The Chaser Report - ARVO: Sami Shah on Australia's love for refugees

Episode Date: March 25, 2022

Sami Shah joins Charles and Dom for another Arvo Chat. Sami tackles Australian refugee policy, the inner politics of Hillsong, and what it's like to introduce yourself on stage. 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 an afternoon edition of The Chaser Report on Friday, the 25th of March. We have Charles Firth. I'm Dom Knight and ladies and gentlemen, it's Sammy Shah. That is exactly the enthusiasm I announced myself with before every comedy festival show. I love the awkwardness of that, of you sitting in the room, and you've got clearly the comic from behind the stage talking about themselves in the third person. Yeah, it's very strange. I've done once or twice where I've done,

because you have to announce your cell phone. People don't realize this. You're just in the back, like behind the curtain and you go give it up for Sammy Shah and then I walk out on stage after saying my name. And it's weird. Once or twice I've said give it up for me. And the audience got so confused they didn't clap.

So I had to say Sammy Shah for them to remember, oh shit, that's who's show we're here to watch. What I do is I take it, it uses it as an opportunity to pump myself up a bit and just because they trust the voice of God more than they trust, you know, you. So I've been just recently saying, give it up for multi-novel prize winning the film.

Niles Firth. Works really well. The best I've ever seen is David O'Dorty, the British comedian. I love him. David's the best. Except he does. He'd hate you saying that.

But anyway. Yeah, he probably does like 10 minutes of stand-up from backstage with the audience. able to see him just riffing about random shit. I thought it was really clever, yes. Well, I'm glad I made you feel like comedy. Do you want to introduce yourself? Why don't we just do it again?

All right. Give yourself a big rap. Okay, here we go. I'm Dom. Charles is here. And please, put your hands together. And welcome to the stage. The extremely funny, the multi-talented, the very well-endowed and extremely

unbelievably handsome Sammy Shaw. He's going to join us right after this annoying ad. The Chaser Report Now with extra whispers Okay, so we've given you the big up Mm-hmm Your show is coming up What's it called again?

Unappreciated Which is exactly the right title For sure that you couldn't remember the name Exactly Yeah, it's called unappreciated It is at the Melbourne National Comedy Festival The entire length of the festival So from the 31st of March

To the 24th of April Every night at the Chinese Museum Which is cool I get to perform stand-up comedy amidst relics from ancient China That sounds amazing So if people don't enjoy the show Come from the museum

Is that the people? Yeah, exactly Come look at a Ming Dynasty vase If you're not going to listen to my nonsense And so that's happening And then I'm coming to Sydney for I think two days And now it has been announced I will be coming to Perth for one day as well

So that's been I'm so sorry for you Look here's what I'll say Perth audiences are always wonderful They're way, way better than many audiences in the rest of the country because they're so desperate for anyone from any other part of the world to acknowledge them that they treat you like a king.

Yeah, no, Perth audiences are some of the best we've ever had on the Characetyl. They're really like, you flew all the way here to talk to us? Yeah, yeah. I actually love, I love WA only when I'm in W.A. And then when I leave, I'm suspicious of them again. But yeah, I'm excited about the festival. I've got that going on. But the thing that I was really excited about today,

and basically I've been excited about since yesterday, is the announcement that the government made of 450 refugees from Manus and Nauru finally being allowed to go to New Zealand. The New Zealand offer that was made nine years ago to a cowardly Gillard government has finally been accepted by Scott Morrison. Is this the offer that Tony Abbott at the time absolutely slammed and made it impossible for the Gillard government to accept that offer? Yes, I mean, the Gillard government could have accepted it anyway if they had any courage. or backbone or fortitude or any of those things. But, you know, that's asking too much of a Labour government anyway. Or sort of moral, you know, sort of understanding of how the world works.

Have you forgotten how the Gillard government worked, Sammy? I mean, I think what it came down to is they basically announced that they're going to put refugees in offshore detention centers indefinitely because it was easier and cheaper than running a competent election campaign. No, no, but you've got to realize, Sammy, like, I think it was more than. than electoral politics guiding Julia Gillard. Gillard was immigration minister and shadow immigration for years before she got into prime ministership. And she was always horrible to refugees.

Like she hated them. I remember talking to her when she was really young and she just hated refugees. She just didn't like them. She was sort of just a bit of a fuckweed. Yeah. I think she went, oh, and it's also electorally popular. Oh, great. Okay, well, then there's two reasons to do it.

