The Chaser Report - Australia Needs a Fire Ant Tsar

Episode Date: July 31, 2025

Pauline Hanson was right! Australia is under attack by dangerous foreigners who want to take over the most beautiful part of our country, Southeast Queensland. But fear not, Charles and Dom are ready to knock their heads together and figure out how to stop these fiery insectoid foes.---Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ VOTE OPTICS FOR A LOGIE: https://vote.tvweeklogies.com.au/Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal 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. Now, Charles, you've brought a solution to the table. I do like it when you go beyond the traditional format of this podcast, which is basically just complaining about things that are terrible. You've got, oh, I can see the Invasive Species Council website up. I do like it when we're in the same room with a big screen.

Yes, because then we don't have to look at each other. That's right. Yeah, much better quality. So, Dom, I took a couple of days off a few weeks ago and went up to the Gold Coast. Really? What earth did you do that with your days off? Well, I heard there were lots of casinos up there. Yeah, do you do you like spending holidays in abject misery, do you?

That's right. No, actually, do you like artificial canals? The truth is, I had lots of points. So I had to do something with the points. And it's like, it's sort of like the Las Vegas of Australia, right? It is, yeah. In that there's just huge numbers of hotels. So if you go outside of peak, the Gold Coast is actually very beautiful.

It is. The actual coast itself, I was there last year. First time I'd really been there. And the actual beach, if you can completely ignore any of the human development that's happened, including the very strange canals. Oh, yes. But the actual beaches are beautiful. Yeah.

But one metre in land from the beaches, it's hideous. Horrible. Mainly the people, though. The people. But also, I mean, the... A bit like Hawaii, they've managed to do, all of the buildings that have been built there somehow in the worst periods of human architecture. Yes.

There's disgusting hotels. Or are they just the worst examples of each era of architecture? Or maybe it is. Maybe that's right. It's a least great hits. Well, look, a lot of the younger listeners might not know, but the whole Gold Coast thing was basically built on corruption. It was...

White sand shoes and... Yeah. ...Barram bags with cash in them. Sir Joe Vosocchi Peterson. And I think Richard Roxburgh has done a good job. of, he's got a new film house. That's he? Oh, about Joe, that's good.

Well, no, I mean, I hope someone was getting paid because the architect shouldn't have been. Yeah. I'll tell you that much. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.

Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at Fiz.C. So anyway, I was up there and the one thing that you come across quite a lot is all these signs along the road warning you that you're now in a fire ant eradication zone. Really? I didn't notice that when I was up there. And to watch out for the fire ants.

And that you're not allowed to take anything from point A to point B. Like, literally, like you've got to make sure that the soil on your shoes isn't sort of, I don't know, infected with ants. As if we needed another reason to avoid the Gold Coast. Well, it was the perfect reason to avoid the Gold Coast. But it was quite alarming and it's quite big. And it got me thinking, I wonder what this whole fire ant thing is. Because fire ants are really bad, right? Fire ants are these South American ants.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but they're the ants that actually, they're just hideous, right? They can kill basically anything that they come across. Yeah, that sounds about right. And they're like, and I think one of the ants that. One of the things about the fire ant is that they don't exist in conventional colonies like other ants. Oh, okay. So the way ants sort of, because ants are, I think, the biggest biomass in the world,

aren't they? I vaguely remember that. It's something like, I think it's something like for every one human on earth, there's like 100 trillion ants or something. It's something like that. And the way ants conventionally keep each other in balance is by, you know, having, you know, clans or, you know, like groups, tribes, whatever, what would you call a tribe of ants?

A colony. A colony. A colony of ants. And they end up sort of fighting each other and not breeding with each other. And that actually keeps the population in check somewhat. Right. But I'm pretty sure fire ants are the ones where they spread out because they're all just on same team, the team of fire ants.

Yeah. And they can just, and they can go rapidly, you know, across whole, you know, population. So they've done enormous damage in the US, I know, especially to agriculture and to local sort of plants and animals and pets and things like that. I'm reading here that during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, clumps of them are clung together with 100,000 individual ants. They literally formed rafts. Yes. And that's how they survive floods. They just float. They can survive pretty much anything. And, but then what happened was in 2001, while, America was dealing with 9-11.

