The Chaser Report - Andrew Bolt is a Dropkick - or is he? | Zoe Daniel

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Journalist turned candidate Zoe Daniel joins Charles and Dom to talk about why she's running as an independent this election. Meanwhile John Delmenico shows what he has learnt from Sky News this week. Plus Charles has all the most important news in his daily Election Wrap. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In an election that will determine the fate of the entire universe, there's only one podcast holding politicians accountable. Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese, Who Will Boom? Find out on The Chaser Report, Election Edition. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report Election Edition. It is Thursday the 5th of May, which means there are 16 days still to go until the 22 federal election. I'm Tom Knight. Hello, Charles Firth. Don, this is a disaster.

We should never have committed to a daily election podcast. Look, in our defence, in every previous campaign, we've done eight. This is the eighth campaign we're covering with the chase. So every other time, things happened on a daily basis that were interesting. If you look at the front page at the Sydney Morning Herald this morning, the top story is that there was a spill. on a road in Sydney's West, and it was slightly acidic, whatever they spilled onto the road. Right.

So they're worried that the road is going to be sort of slightly damaged. Right. So there might be a minor impact to a road. And that's a higher story than the federal election. I relate to that. That's new information. Well, exactly. It's better than the sort of, there's just nothing.

The only election story that I can find in the entire press is a recounting of the fact that Russell Crow voiced a labour ad on the weekend. Yeah, which we knew. Which we knew. They've revealed why he did it. Yeah. Do you know what the link is? Albo's a fan of Souths, which we knew, which was obvious from the moment that he voiced the...

I've got a story here, though. My phone pinged, actually while we were speaking. Get this. Scott Morrison has compared Albo's budget to Harry Potter. What? Yeah, because you can't just wave a wand and money appears. Oh, I thought it was like transphobic or, I mean. All right, that's probably in the mix of somewhere knowing the liberal policy.

It's probably a compliment knowing Sir Morris. Well, thinking about it, doesn't Harry Potter make billions and billions of dollars as a successful franchise? Anyway, it's confusing. Look, there's not much going on. No. For some reason, there are still two more debates to come, Charles. There's nothing to debate. It's almost as if Labor's strategy of just being the same as the Liberal Party means that there's nothing to talk about.

It's like the T-shirt you get in Thailand, same, same. I went so, like, things have got so desperate for me that I actually followed the Greens and Adam Bant's Instagram feed just to get some, something else. Do you know how many selfies Adam Bant takes per day and little speeches to the camera? That can't be good for the environment. Like a fucking shit done. Actually, Charles, I want to break some news right here and right now about the Greens. Okay, because they've flown under the radar.

They have flight, no one's had scrutiny to their policies. No one's taking them seriously. Yes. It's time we did, Judge. They may be part of a kind of Labor Greens coalition of sorts, with the teals. They'll probably be government. I mean, Adam Ban may end up the Prime Minister at this rate. Let's look at some of them.

They've got a lot of policies on their website, and I'm not making this up. This is what it says. Okay. Free education for life. They want free early childhood education, free public schools, free Tafein University, wipe out student debt. Disgusting. Just free money for that.

Free healthcare for all. They want money into public hospitals, free dental, free mental health care, safer drug use, interestingly. So lots of money for healthcare. And they also want, you know, wipe out student fees. Yes. They also want to raise all of the social welfare support payments every single one. Disgusting.

If you scroll down the list of their policy plans, there's actually an item which says paying for our plan. When I click on paying for our plan, it quite honestly says, not found. The link is broken. It says, sorry, we know how you feel when you expect to find something. It's just not there. And you wonder, how could this have happened? I'm quoting, where did it go out and we end up here?

Was it apathy, informal voting? No, it was the Greens not having a plan to pay for all the money. Maybe they didn't have enough money to pay their website designer properly. I think so. on today's show, we've been subjecting poor John Delmenico to Sky News once again, let's see what it's done to his brain today. He's going to

end up a right winger. Plus, we've got a fantastic interview with Zoe Daniel. She's the teal candidate for the seat of Goldstein up against Tim Wilson. And she's a really polished media performer for some reason.

