The Chaser Report - ARVO: Sami Shah Cancels Ukulele

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

Sami Shah join Charles and Dom for everyone's favourite part of Friday, an Arvo Chat about politics! Sami talks about the PM's latest stunt, playing ukulele on 60 Minutes, and how it's an effective distraction for all the other things that are going wrong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello, and welcome to The Chaser Report. It's the afternoon on Friday the 11th of February, which means it's time to check in with Sammy Scha. Once again, I'm Dominant Charles Firt's here to Sammy, hello. Hello, how are you doing? I'm traumatized. Well, why? Because I just watched...

Other than life in general and everything that is showing at us. I just watched a video of Scott Morrison playing April Sun in Cuba by... dragon on the ukulele when i say playing i used the term very loosely i think massacring would be the way to put it it's a promo clip for 60 minutes it's coming out on sunday which we'll do we're just talking about doing a drunk reaction can we just play a clip of it now just so that yeah let's do that let's do that get a sense of what it is because it's only just coming out on social media take me to the april sun and tuba oh take me to the eighth I can't remember my words.

Oh. Come on, Jen, get into it. Oh. Ha, ha, ha. There we go. Wow. Bravo. Oh, my God.

It's brave. I mean, I admire his bravery in several respects. Firstly, that he's massacring. Like, that's an appalling piece of music. But also, as if after what's happened, you would talk about sunny holiday destinations. I mean, but, but. And also that's, you know, it's not on him. That's partly on Carl Stefanovic or Stefanovich or how do you pronounce Carl's last name?

Stefanovic, I think is his last week. Right. So that's on him because at some point he should have said, get that goddamn ukulea out of your hand. And let's talk about the fact that you have made a complete dog's bollocks of the entire country in the last week alone. And let's talk about those issues as opposed to this terrible song that you're doing. I don't even blame him for being bad at playing the ukulele. Who plays the ukulele? I totally disagree.

I think, like, if you want to convince the majority of Australians, he's a terrible human being, that clip, it says so much. You don't even need to look at the discrimination bill. No one goes, oh, good. Oh, good. The guy's got out of the ukulele. No one says that. No one goes, oh, wow, we're on to ukulele time.

Like, did he buy it in Hawaii? He's playing a Hawaiian instrument. Oh, my God, you're right. This is bad optics right there because he's reminding everyone of when he was in Hawaii. No, no, no, it's genius. He's leaning in to the Hawaii thing. So he doesn't hold a hose, but he holds a ukulele? Sure, I was overseas during a massive crisis when much of the country is on fire, but I got a ukulele.

Yeah, like he's not being defensive about it. This is the whole thing is you own your own weaknesses. So if you, if that's your weakest point, the Hawaii trip, you make it the center point of the thing. I'm Mr. Hawaii guy. That's the Karl Rove principle. All right, look, look, again, who's to say, because let's not forget, Bill Clinton, became wildly popular because he could play the saxophone badly. Because he could play the saxophone, at least somewhat.

I just want to, I mean, maybe this is, we couldn't get the religious discrimination bill over the line. Yes. But I think we can all come together as a nation and ban ukuleles, can we have ukulele discrimination? Has anyone ever, has anyone ever reacted well to the sentence, hey, I'm going to play the ukulele now? Like, how is that not the worst thing that you ever put anyone through? but also that's the way he wins his appeal

because he reminds everyone of all of their collective shit dads who forced them to listen to terrible things. It was either play the ukulele or put on Dias Straits' last album and just sing along to that and then mouth the guitar solos for the next two hours,

which 60 minutes by the would happily have played as well. Just Scott Morrison Mouthing Guitar Solos by Mark Knopfler for a total of 60 minutes I would have had the exact same journey Integrity and quality as him playing the fucking ukulele. But it's the dead cat, isn't it? Which is, we, you know, have just spent the last three minutes not talking about his complete fuck-ups during the week. Because he puts the ukule...

Like, it's just like literally present something so much worse. Like, the ukulele playing is worse. But hang on. But isn't the get dead cat thing, you go, look over here, there's a dead cat rather than my musical stylings. I have just murdered this. He's dying. No, no, no, Dom, you're not getting it. Look, okay.