Well, it turns out... Exactly. Every Australian politician. Every Australian politician hates refugees. That's just part... I mean, the hatred of refugees is equal to love of coal in Australian politics, at least mainstream politics. With the exception, it turns out of fucking Jackie Lambie.

Oh, Jackie Lambie, I thought you're going to say with the exception of Scott Morrison. No, Scott Morrison hates Jeffrey refugees too. He hates refugees. I just going to ask what we do with refugee coal. like if coal comes here from another country do we hate it or do we love it how does that work if refugees wanted to be accepted in Australia they should carry coal in their pockets on the way over

basically the problem with coal is it's black so they're just doing yeah true true there is that element as well but like i mean scott morrison hating refugees is bizarre when you understand that he believes in a religion whose main characters the central characters in the in the religion and Jesus Mary and Joseph were refugees at one point. Yeah, but that would imply that they read and understood the Bible.

And having been to a few Hillsong events and having read the Bible myself in my youth, no, not really. Wait, hang on, you've been to Hillsong events? Yes, only to stunt them. Has this come up before? No, we had one of the most fun, I mean, this is a very meandering conversation, but I'm into it. It's Friday afternoon. We had one of the most fun choices stunts that we ever did. Craig and I went to this massive, weird Hillsong event at the Entertainment Center in Sydney, vast venue that they've now knocked down.

And, I mean, everyone was just standing out there. What they do at Hillsong is they sing emotionally manipulative songs and then pass the collection tin around. And everyone in the audience puts their arms out in front of them. If you imagine a Heil Hitler salute, I'm not making this up, but with both arms, that's what they do is I was like a filmy with the Spirit Lord type thing. It's very strange. But anyway, the stunt that we were going to do, which we actually filmed and was quite fun, but it just, I don't remember where we didn't air it. But it was asking devout Christians, so Craig said, have you heard the news that in the United States, there are two gay bishops who've gotten married, but they're now thinking about divorcing. Should they, in your view, divorce?

and I've never seen well-meaning but a little bit naive religious people get tired in such knots as trying to figure out what God would want them to do these two hypothetical married gay bishops But I mean it's so bizarre Because there's a massive Hillsong church

Or office or whatever In West Melbourne It is humongous It really is It looks like a huge container warehouse And it's got Hillsong written A cool young youthful funky font And I've always wanted to

going to go inside and attend some of the sermons there are curiosity. So I think I've been inspired by you, Dom. I am going to do that. I'm going to attend a hill songs. Get on board. And then, who knows? I'm pretty pliable. I'm pretty easily influenced by everything. So maybe I become a hill song guy now. You get your next comedy festival show out of it. I'm absolutely serious. Because they'll love bombing you. You know that what they do. Do you have any, do you have any child sex crimes that you need to cover up? Um, that might help. I'll have to think back. None that I come to mind right away, but I'm sure, you know, you might not need to get a Hillsong, but also keep in mind, like, that's only relevant if you're leading a religion.

Yeah, like, I just want to be one of the flock. I don't want to start my, if I start my own religion, then I got to go feel up a kid. Well, if you find yourself in a room with a woman, just to be done unexpectedly just, oh my gosh, why am I in your hotel room with you? This is so bizarre. Just put it down your medication. That's, that's what God would want you to do. Can we just talk about that for a second? And I know we're going to talk about Jackie Lambie, but let's just talk about that excuse. Because Brian Houston, who's now resigned as a pastor from the International Hillsong Church, right?

His whole excuse, because he confessed that he'd wandered into the hotel room next door and had inappropriate relations with the woman who was staying there, right? He's been covering to her. Yeah, oh, yeah, talking to her. But his whole cover story was, no, no, I was in the hotel. I lost my key. So, of course, I just knocked on the, and I was a bit confused. And so I, of course, knocked on the hotel room door next to me.

Now, who does that? No one in a hotel goes, you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to knock on the door next to me. Like, downstairs, there's another base. They'll give you a key. Like, it's one lift ride down. You get a fucking free key. It's not hard.

He was his plan. He was disoriented. He was disoriented. He was on alcohol and prescription drugs and it made him disoriented. So what was his plan here? Knock on the door and then once they let him into that room to then bash his way through the wall? Potentially. Maybe he put out his arms to sort of take in the Holy Spirit the way they do in Hill Song and she fell into them by accident.