Yes, I'm interested with being an ABC Geno for decades. I'm actually quite good at interviews. Yes, but the polls say she is probably going to win and quite comfortably in the latest poll. Will she own to being the front run? Of course she won't. Nobody does in this election. No, no. And then also

we've got more updates from this election. I think that's it. I think we can safely promise that those are the only items of content today. Because you and I spent the past few hours looking for something interesting to talk about today. No. Let's hope something happens tomorrow. Yeah.

Look, hopefully China will set up a military base And that'll be juicy You know On the Solomon Islands And then we can You know Sort of have a little bit of

You know Bullets and you know Second half the campaign That is a good point That boring Am, thank you ma'am It could be worse than boring Could have you actually done a daily rap

Charles Yeah I did a daily rap Oh my God There's just nothing to rap All right Let's hear to Let's have a listen To what little Charles

Come up with For today's daily rap This is the wrap for Thursday the 5th of May. A coalition candidate for the Senate in Queensland has backed the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates was behind the COVID-19 outbreak. Nicole Tobin has also supported comments linking mask mandates to Nazi Germany. The story was broken in the nine newspapers this morning, but the LNP quickly hose down the scandal, pointing out that Ms. Tobin had been vaccinated twice and so is now fully under control thanks to the computer chips

Bill Gates implanted in her arm. Meanwhile, Scott Morrison hit Sydney Breakfast Radio, telling Nova that he ate boiled eggs for breakfast in what was clearly a very hard-hitting interview. Finally, more polls are out today, suggesting that Labor is pulling ahead of the coalition, meaning there are just 16 days left for Labor to stuff it up like they always do.

That's the wrap for Thursday the 5th of May. We'll be back in a sec. The Chesa Report. Our guest today is Zoe Daniel, independent candidate for the seat of Goldstein in Melbourne. Zoe, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So how's it all going? Are you going to win?

I think we have a real chance at winning, but there's a couple of weeks to go. And obviously, I'm the underdog being an independent in a safe liberal seat with a six-year incumbent as my opponent. but we have amazing momentum and more than 1,000 volunteers active on the campaign trail right now. So it's exciting. It's just day by day. Do you do any polling?

Do you have any internal numbers that you can reveal to us exclusively on this podcast? Well, short answer is no. We haven't done our own polling. There's been some polling done. There was some polling around in the press over the last 24 hours or so to suggest that it's, Even Stevens that basically were level pegging at the moment. It's a little bit better than that, actually, from the Australian Institute. They found the two-party preferred number 62 to 38.

Given what happened last election, are you worried to see such good poll numbers at this stage? Well, my reference point for polling is Donald Trump went in the 2016 US election, which I covered as a reporter. And you might recall that Hillary Clinton was supposed to win that election right after the day. And I was one of the only reporters who was running around. saying, I don't think it's going to be quite that simple. So my trust in polling is pretty skinny, especially in individual seats. But, you know, look, the trend in the polling is obviously very positive for the campaign.

I think it's a motivating force for the volunteers and me too. Now, you're up against Tim Wilson, and we actually had a run-in with Tim Wilson a couple of months ago up in Canberra, where he – and we were asking about – Zali Stegle's climate bill, because the Libs refused to pass that bill. He accused that bill of being treasonous. He said that anyone who supported Zali Stegel's bill was treasonous. Why do you believe in treason? I do recall that particular incident.

Thank you for reminding me. The concern or the issue that's been put forward is that an independent climate body with teeth, would take the power away from elected parliamentarians if you legislate targets and then you have an independent body managing those. And my position on that is, well, if the government kept its promises, we wouldn't need that body. But because apparently there's wriggle room on climate targets and net zero is dead, we unfortunately do need that body to hold the parliamentarians to account to the climate target.

So those running the government have put us in a position where that body is needed. And indeed, I never planned to be a politician. So I wouldn't be sitting here either if I did think it was kind of needed to get in and exert some pressure and make some things happen rather than looking backwards all the time. Shouldn't the government be in favour of anybody that lets them pass the buck onto somebody else and not solve problems? It's not unprecedented to have an organisation that sits outside the control of the parliament

to make decisions. The Reserve Bank is a classic case of an organisation that has power of a particular set of policy levers. So it's not as if this has never been done before. But as I said, if we didn't need it, we wouldn't need it. But unfortunately, because of inaction, we need it. So you said you're not a politician and you never thought you would be. Because you're a journalist for years for the ABC.