Before he tried, it's happened once before this week already, right? Like, he needed to distract from Grace Stame and Brittany Higgins, and he needed to distract from the lack of federal ICAC. So he basically did the religious discrimination bill. And then he needed to distract from the religious discrimination bill, so he played the ukulele. And the strategy here is, if you have a headache, I'll punch you in the stomach. You can't feel your headache anymore because now your stomach hurts.

And then, because your stomach hurts, I'll put you in the balls because now you can't feel the headache or the stomachache anymore because your balls are hurting and that is the political genius of Scott Morrison But isn't none of it working? I mean Peter Dutton's clearly

on the verge of launching a challenge His own ministers are leaking Like his own cabinet ministers are leaking against that whole thing about how he offered the Federal ICAC if they've supported the religious discrimination bill The wheels are falling off aren't they? Yes, but he is holding us hostage in a very clever situation, because here's

where we are. If Scott Morrison goes, if there's an internal coup, or he loses the election, the next leader of the Liberal Party will be Peter Dutton. And then the question rises, are we better off or are we worse off? Because... I mean, does he have a ukulele? That's basically the way to have to turn. He probably has a ukulele made of human flesh. I mean, there is, at the end of the day, it's Peter Dutton, right? So now we're in that situation where the only redeeming quality to Scott Morrison is that he isn't Peter Dutton and we now have to consider maybe we keep Scott Morrison alive and get his career back up again to save ourselves from Peter Dutton. It's like being attacked by Mothra and turning to Godzilla for help.

Sure, Godzilla's going to level most of Neo-Tokio while fighting Mothra, but it's still better than Mothra. Yes. I think that's right. I think you've actually summed up my entire thought process yesterday when it became clear that Dutton's making a tilt for it, which is, no, we've got to keep Morrison. Like, I'm prepared to sort of answer in polls. Dutton won't do the numbers. Yeah, I'm going to do the numbers. If Dutton's doing the numbers, Morrison's staying.

Yes. Like, and it's sort of genius branding, isn't it? Like, just from a, I mean, there's a sort of, like, it's like literally the Liberal Party have just, in Dutton, they've got this thing. It's like they can threaten it at any time. Absolutely. Yes. It's just doing it. They literally got a gun to our head that way. You know, it's like, look, the best case scenario is, of course, Labor winning the next election,

which is, you know, maybe it'll happen. Maybe it won't happen. I'm still 50-50 on that. But let's be very honest, even if they win the next election, it'll be a one-term government. Labor has never been able to do more than disappoint us after a single term, and then we throw them out. And we'll end up going back to the Liberal Party. In that situation, we might end up with Peter Dutton as Prime Minister three years from now or four years from now. So either way, we get screwed by Dutton. So we need to save Scott Morrison is the situation we are in. Yes, yes.

So sing along to that ukulele song, clap his ukulele playing, celebrate it, let him perform the ukulele in concert at the next, you know, the voice or... And it's not just about ukuleleys, it's let him pass his bill, you know, discriminating against guys and trying. trans people like let's let him get a few successes on the board like let him you know you know what else do he do yeah because he doesn't actually have another policy that's the alternative is peter dutton will pass a bill discriminating against humanity or like all human beings because he hates humans he's from his reptoid planet it's that we are the food yes but let him do all that just so we don't have to have peter dutton yeah this is the situation we're in.

The Chaser Report, less news, less often. Was the point of the bill that he was so dead? Imagine keeping everyone there till 5am to get it through the lower house and then like two hours later going, yeah, we can't get it through the Senate. Sorry, guys, just that up for nothing. I mean, was he trying to do this so he would have accomplished at least one thing during the past three years? Because I was trying to think of the things that he's actually done during this term,

And other than reacting incredibly late to a lot of urgent disasters, I can't think of any policies. Like, what have they actually done in this term? I think what he did was instead of reacting late to a terrible disaster, he thought, what if I start creating a terrible disaster late in and of itself? You know, he went from being the subject of the painting to the artist himself. And if you see the speech that he gave in Parliament when the bill was basically going to be shelved, he sounded despondent because he said,