We had our own 9-11 here in Australia, which was the first fire ant arrived in the port of Brisbane. And since then, it's been this battle back and forth between humans and fire ants about who's going to get supremacy. Look, this picture on Wikipedia of a... This is someone whose leg has dozens and dozens of stings on it after apparently a brief contact with a fire ant colony. Yeah.

How? So it looks like a leg of measles, right? It is, full of measles, yeah. So fire ants, in other words, fire ants are pretty bad thing. And they're, you know, southeast Queensland is where, sort of ground zero. Yeah, that's where they first arrived. I mean, Pauline Hanson tried to warn us about migration. Yes, little did she know.

Well, she wasn't paying attention to her own backyard, was she? Yes, exactly. So anyway, and this is serious. Like, this isn't just like, oh, I got my leg bitten or, oh, all these pets are going to die, which, you know, you could live with. Look at these numbers. But beaches are already being closed due to the dangerous, paid and full and venomous sting inflicted by fire ants.

They had been an all bloody mess with our beaches, Charles. So this is from the Invasive Species Council website here. They, apparently the impact on 123 animals in Southeast Queensland predicted declines. 45% of birds, 38% of mammals, 69% of reptiles, 95% of frogs with some species being pushed to the point of extinction. Now, Charles, you and me are mammals. We're on that list. Yeah, we're on that list. 38% of us could be affected by fire ants.

And there's a map. You've got a map of Australia here. It's a bit alarmist. Which shows which places aren't going to be affected by fire ants. And basically, it's everywhere except Tasmania. Tasmania. It has an 80% chance. We're all going to have to just move to Tasmania, I think.

Oh, I don't know if it's that dire, is it? No, maybe it's just better to be beaten alive. Yeah, quite possible. The Hobart. Well, they coped in America. And so, okay, so the fire ant is on. So the fire ant problem is on, and it's very clear that they're having real troubles fighting it. The thing is, though, Dom, it's possible to fight back against fire ants.

Yes. I thought they were basically once they were in, you were done. But they were going to be the superior species and just eat us. No, the thing is that there's been seven separate incursions into Australia since 2001. Right. Brisbane, Gladstone, Fremantle and Sydney. Sydney. And yes, I know, it actually affects real people.

Oh, my goodness, this is serious now. Imagine the poverty prices. Yeah. They'd probably go up. Yes. So, and then, and then, and Fremantle actually, it was only in October last year that they managed to fully get rid of them. But you can actually, through eradication programs, get rid of them. But southeast Queensland still has this problem.

And the problem's just not being funded enough. But Dom. I smell a solution. I have a solution, which is the. What we need is we need another animal that eats ants. Interesting. To be introduced into South East Queensland to get rid of the fire ants. Like the cane toad.

No, not just like the cane toad. I'm suggesting it should be the cane toad. Well, they're probably going to come down there anyway. Well, no, they are there. They're already there. Cain toad line gets getting further south. If you look up the web, cane toads eat ants, right? Problem solved.

We just need to encourage the cane-toed population. Just, yeah, see if you can find the eating fire ants. They do eat ants. Can they eat fire ants specifically? Can you put them? Oh, can they eat fire ants? Hold on. Yeah, who wins?

Knowing fire ants, they digest them, and then they would fight their way out of their bellies. Including fire ants. They eat fire ants. So what I'm thinking is, what we need to do is not have a fire ant eradication program, which is clearly not succeeding. What instead we need is a cane-toed. expansion program. Oh, so more canoads?

Yes, to keep us safe from the fire ant threat. Scroll down to that story. Hungry ants have cantoads on the menu. Yep. Are they already meat ants? Meat ants. Meat ants. Well, we need to bring in something to deal with the meat ants.

Well, we'll have to bring in the meat ants when the fire ants are out of control. We'll have to bring the meat ants in to eat the cantoads. Oh, see, that's just sensible. Yeah, yeah. See, Charles, I thought you were going to come with something completely different from this. I thought you were going to, I mean, here is some of the, things that occurred to me. Oh, yeah.