Why did you decide to throw your head in the ring? Because I was asked to. A community organisation called Voices of Goldstein, which was a whole group of concerned citizens who wanted to see politics done differently in the electorate came together in late 2020 and decided to try to find an independent who could better represent the views of the electorate and take those views forward to the Parliament. So I was asked if I'd stand as an independent. Initially I said absolutely no chance politics is revolting them. I want no part of it. But I thought about it for a couple of months and

they kept coming back to me and saying, are you sure you through the process? Are you sure you're not interested. Over that time, I had some pretty deep conversations with my family, especially my teenage children. And it was actually my son, who's turned 15 earlier this year, and he said, you know, someone's got to do something for us, Mum, and all you feel in 20 years time, if everything's worse, and you had an opportunity to change something, and you didn't even try. You know, someone's got to step in and try to create some change for our future. So it's, it's pretty hard to stare, stare your child in the face when they put that on the table. So I decided But okay, I'll give it a go.

You know, you were a journalist of great integrity and respect. Not everyone in that role necessarily is. We've got one person here who we've made to watch Sky News for the past three weeks. And he's put together a compilation of some of the things that they've been saying about you and some of the other independents. And I'm keen to get your reaction because listening to them, there's clearly some sort of giant conspiracy going on here. So maybe we can reveal what it is after this brief clip.

One of their candidates, Zoe Daniels, is a former prominent ABC reporter. Got Hayes for like Grace Tame and Climate Independent Zoe Daniels to Savage the Morrison government. Basing accusations of white privilege. I want to be careful not to accuse any of the individuals of being anti-Semites,

but it does raise a smell about it. This is the most fraudulent political movement ever inflicted upon the Australian electorate. The Climate 200 candidates are the spice girls of the political world. Funny how all those commentators are mail on Sky News, but anyway, what is the vast conspiracy going on hit? The Spice Girls, that's the first time I've heard that.

I'm wondering which of the Spice Girls I am. I'm going to need to think about that. I said the Spice Girls were good. I don't understand the inside, or were they complimenting you? I loved the Spice Girls. Girl power, saving the planet, making people, you know, dance. What's bad about that? Oh, yeah, Charlie's Angels, I believe the independents have been called as well.

So I guess it depends which particular era you're from, just how you'd like to frame. that particular sort of sexist trope but look no it's not there's no conspiracy as I've explained you know I'm a former journalist I'm a I'm a mum who lives in the electorate I'm standing because my children are really worried about climate and so am I and also all sorts of other things including integrity and equality for women and girls and aged care and housing affordability and mental health and thousand other things that people raise with me and I'm an independent. I'm a swinging voter. I've been a swinging voter for my entire life. I voted for Tim Wilson myself in 2016 as a proxy vote for Malcolm Turnbull, and we know how that turned out. And like many

people in my electorate, I don't know who to vote for when I go into the ballot box because no one represents me. So now people in my electorate have an alternative. And they can vote for me if they're not satisfied with either of the major parties, which I think are stuck. So at the end of the day, elections are mainly a popularity contest. What are the things that you are doing to sort of boost your vote in the seat? Like how many car parks have you promised to build after the election? My campaign is based on an absolutely traditional grassroots round game. So we have about 1,200 volunteers actively out in the electorate door knocking,

hanging out leaflets, standing on the corner of streets with Zoe signs, with other signs saying toot for Zoe. That was not the question. How many car parks are you going to build? I won't be building car parks. I'll put that on the table. Oh, no, no, you don't have to build them. They didn't build them.

You just got a promise to build them. As a marginal seat, you've got a lot more leverage to get things done in your electorate than you do as a safe seat. So I think we can take that as red. Zoe, Daniel, good luck. over the next 17 days. Are you planning a holiday to Hawaii shortly afterwards? You know, funny you should say that.

