containers for change, which was keen to teach kids to recycle things like poppers. Isn't that a lovely idea?

Yes, that's lovely. And what they were going to do was give you money if you recycled your popper. It looks like. And so what they did was they wanted school children to return 100 million poppers to recoup $10 million in cash. So I guess that's 10 cents to pop up. That's good. It's not bad, right?

That's a little bit of pocket money for the kids. There's just one slight problem with the scheme, which included such characters as Harry Popper, Dolly Carton, Bruce Deuce and Annie Smith, which is not a pun. I don't know how Annie Smith fits in there. But anyway, what do you think the problem was with the Queensland government's proper recycling scheme, which ended up with them paying $12.69 million to residents who recycled poppers? it something to do with the involvement

of bikey gangs was there car chel... But used to poppers to then transform meth across borders. Yeah, yeah. No, no, not quite. I can't imagine

why would there be a... Was it that school bullies would go around and get... Grab paupers off kids. Give me your poppers off kids. Give me your head. That probably happened. It's Queensland. Yeah.

But no... That was actually probably encouraged. Yeah, that's how they found the front row of the Maroons from the state of origin. Well, logistics, Charles, simple logistics. I mean, you have a dream that you're going to get kids recycling and you pay them money.

Yeah. The problem is you've got to recycle the things you collect. Oh, no. And so this started in 2018. The problem is Queenslanders has not ever had capacity to recycle poppers. I mean, that's this cardboard with plastic on it. It's a little bit complicated, certainly for Queenslanders. So what they did was, they forced, the government was forced to sell the waste

to a private Brisbane. been company called the Genuine Recycling Group. It's got the word genuine in the name of the company, Charles? It sounds, yeah, it does sound a little dodgy. If you've got to put the word genuine in as a trademark, so I'm guessing that they had no capacity to actually... So, wait a minute, they sold... So the genuine bought the poppers, did they?

No. They bought them. Yep. They bought the popper containers. They bought the popper containers. From the government. And what they did was they shipped them all off to India. Oh, no.

So the paupers from the developed world just got shipped on massive barges, presumably, off to India to be recycled. And supposedly turned into pulp that was used for construction. I thought that that was illegal. I thought that the government had cracked down. That's another problem. Oh, okay. But it hasn't happened yet.

It's going to happen from next year there's a federal law to prevent us shipping our waste offshore. Right, okay. So it was all above board. It was just, we exported all the poppers to the third world. There was no evidence. So there was an audit. Everyone benefits, except for Indians. Well, it's not actually clear whether it's being recycled over there.

Like, there's no positive proof that it's being recycled. Right. It's being dumped in a giant landfill. Yes. But it might be being recycled. My understanding is a lot of that waste actually gets dumped in the ocean. So maybe actually it'll end up back in Queensland. And that is genuine recycling.

And then they can pay the 10 cents all over again. Yeah, that's right. There you go. So, yeah, I mean, it sounded like a nice idea, didn't it? Having all the kids bringing back their poppers. Sending it off to just dump it on India to deal with. Not such a great... Prime Minister Modi didn't mention...

I didn't say thank you for the pappers during his big rally in Sydney this week. You know, though, Charles, this is the last line of the Australian story about the recycling. They could have just sent it to Victoria where they actually can recycle liquid paperboard and 620 tonnes of it was recycled last year. So there you go. I mean, India is much closer to Queensland than Victoria. We've been talking about The Voice a bit this week, Charles. Here's another story for you.

Scott Morrison is against the voice, having previously sort of disgusted and waived the idea of it. Oh, that's good news for The Voice. Yeah, I think Scott Morrison coming out. is a massive boost to the ESCates, really. Can I tell you a very depressing fact about Scott Morrison? He's still in Parliament getting a public service salary? No, that's actually good news for us because I was looking at our Instagram stats this morning

and the really depressing thing is that consistently all our top jokes in Chaser headlines on our Instagram feed this year have been Scott Morrison jokes. Oh, wow. Yes. So even though he hasn't been. Prime Minister for over a year. And even when I was getting a little bit hackneyed to make jokes about his jobs.