Just completely cutting off Southeast Queensland. Oh, I like that. Basically, there's a big, I mean, a bit like they did during the pandemic. Yes. There's a, there's a wall, um, maybe we built a big, big, beautiful wall and get South East Queensland to pay for it. Yes. Or maybe a giant fake canal, because what, I, it's, I mean, maybe they can cross

that water, a pull of poison. Yes. A trough of poison. A trough of poison. And no one from, I mean, you can fly in and out of Southeast Queensland to the rest of the world, but you can't fly to Australia. They're not welcome. And what will be the downside of completely blocking off the whole of South East Queensland?

Well, but how would you use up your points when you've got points? You'd just go on a mystery flight, which would go to Adelaide. No, okay. So that's one option. So that's one option. The other thing is completely eradicating. So this is my other idea. Eradicate, just move every single, relocate every human out of South East Queensland.

And plant and animal, because they eat plants. Every other thing. Yeah. And give it to the fire ants. Yeah, like as a sort of offering. As a neutral territory. Like, you know, just don't go anywhere else. See if we can negotiate with them.

Yes. And to say, you can have the whole of South East Queensland and see if they can eat ugly cement buildings. Probably can. It would improve, it would improve the Gold Coast. It would improve the Gold Coast. Because you get rid of the people. Yeah, well, there'd be nature as well. And the only problem would then be that all the people who live in the Gold Coast would be in the rest of Australia.

Oh, yeah. So it's not as attractive for that's a terrible way. Could you think we could, could we set it adrift? Could we sort of make the Gold Coast, could we sort of cut the whole thing out in a sense? And drag it offshore as a new island. No, no, you can't because the problem is they can survive on water, remember? On rivers, I don't know if they can survive in the ocean for it. Well, they made it out to Stredbroke Island, apparently.

Yeah, they just... So they've got to be further away. Maybe they could be the north island. They're the Nauru. Yes. They could be the sort of immigration exclusion zone type of. Yeah, so instead of bird shit, it's shit architecture. Yeah.

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These are all practical ideas, but I like the cane-tide idea. I've got another one, which is we're, get the big banana. Oh. And all the fire ants get attracted to the big banana. But it'd have to be a real big banana, like, just a really big banana. Also, have you been to the big banana? It's disappointingly small.

It is very disappointing. I honestly thought when I first went to it, that it was just a sign advertising the big banana. Like, it was like, you know, go around the back and you'll see this amazingly huge banana. Like, it's, if I recall, you walk through it and you duck your head. No, I don't mean, oh, can you walk through it? You walk through it. Oh, I don't think. It's big enough to hold a human, but from my recollection, it's a, I might be wrong, but ducking your head.

I don't think that's going to deter any ants. You don't think, because, no, I'm just thinking, like, you place a trap where all the fire ants want to eat something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could poison the big banana. There'd be no, you'd be doing tourists of favor, frankly. Yeah. Surely the other thing is, I mean, you said, they're called fire ants. I presume they're not fireproof.

Look how pathetically small. It's got an image of the big banana there. It's fun-sized. It's basically the size. of a car, really. Yeah, or of a minibus, yeah. Can I just say about the big banana? In fairness of the big banana, they're water park.

They've now got a whole lot of slides and things like that. Well, they have to. And that's cool. I'm sure it is. When my kids were young, they, like, their repeated request was, can we go back to the big banana? I'm very confident that if I was operating the big banana, I would invest heavily in non-big banana related activities to get people in.

I mean, that makes sense. Yes. But Charles, can they resist fire, despite being called fire ants? Because surely Australia is, you know, the kind of endless bushfires will take care of them. Can they survive bushfires? Yeah, maybe that's the way to do it. We just burn down southeast Queensland. I mean, we don't even need to.

It'll take care of itself with climate change being as it is. Yes. So we can't get them with flood because they can survive flood. But can we get them with fire? I think that that is. There's been a fire ant containment dam, I see. Fire ants Can they be killed with...

Oh my gosh. They spread into bushfire affected areas. Oh, because the... Yes. It gets cleared out. Oh, so yeah, that actually helps them spread. So that was a terrible idea. It's actually good for them.

We shouldn't have set the bush on fire just there. Ah. Ah, damn. And the dam is interesting. What else can we do? So according to chat GPT or whatever it is, Google Gemini, Gemini, granular baits.

Oh, yeah. That sounds a bit boring. Where you poison the queen. Yep. It seems a bit treasonous, doesn't it? It does, does, yeah. Mound treatments where you drench individual mounds with insecticides and broadcast insecticide treatments, which is where you take a big plane and just spray a shit tank.