My kids are pretty keen to get out of the country after two and a half years of COVID, and they were framing the prospect of a trip to Hawaii, but I did veto that immediately. So no. Thanks for the question. Thanks for joining us. Election News You Can't Trust, The Chaser Report

Now Charles, in our planning for this podcast We knew that there might be days like this Where it was quite hard to talk about anything Because Albo and Skyna were just so dull That was very little to discuss That's why we sent John Delmenico Into the Sky News dungeon To watch only Sky News for the whole campaign

Somehow he is still alive Hello John Hi So according to Sky News What's going on at the moment? Right now, Hunter Biden's last laptop is threatening our democracy. Our democracy too.

Our democracy. Yes. Why? It's just an international threat to all democracy. Right. So what actually happened was, for anyone who doesn't know, the Hunter Biden conspiracy, laptop conspiracy theory, recently there was an update where some information was actually found a laptop.

It's not the information that News Corp claimed was on the laptop two years ago, but there is allegedly bad information about Hunter Biden. Right. None of it connected Joe Biden, but Sky News has currently been like, see, we were right. Okay, so there was a different smoking gun than the gun they were branching last year, but there's still a smoking gun. Yeah, and it has nothing to do with Joe Biden. And is that because the election here that's on right now is just so boring that even Sky News can't talk about it? Or is it because Scott Morrison's so on the nose that they need to sort of have some other...

I think it's the former that the election is just that dull, that even they can't put spice on it. So I wasn't sure how to do this week's segment, and then I watched this show from when I was a kid called The War and Everything. Oh, yeah. And I saw that there was this like, like what we learned in the week from the current affair. I thought I'd take that and then do it for Sky News.

Oh, great, okay. So I thought, get some stats up. So I've got three things here. Which one do you think has been referenced more? Karl Marx and the Marxist agenda. 1984 and George Orwell or the exact phrase virtue signal

well I reckon 1984 is a popular like everything is Orwellian now that yeah including his client sky news by the way yeah but I kind of feel like this is sky news it's going to be virtue signalling oh yeah because simply because of Chris Kenny right the fact that they employ I've read Chris Kenny's

column on an offer for many years and I don't think you can go two sentences without using the phrase virtue signaling. So much so that he's actually virtue signaling about his hatred to virtue signal. Well, I think what you've mixed is that Chris Kennedy does say it a lot. So 924 is the worst. It's got five references.

Really? Yay. Virtue signaling comes in second with 10 references. But Marxism has got 14. Oh, because they've got Bromwin Bishop, of course. Yeah, she loves it. Rowan Dean loves it. Has anyone told them that, like, communism?

and collapsed in 1989. No, because communism is still, according to Sky News, communism is still alive and well, and George Bush Jr. and senior are trying to set up an international cabal with Dan Andrews and Anthony Albanyas. I don't want to...

They're calling it the New World Order, Charles. Oh, okay. The old New World Order from the 90s. I thought the Bushes... Yeah, so the bushes are behind communism worldwide, Charles, and that's what cryptocurrency is. Wow. And cryptocurrency...

Except not Bitcoin. Specifically, they've said Bitcoin does not count towards this. This is an amazing cut and paste of a lot of weird dudes. And I've got to say, I don't want to insult Anthony Albanyzer here, okay? I look, I don't know the guy. He might... He just doesn't seem like the kind of person with the hoodspart to organise a global conspiracy. Like, he can barely...

I mean, his election campaign has been about doing as little as possible. He's not exactly going to organise a coup. Hang on, hang on. But surely, if the Bushes are on board, surely Scott Morrison is part of this communist conspiracy as well, isn't he? You would think that, but also Sky News. Like, they're saying it's bad, which is like sort of where I'm getting my lessons from for journalism

is that you can just sort of say whatever you want is the main takeaway. So my first lesson is if you don't like someone, not only do you accuse them of being in a global cabal with the Bush administration and the other Bush administration, You also just don't learn their name You know, I'll be made Anthony Albanese, you made a name Mr Albanyese, he put something out

Anthony Albanese, Anthony Albanese Mr Albanese, Mr Albanese Albanese, Mr Albanese, man, Mr Albanese Wow So that last one was The Deputy Prime Minister by the way Albinase Is that a racist dog whistle

Like are they doing it intentionally Do you think? The one that confuses me the most is Prue McSween Albinini. Albanini. Like Paganini and Albanese. That one's not even close. So like, but also,

I think it's racist. I think it's racist. I think the... It does remind me of the time, and this is absolutely true that my high school science teacher referred to Chas Lichiello as Pizzarelli.