It was hackneyed about four years ago to make jokes about it. But things like during the coronation, it was like awkward, Scott Morrison accidentally appoints himself King. I saw that and I thought, wow, they're still beating that drum. Yeah, yeah, I know, exactly. Like, no, I'm not proud of this. But they're all, they're like the top rating ones. And Scott Morrison rejected from PWC job, despite having references from five previous

I see we may have made that joke on the podcast, even though... Well, that's probably... I mean, the thing about it is, it is still very funny. That scandal is still one of the best scandals of my life in Australian politics. Behind that is why would we possibly need to enshrine Indigenous representation in the Constitution, asks former Indigenous Affairs Minister Tony Abbott? I mean, what are we doing? Scott Morrison says, actually, that he's very happy to have recognition of First Nations

people in the Constitution, just not this one. Just not this one. Just not the culmination of the process that he personally advanced while prime minister. I don't really know what's changed. Which constitution should it be in China? Oh, he's got five other constitutions that he's put together. Fair enough. The Chaser Report, less news more often.

Well, Charles, I got some news from Wall Street. Oh, okay, yes, yes. Oh, this is good. This is very interesting. What happened was, you know that blasted the Pentagon where it wiped billions of dollars off Wall Street. Yes, I saw terrible photos of the Pentagon. America's under attack, Dom.

It's under attack. I think we should sell, sell, sell, immediately. And the important thing in the stock market world, Charles, is that it's all about speed, isn't it? I mean, you see something you've got to be the first to dump your stock because otherwise you'll be too late and already will have lost its value. Yes, that's right. So if you see a picture of, for instance, the Pentagon burning,

you shouldn't, under any circumstances, check whether it's just an AI-generated hoax. Well, hang on. So that was an AI-generated hoax. Well, now we know that, but that already sold all my stocks off. Oh, yeah, I didn't know that at all. I've been shorting the market all morning. When did this, how did we find out of it?

Why didn't anyone tell me? I love that in the City Morning Herald kind of report on this. Someone's done a cross, a red cross through the picture just to make sure it's not clear. Someone with the Twitter account at Bloomberg feed, which is not a real Bloomberg account, large explosion near the Pentagon complex in Washington, D.C., initial report. Wow. And there's a picture of just a giant cloud next to the Pentagon. Do you think we should start using AI to do chaser pranks?

Yeah, probably. I mean, it's very easy. What's the engine called that fakes photos and did the ones of Donald Trump being arrested? Oh, yeah, yeah, the mid-jurney. I've got a subscription to mid-Journey. I mean, we used to Photoshop pictures like that for the chaser. We used to just painstakingly assemble. I wish we should cancel our Photoshop subscription

because it can create more realistic images than our crappy photoshopping skills these days. But what are some good pranks to pull? Maybe we could do a... Oh, no, what about a photo of Anthony Albanesey, the Australian Prime Minister enthusiastically hugging Narendra Modi of India despite some of the concerns over his human rights record?

No, no, that's real, that one. You sure? Yes, that's a real. Albo. What we should do is we should do an AI video of Anthony Albanese doing something for poor people for ones and not leaving them behind.

That would also crash the stockmacks. Why don't you... His mid-journey to create a photo of Anthony Albanyi opening a massive social housing complex and published that. No, but no one would believe it. It's the sort of thing he grew up in

massively subsidised, people who really need it. Yes. He'd call it the Albo's Mum Institute for cheap housing. Albo's Mum mansions. It's sad, isn't it? The really sad thing about it is I'm sure he still believes in the idea somewhere. I don't think he's abandoned his principles. I think he's just been convinced that, I mean, we've done a whole episode's on this, that you can afford to wait for a

while. Charles, it's where you finish up. It's where you finish up. Not now. You can do it in his last term, whenever that is. And look, I'm going to tell you something interesting. Okay. It's not really what this podcast's about, but I'm going to just a little bit of insight. Lay it on me. That I worked out the other day, which is that, you know how everyone thinks, oh, Albo runs a bit of a cabinet of equals,

a bit like Bob Hawke does. Yeah, yeah. He's got people who historically he's not necessarily gotten along with, you know, it's side by side with him in cabinet. It's a team, that's what you're saying. Chris Bowen, who, you know, for a long time was vying for the same position, like wanted to lead the Labor Party. That seems amusing in hindsight, doesn't it?