Yeah, exactly. Look, there was, in Pakistan growing up, we had, we didn't have sex education in school. But our Islamic studies lecturer in ninth grade took it upon himself to give us sex education. Because he's like, you know, these kids fucking need to know something. It's going to be embarrassing. But he couldn't use the word sex because that was, you know, frowned upon in the education system and in culture and society in Pakistan. So he used the term falling down. So a man falls down onto a woman is the way he phrased it.

And I think Brian Houston will have some sympathy for that because it sounds like that's exactly what happened. Either that or Brian Houston is living in an ordinary reality. where every porn movie set up scenario is coming true, which is you lose your keys, you knock on your neighbor's door, they open the door in a negligee, you know, bass music plays in the background, like bown-chicabow-bow, and then you suddenly start having sex with them.

Like, that is basically the world that he gets to occupy, which, I mean, fuck, yeah, if that's what Hilsong is offering, sign me up. I think that's why Biber got involved. But anyway, we were told me, just to Biber get involved in Hilsong. Yes, he was a member of Hilsong for quite some time in the States. It is absolutely huge.

It's ridiculous how big it was. The problem was, though, that the pastor in the United States, you're not going to believe this. He got embroiled in some kind of scandal and had to resign. No, I refuse to. Yeah, pastors are unimpeachable character. I refuse to believe that. I feel like it's now, I'm not going to say a majority,

but there's at least three senior Hillsong pastors they've had to sack due to pretty terrible stuff. Maybe don't put all your faith in, like, some dude is the embodiment of God, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's worked out great for the Catholic Church, though. So I think basically Hilsons following a great model, a good business model, if you will. But yeah, just to go back to the refugee thing, I just want to address the fact that Jackie Lambie is the savior of Australia's refugee population. How the fuck did that happen?

Who knew this was the world that was happening? I mean, was it a process of elimination that all the major parties basically ruled themselves out? Yes. and she had just enough human decency to actually just do something that was vaguely sensible and right. Was it an accident? Was it kind of a Steve Bradbury process of doing the right thing? It's gotten to the point where how is she the conscience of Australian politics? Every time something happens, she's the one who bashed Pauline Hansen in parliament, you know, on the anti-vax stuff, way publicly.

She's now, she got a deal with the government to accept the New Zealand offer, it turns out. and then was threatened by Scott Morrison, according to her, to keep quiet about it. She says the deal took way longer than she thought it would, which is furious about. There's been other instances in recent times when she's defended the rights of the maligned and fought for the poor and in terms of working rights and things like that. Really? Like, that's amazing. You know, it's one of those things where you see hope and inspiration coming from the unlikeliest of places.

I'm pretty sure Jackie Lambie was the most unlikeliest of places a few years ago. She's the stable of Bethlehem version of the same politics. Like the least likely place is where she's. So just explain to me exactly what happened and how she came to be the unlikely saviour of all this. So do you remember the Medivac Bill? Yes. Which was yet another one of the Australian government attempts to just randomly torture refugees and make their lives miserable, you know, as if there's some alternate energy source or something.

To get the Medivac bill over the line, they needed to cut a deal with Jackie Lambie. Jackie Lambie said, I will vote for the Medivac bill if, in return, you accept the New Zealand offer for 450 refugees, 150 every year to be accepted by New Zealand. The government said yes to it, and Scott Morrison apparently agreed to that on the, but part of the agreement was that she has to keep quiet about it, otherwise jail time could be on offing, is according to her. Why would you, this is the thing that I don't understand. Why would Scott Morrison be allowed to lock up Jackie Lambie for, is it because it's in the legislation that you're not allowed to reveal the Australian government is being nice to refugees? Is that the reason?

Basically. Or just transparency is something, like the notion that parliamentary privilege protects all this stuff is now dead. Is that what we're saying? I don't know. It's in the legislation. It's not parliamentary privilege. It's in the legislation that if you reveal anything about a refugee at all, you get jail time. And that's what Scott Morrison threatened Jackie Lambie with.

That is crazy. That is so fucked. That is just fucked. What's funny is because if you're bad to refugees, then you can just crow about it all you want. You can talk about it at length. You can advertise it. Yeah, you put it on your campaign post. Yeah, exactly.