It's that level of insight into the Italian-Australian community, of which I know you remember, John. John del mena-pasta. I mean, we've been left a lot of questions about how they're talking. But luckily, my second lesson is if you're trying to do journalism and you don't quite know how to make your point,

I've learned this directly from Andrew Bolt. You just ask a question. And then that's how you finish it off. That's good. Is that good? Why are almost all of a women? 17 of the 20. How can you trust Anthony Albanese with our economy?

I would have thought toaster reviews might actually be more in the national interest than gamer reviews, but there I go. These are the election issues. Isn't this racist? And you've got to wonder, how do we raise and educate millions of voters? So look at all that. And they say, hmm, make sense to me. And what exactly is Alvonez's plan?

Do you know? Hello? Oh, you answered that one. Yeah, no. He just keeps, he kept up. That one I love the most because he asked questions and then did follow-up questions because he didn't fill enough time. That is remarkable.

And if you want an example, of the rhetorical question, then you can go, when Andrew Bolt, he never answers the questions. But if you just keep asking them, then you've got a show. And that's what...

It's just extraordinary. But does he ever show? Is he employed? Is he a shitted? You know what? Is he a fucked her? I'm going to put it out there. I actually think Andrew Bolt's analysis there

is the best take on Labor we've seen from anybody this entire campaign. Because you can't, their entire strategy is not to have answers to any question. Oh, yeah. The small target, they've got no target.

So just ask, what's the plan? Can we trust? What are you going to do? Maybe we can trust him. I don't know. Who knows? Like it is better than Andrew Bolt what I assume he does every election, which is like, you can't trust them because he can't be sure about it or not you can trust them.

The big lesson for me this week has been contradictions and backflips. Oh. See, it's one thing if you're pushing a message, but sometimes the messages don't quite work out to how you want to push it. So you have to, like, backtrack to make it look like you didn't make that message. Oh, that's clever. So first I've got, there's been a whole debate on Skyny about whether or not Labor's bringing in a carbon tax, where everyone was saying yes, but then Labor's not bringing in a carbon tax. So what do you do in that situation? Andrew Bolt, you just keep asking.

You just keep asking. Are they bringing in a carbon tax? Well, you'd think that, but no, they just do something very different instead. These, so have two clips here that are literally one hour. apart. This is a carbon tax, pure and simple. Towns with a carbon tax because all these mining companies will have to buy these credits. Yeah, so within an hour, Sky News went from saying it's a carbon tax plan and simple

to it's not necessarily a carbon tax. That's not true. But that was Andrew Bolt saying it's not necessarily. So what's his story? As I've said before on the podcast, if you watch him after the debate, he seemed genuinely. genuinely to prefer Albo to Skomo at that point. He thought Albo had done a better job. And he gave him a lot of credit for being less scary than previous Labour leader.

So I think Andrew Bolt's becoming a lefty. Yeah, Andrew Bolt... Is he? Is Andrew Bolt becoming a lefty? Does he love Marx? Does he love Ingalls? Does he want to go and live in Cuba? I don't know. Has he told us?

No, he hasn't. Will he tell us? I don't know. There's been this whole weird transformation for Bolt this year. He clearly, to me, I think it's a thing. like he clearly doesn't like Scott Morrison. It's hard. It's hard to work at Sky News if he doesn't like...

He also doesn't want to praise Labour, so it's also this weird thing of him just being like, well, are we sure about Anthony Albanese? He's not bringing in a carbon tax. Who knows? He just sort of... He seems defeated by this election, which is the most relatable thing on Sky News.

Yeah, he's starting to question everything, including his own sanity. I relate to that. Andrew Bolt, welcome aboard. But the contact. isn't the biggest backflip that Skynees has had. There's been a massive backflip over the last three weeks regarding Catherine Deves, where at the start of the election, they were all on board, and they still are very on board.

But they were all on board with her entire message. This is the transphobic Canada in Rohingya, yeah. And there was a point where they kept saying that they were doing this massive polling to prove everything's true. And then about a week later, they started going from, we're going to have the poll and come in soon to be like, oh, there should be polls done, but I reckon it's probably like 80 or 90%. And they never released the information that they got from that poll.