you know, a lot of, you know, sort of people from different factions within the ALP. And then I realized that actually the assistant minister of all those ministers, of all his greatest opponents in cabinet, all his assistant ministers are elbow fucking suckholes. Like literally every single one of them. If you go through it, so Chris Bowen, who's the trade minister, Underneath him is Tim Ayres, absolutely staunch, factional ally of Anthony Albanesey. Underneath Jim Chalmers, the treasurer, potential opponent for the leadership, is Katie Gallagher, absolutely staunch Albo ally.

In fact, the only reason that Katie Gallagher is in the Senate is because Albo constructed a pre-selection where she got installed in the thing. Underneath Tanya Plibersek, who Albauntona, hate each other, is Jenny McAllister, who literally was first cab off the rank in supporting elbow when he first put up his hands to be leader. And the list goes on and on and on. Basically, every single you know, supposed senior cabinet minister has an elbow plant as the assistant minister. He basically controls the whole thing. It's not this sort of Bob Hawke style, you know, let's all just share ideas and go off on our own and be de ministers we want to be.

It's just a fucking, Albanyzi has his own little cabinet that he runs the whole of Australia. What'd you call it a kitchen cabinet, Charles? Was that a part of the kitchen cabinet? He was, wasn't he? I'm not sure he'd be very good at cooking. I don't think that's one of his strengths. But wasn't your sister Charles, an ally of Alba's?

Well, she used to work for him, yes. Why isn't she in the federal cabinet? What's she doing? I know. She could be running Australia. Well, she's too probably, she could be part of the cabal. She's too honorary now. She's too high up for me politics.

We've recorded several episodes about the evidence of Charles's sister and him in comparison. Well, that's interesting. Isn't that terrible? Or is it just not surprising? Isn't that what you'd do? Oh yeah, that is what I'd do. Yeah. Yeah.

Actually, do you want to be my deputy? Dom? I can be your assistant minister. You can be my assistant minister. Assistant Minister for Charles Affairs. Charles, I want nothing to do with your affairs. Man, is it the weekend yet? Can we go?

Can we go home? I think we can. I think it's, we've successfully reached at the end of the week. It has been a bit of a ground. We've just both been very tired for some reason. I can't, I can't sleep anymore. It's winter. It's because you're worried about the future because it looks so bleak.

Yeah. But also winter's coming on and we're all going to get COVID again and it's going to be awful. Yeah. Oh, but you know what the worst disease in the world is, according to Channel 7 news last night, chronic back pain. Chronic back pain? That's the most popular disease in the world or like condition in the world. 800 million people in the world suffer from chronic back pain, which is more than COVID.

Okay. It's just going to show things could always be worse. Yes. Imagine having COVID and chronic back pain. but we won't have to on odds on that, so. Our gears from road, we're part of the Icona class network. What are you doing this weekend? I just, I think curling up in a ball and feeling sorry for myself.

Yeah. That's the plan. Oh, plus I've got to take my daughter to music class, which is much the same thing. And fucking kids sport all weekend. Is it? Well, my entire Saturdays are now kids sport. I have girls who are too young for such things. So my, clearly my goal is to get them not interested in sport.

Yes, exactly, definitely. Just make them, I don't know, bookish nerds. Charles, I mean, odds on, frankly. Charles, can't you just gamble on the outcome or something to make it more interesting? Like, can't you become the first bookie in parent, sort of kid's sport? Yeah, kids bet. Kids bet. There's a business idea.

Now, this is the sort of thing that could tease Charles up. I do have a little bit of a new business. Yes. We're going to do that. I'll be betting against my kids this week. Catch you next week.