So I think what actually what they've done here, the government, is they're very cleverly taken a tool away from the Labour government. Because the Labour government could have continued the long-history Australian tradition of torturing refugees for shits and giggles. But the Liberal Party government, in an attempt to hurt the Labour government, has released the refugees and made their lives better, not to help the refugees, but despite the Labour government, which now has less refugees to torture,

which is an amazing thing. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Can you imagine how begrudging that must have been to sign the piece of paper to let them out of the endless hell of detention and let them go to the country that wanted to take them nearly a decade ago? Can you, it must have been like, you know, pulling fingernails. Peter Dutton is probably wept, you know. I don't think.

Maybe I actually think I know what happened, which is Peter Dutton is all wanked out. He has no more He's got no more semen left He's only coming air at this point Well, we might as well just Get rid of him now He's not the minister

He's presumably this wouldn't happen With him still as minister He's defence now And it's Alex Hawke He would have made the call But I must say it is very strange to me But the announcement wasn't made by Alex Hawk either The announcement was made by Karen Andrews

The Home Affairs Minister so at this point it's just like any department the sports minister can announce it who gives a fuck like it's as bizarre because i wouldn't have thought because alex hawk um as one of skomers fellow conservative christians you wouldn't see him doing anything biblical like taking pity on the vulnerable no no not at all that is that that's against the bible at this point you know tarnika muragapen and her family heaven forbid they'd be allowed to actually live comfortably in australia like that still isn't but even though they're here there's no stability like he won't even do that.

Oh, man. But look, here's the thing. The refugees get a better life, fine. It only took nine years of torture and suffering and misery and deaths and, yeah. They should be grateful. They should be completely grateful. At this point, is New Zealand just basically doing this shit to mock us? Like, everything New Zealand does, it sounds like they're just going, we're going to show everyone

how much better we are than Australia, just despite Australia. Like, it's just becoming a thing when. We have no choice left but to invade New Zealand because they're making us look bad all the time. But the other thing is we've found an amazing way to deal with refugees so they don't want to come to Australia anymore. I mean, Beiru's Bichanis, a perfect example. I think he ended up in America.

After experiencing our hospitality for all these years, of course they don't want to come here anymore. Of course they want to go to New Zealand or America. We've made ourselves completely like, hellish, she wouldn't want to come here. Well, that's been the policy at world. You know what will happen now is if both of refugees do come, The Australian Navy will stop them

And the refugees will be like No, no, no, we're not coming to Australia. Don't worry about it. We're going around you to New Zealand. Don't worry about it. Well, it is nice, though, that we're taking some Ukrainians. Well, yes. I mean, look, we also, well, here's the thing.

Even that I'm skeptical about. But if you remember, we'd made the announcement of taking, what is it, 10,000 Syrians at one point. Oh, yes. I'm so sorry, Sammy. I quoted announcing something with it happening. That's a fool's mistake. It was, and it was supposed to be 10,000 Syrians.

and we only ended up resettling about a sixth of the promised amount of Syrians. I don't even know if we ended up taking the 10,000 ever at any point. And so who knows how we're going to, you know, like we know, being good to refugees is something that doesn't play well with the electorate. And so who knows if we'll announce that? We now need to come up with some other category of person to pick on. Now that the refugees thing is sort of over, is there some next? Some of, like, I mean, trans kids work as well as refugees?

Like, what's the next step? Where they're trying it. You can kind of see them trying it right now. They're going for different groups. They try poor people, you know. I mean, the group that Scott Larson's most keen to distance himself from this week is actually Hillsong. Yeah, true.

It'd be quite fun to try it the other way around. Let's go for the Christians this time around. It's time to start persecuting Christians again. been a while. It hasn't happened since the Romans, all right? Let's get, let's bring, let's bring Christians versus Lions back is what I'm, my, my campaign pitch. It's always heartlifting getting to just chat about the news the week with you on a

Friday something and just, um, reflect on the, just non-stop walls of all awesomeness that is this country and all that we do. Why did you move here in all honesty? Imagine. I mean, at this point, I mean, at this point, I'm, what were my, My options. The United Kingdom were Boris Johnson's prime minister. The United States which had Donald Trump currently as Joe Biden. And let's be honest, the next election in the US is going to be the last election in the US ever.

Like, yeah, you know, imagine how much worse Pakistan is. Fucking New Zealand. Fucking New Zealand. You would have had Jacinda Dern as your prime minister. I know, but at the time, they'd just had an earthquake. It didn't look like a good thing. Give some red microphones. A part of the Acast, Crater Network. Catch you next week. Thank you.