I thought this would unite everyone. And, you know, what could be more obvious than a man who basically, let's see, he told Grace Stame, I bet that felt good to get it out when she got the Australian of the Year award and she gave a speech in which he wept. He, you know, was in Hawaii and during the fires and came back and said, I don't hold a hose mate. You know, all of the things that he has done told women's protesters that they should be grateful and not being shot at. Who knew that he'd be bad at reading the room? I think it's the real surprise here. is that Scott Morrison, it turns out,

not a very good strategist. What does it say about our political system that even though he's such a bad strategist, he's the best strategist we have in politics in Australia? Although you do have to admire Anthony Albanesey's week. Like, he's had a good week. I mean, if the objective is to not do very much, except for fairly on-point motherhood statements,

yeah, it was, it was a good week. Yeah, yeah. It was, for Albanese, it was a good week. And I think we have to qualify that statement. You know, it's like, you know, that kid in class who's just not very bright, very sweet, usually eats the crayons, smells his fingertips a lot after putting them in his underarms. And he comes in and he does two plus two on the board and writes down five. And you're like, that's close enough.

It's not a four, but it's close enough. It was a good week for that kid. But Sammy, I reckon, I just got a little bit annoyed with the Twitterverse this week because most of the commentary on us was people. People saying, complaining that Anthony Albanese was not in the Greens. Like, it was basically going, why doesn't he do the exact same thing that the Greens want him to do? Why doesn't he behave exactly like a green? And it's like, because he's not a green.

But that's the reason he didn't do that. And they're two different philosophies. Like, the Greens want to be right and do things that are good and right and moral. And that's not label. Look, that's not Labor. Labor's whole thing is they want to get an electoral majority. They want to play the game of electoral politics and do all the tricks because they're interested in power, right? And they're totally different goals, right?

And so he started engaging in the game. And the games of electoral politics are ridiculously stupid. They're things like support a bill so that it gets skewed in the Senate for an obscure rule that sort of thing. And there is no better person in the country to run those ridiculous games than Anthony Albanese. He's been doing it since the late 1980s in Parliament. Like, he's been in that building for about longer than he's been alive. And he hasn't built a single fast train. Is there one thing he's wanted to do his whole career?

Because that's actually not, I mean, I know he calls himself Mr. Fast Train. But actually, his whole life has been parliamentary tactics. Like, that's what he's good at. He's good at moving amendments to the motion. Isn't that even more dead at it? Labor has had two terms, well, sort of one and a bit terms, really, during his, you know, in the post-Hawad, well, I guess, post-end indicating in 1996, the first Rudd term, which was an absolute debacle, and then we had Gillard, then we had Rudd. And then Gillard being re-elected without even a majority, where's the skill? Yeah, that's what I mean, that's what I always wonder.

Everyone always goes, Altine Albanese, is a political maverick and he knows what he's doing. They said exact same things about Bill Shorten. You're not listening to me. I'm just saying, I'm not saying that what he did was right. I would have voted against the bill, right? But that's not why the Labor Party exists. They exist to do all the little tricky tricks. But Charles, this is my whole point.

Just hear me out, which is that I'm not saying he'll achieve anything. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that this bill was a tricky trick thing from Scott Morrison anyway. The whole point about this bill was that Scott Morrison wanted it to be rejected by Labor so he couldn't get it through and then he could go to all these donors and complain about that and say vote for me at the next election because the Labor Party is against religious freedom. And instead Alba got his entire caucus around saying, well, why don't we support both the religious freedom, like, you know, you know, there is a problem about, you know, Muslims being

discriminated against. Let's run hard on protecting Muslims from being discriminated against. And let's also protect gays and trans, but not a whole of other people, like disabled people, from, you know, being discriminated against. Well, I mean, no one wants to talk about the fact that Muslims don't like gays and trans as well, which is a whole other separate issue that no one gets into. But anyway, continuing. But the whole point is this whole bill was a gamey game.

Like, it was solving a problem that didn't even exist. No, I understand that, Charles, but the broader point is, and this is the frustrating thing about the Labour Party, is that I totally understand the notion that in order to win an election, you've got to win the majority of people or in marginal seats. You're not going to be able to get the things you truly believe in. You have to make some sacrifices in the interest of getting power. The issue with Labor is that they're crap at it. They don't manage to get power.