Actually, that's the key, isn't it? Just crop dusts southeast Queensland. Yep. Just get whatever the sort of napalm equivalent is. Yeah, that'll work. Okay. So we don't seem, they don't seem to be over there. Looking at the current New South Wales Department of Primary Industries website,

we've pretty much, there were one or two around just south of Liz Moore near Ballona. There's some little hot spots. Yeah. But so far, they aren't really in New South Wales. So that really means we don't need to worry about. So there's not too much of a worry. It's just Queensland. Queensland's got bigger problems.

I think the thing is we just, maybe we make it everyone's problem and just wait until, the 20 to 32 Olympics. Oh my goodness, that's going to be ground zero. They've got to cancel the Brisbane Olympics. Yeah, I think they should. Yeah. Because the way that they spread is in luggage. Everyone who goes to the Brisbane Olympics is going to take fire ants.

You take home a gold medal and fire ants. It's another good reason not to go to the Brisbane Olympics, isn't it? Or indeed Brisbane in general. Wow. Although you could have a wonderful sprint, couldn't you? Sprinting away from a massive board and the fire ants. The whole, the mascot for the Brisbane. been Olympics should be fiery.

Oh, no, no, it'd be Freddie the Fire ant. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's good. I think that they just lean in to like, you know, because Australia is known for all that sort of terrible animals, like spiders and snakes and things like that. We just adopt, you know, like other things, we just say, look, this used to be South American,

but now it's the Great Aussie fire ant. Great Aussie fire ant. Yes. And New Zealand will come in and go, oh, we invented that. And we build a big fire ant on the Gold Coast. That's what we need, a big fire ant. Yeah, we've got to change their image. Maybe we want to learn to live with them.

Yes, exactly. I mean, they're going to take care of all the frogs, it sounds like. Who would you rather have frogs or fire ants? Exactly. I mean, frogs. But, okay. If the ultimate point of this is doing nothing, Charles, it seems as though this is probably what the Australian government's likely to do.

Do you think? Yeah, you know what we should do? We should point out that property prices are threatened in South East Queensland and then the government will act. Yep. That's the only, that's the only way. Yeah. Oh, you know, I know just the person. We need a czar. We need a fire ant czar. That's what America would do. I think it's time. Because it's going to cost $2 billion if we don't do it. I know just the man.

Draft Barnaby. No, I don't know Barnaby. Barnaby's got an important job to do splitting the coalition. Okay. I know net zero. Yeah. I know a man. Who? A Queenslander. Got some time on his hands. Oh, Kevin Rudd.

No. No. He's very good at opposing things. Peter Beatty? No. Warmer. warmer Peter Dutton Get Dutz on it Get Dutton Yeah what's he doing

I don't know what he's doing I know what he should be doing Getting rid of the fire ant Farrants you're not welcome In South East Queensland Yes I'm sending a message to fire ants You were to leave immediately

I think that's the way to go A stern cop An actual cop on the beat Yeah fire ant zar dutton I mean he could get a sculpture Scott Morrison style of the fire ants Saying I stopped these Yeah, if he ever does, which is unlikely.

Yeah. Okay. Because it's a win, win. Not only is he good at, you know, opposing things and biosecurity. Yes. Former Home Affairs Minister, but he's also a big property investor, so he's got a lot to protect. What he should do is he should run some sort of referendum asking, you know, whether we want

fire ants, and then he can run the no case, and he will win that. Oh, yeah. I can really see the fire ants respecting the result for referendum. Okay. There you go. Well, if we found a solution, we've got the Tsar. Yep. It's as good as done our work.

Have we saved Australia again, Charles? I think we have. I think we have, yeah. I mean, I still actually prefer my first idea, which was the cane toad. The cane to do. I reckon that's good because it's sort of, it just, you know, like, we've got to start accepting who we are. But, no, but you're right.

But then Peter Dutton is, yeah, you're right. I think. I'm imagining Peter Dutton basically riding a giant cane toad around the area just going, get them. I think that's the image we can all get by. I think that's great. See, he was wasted in polities. He was literally wasted in the last election, yeah.

Ah, there you go. We're part of our calling class network. We find solutions, don't we? We do. Have a good weekend. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore.

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