And after then, they've had a shift in what they think. Well, that is interesting. I do know one poll said that it was a top of mind issue for 3% of voters. Yes, it was. Yeah, yeah. So maybe that's the poll. They didn't go. So what I've learned from that is not only need to contradict,

you also can just blame the left for everything you said until that point. I openly advocated for the Liberals to let her contest a pre-selection in Waringa. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you saw it here first. Our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has just fought his first ever battle in the culture wars. Those same culture wars that we here on outsiders have been fighting on your behalf for a over five years. And it's the same thing. They always accused the right

of wanting to have a culture war. But also what that exchange showed. Why are we always talking about trans people during a federal election? Why are we talking about Catherine Deves too much? Well, I'll tell you why. Because the media talks about Catherine Deves all the time.

We're told by many in the media left that this is a non-issue, is it? But I'm not sure this is actually a huge issue for voters in this election. That's a lot of people. Oh, wow. That's a range of. change.

Yeah, you can hear it on them going from, but why do we want, we should have a culture war to why does the left want a culture war? And Paul Murray in there just going, because I've learnt the voices, it's quite hard to tell them about, going, the media keep talking about Catherine Deaves and he's watching his own station. You can't tell him, Paul Murray. But my favourite of all that lot, and that was a beautiful bit of work, John, is Rowan Dean's voice, because no one has ever sounded more like a Toff who's out of touch with the workers

than Rowan Dean fighting on behalf of the little guy. I love Roan Dean's show. So outsiders, I genuinely believe, is better than the insiders to watch because both are depressing and suck and shouldn't be on TV. But when you put Rowan Dean, Rita Panaghy and James Murrow together,

they all suck separately, but together they all have the same shit sense of humour. And Rowan Dean brings, like, theatrics to it. So it means that they're all lifting each other up with pre-planned jokes. So they just bring a much higher energy to the room. So they're shit, but it's at least like theatrical nonsense, like that rant about the culture wars, which went for two minutes and involved like choreographed finger pointing and waving hands. But he said culture was a lot.

Anyone want to guess how many times the word culture wars has been said? Oh, at least 10 times an hour forever. Particularly Rowan Dean. Yeah, it's been said 28 times. Oh my God. But specifically only when they've said the phrase culture wars. Anything similar, I have not counted.

Right. My last backflip, the only person better than this than Rowan Dean or Andrew Bolt is this last guy who managed to contradict himself during the same sentence that he was saying his previous point.

The work hadn't been done. It's both on one level trivial that he couldn't remember it and unimportant, but on the other hand, it's very, very important because it shows he doesn't really... Oh, that is actually the platonic form of a commentator, isn't it? Yes, particularly. This is the thing about having a 24-hour news station is when nothing happens, it's very, very

hard to... Pat, I was watching the ABC News Channel before the election was called. You know that traditional thing where there's this footage of Yarra-Mumler? Yes. It's extraordinary. How you can go for longer than one minute of saying absolutely... absolutely fuck all. I mean, you had off to them. Yeah, it's, I mean... But on the other hand, you know, this is a terrible thing to have done and they're terrible

at their job. And I insist that the hat remain on. Hat off to them, but at the same time, that hat is not going anywhere. Does the hat even exist, though? Can we be sure a hat exists and that it's not anything else's his fault? I think it's time to invite Andrew Bolls onto the Chaser report. I think I want to hear more of this existential angst where he doesn't like Scott Morrison, can't bring himself to advocate for Albo. But at least he wants to know what his plan is, rather than it's assuming it's evil. That's progress. He's growing.

Yeah, that's a positive. The Sky News is getting slightly less insane with how much they also hate the election. Well, yeah, let's platform Andrew Bolt. He doesn't, he's only got a newspaper column and a national television show. Is it a good idea to have Andrew Bolt on the Chase Report? I don't know. Yes, it is. But at the same time, it's a terrible idea that we're definitely not going to do.

So our gear is or isn't from road microphones. We are or are not part of the ACAST chat credit network. And John, I thank you very much for that segment, which I hated.