They've been part of the opposition for... In the last 120 years, Dom, which... parliament has passed the most legislation. True. This is very true. Charles is right. They did end up passing that important legislation that created offshore detention centers and forced many refugees and asylum seekers into indefinite punishment. So that is a win for the labor government in reminding us that they are just as shit and vile as the liberal government. And I think Charles's argument is it's not the destination. It's the journey. And Anthony Albanese is a master of the journey. He will never reach the destination.

But God, he will walk his ass off getting there. Yeah, and he certainly will never be on a fast train trying to reach his testimony. Someone just by the man a train set to put in his basement. So much of our lives would be made easier if he just had a train to play around with and would disappear for a while. But, Charles, this is the thing.

The thing is that Labor has not been good. Like, the whole Sussex Street, Labor right, whatever it takes, Richo's stuff that worked so well back in the day, they haven't managed to play that game. They've been ruined. outranked by the coalition. And what is interesting is that

the Liberal Party is now being like the Labor Party. So the Labor Party, like everyone inside and outside the Labor Party knows that if you put Tanya Plibersek in, yes. The Labor Party wins. It would not lose the next election,

right? Yeah, absolutely. Albaos, 50, 50, he probably will lose, you know, like, you know, but they don't do it because the ALP, yeah, doesn't have that sort of Labor-right machine that they had in the 80s and the 90s, which goes prioritised winning at all costs. Actually, we're an electoral party.

If we want to win, let's actually just do the dirty on elbow, because even though he's done the last three years, Tanya would do it better. The Liberal Party is in exactly the same boat, which is they're now, they're tearing themselves apart. In New South Wales, there's a whole of the seats that Alex Hawke, Scott Morrison's right-hand man in New South Wales, is stopping the pre-selections in various seats where the Libs are in real trouble because, you know, factually, Scott Morrison's little people aren't getting up in those seats.

And so factionalism is now rife in both. Like, there's no major party that actually seeks good outcomes for their party or for Australia. Like, it's all about... Isn't Alba going to win, though? Like, his strategy of doing nothing and basically not having these sorts of... fights and not allowing No, Dom, your misunderstanding. Albo isn't going to win the election.

Scott Morrison might lose the election. Yes, yes. I think that's exactly the difference. Therein lies a huge difference. And the difference in that is then who leads how and how long they get to lead for. So, yeah. And it's all about like as, was it Caesar or something said like Aristotle, which is the way you come to power.

Caesar or Aristotle. You're just naming old people. Yeah, old. You couldn't remember. Who said it? But it's, or maybe it was Macaveli. The way you come to power is the way that you wield it. Who said that?

Yes. Some political theorists. I think Tanos. Right. And the point is that Alvo came to power on the face of the most cowardly. Like, if he gets to power, it'll be on the back of the most cowardly strategy ever. And, you know, and having nothing to say about anything, well, that's how. he'll govern. We know that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, look, but can he play the ukulele? And I think in the end, when you're a journalist like Carl, and you sit across from the Prime Minister of Australia and have this opportunity to ask him all the questions that the country has been screaming that you ask, you know, things

like, why have you done so much damage? Why didn't you take on the recommendations regarding, you know, sexual assault and endemic behavior in Parliament? Why have you ignore climate change issues? Why have you done so much to this country that could have been avoided? All you do instead, they just sit there grinning like a fucking moron while the

Prime Minister plays the ukulele. I think that is the real thing that we need to remember that we got out of this week. I think you misspoke earlier though because I think you called Carl Stevenovic a journalist. Oh yeah, fair enough. My apologies. Yes, yes. You're right. I meant to say mincing buffoon To be fair to Carl He did ask the question Just one of the clips that's been released at this point That I wanted to know the answer to

Which is that if you lose Are you're going to go back to Hawaii Oh brilliant So I'm looking forward to seeing If some of those little cheeky lines get in front Well we're thinking of doing a live Drunken React to the 60 Minutes report On Sunday night

which we will release as our Monday morning episode or maybe as an extra. How will we do that? We'll release it somewhere. Yeah, yeah. So stay tuned for that. It'll be in this feed if we actually...

Unless we're too drunk to work out how to post it. I think the real question is will you be vomiting because you've drunk too much or because you're watching 60 minutes? Why not both? Thank you, Sam. You'll catch you next week. Thanks for having me as always.

See ya. from Road Microphones are part of the ACAST creator network and don't forget Sammy's News Weekly podcast is also available you can check that out in your podcast app of choice