The Chaser Report - BEST OF: Craig Reucassel & Ketan Joshi

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

BEST OF: Craig Reucassel & Ketan Joshi - Craig directed a movie! He’s here to tell us about The Big Deal, a doco that looks at how money influences our political system. The results of all this influence-buying can be seen in today’s other conversation, where climate specialist Ketan Joshi talks us through the landmark IPCC Report on climate change – what’s in those 3,900 pages, anyway? And can we do anything stop a climate catastrophe? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Welcome to The Chaser Report. We're still doing our best-of interview week. It is New Year's Eve, Friday the 31st of December, 2021. And if you have no plans for tonight, we have a bumpy interview with not one but two guests back to back. That's how we did it on the day. I don't know why we did that. Wow.

Okay. Yeah, right. But you remember the interviews. The first was with Craig Rucustle talking about the movie that he directed this year because he's, you know, so production. It's called The Big Deal. And it's still available on Eye View. So if you want to see it, you can actually still see it on ABCI View. It's all about how political donations are ruining our politics.

And Christian Van Voren, the Bondi hipster, is the star of that. Craig directed it and it's a fun chat. But then, if that's not depressing enough, the IPCC report, the report that dropped this year that told us that basically our climate was going to hell. Ketan Joshi is an expert in these matters. And I actually found his chat with you, Charles, because it was just you, quite optimistic, given the subject matter. Like he had reasons for hope.

Yes, that's right. Yeah, I walked away. I thought it was going to be one of those, oh, everything's fucked. But actually, there's glimmers of hope. And part of it's just about, you know, if you look at what we've done in the last five or six years, it shows that we can actually, we can turn the corner.

We just need to decide to do it. Wow. I was equally excited after that interview, but mainly because I didn't have to read the whole thing. We had Captain Josh. It came up a beautiful summary. It was very convenient. Now, so Craig, you've done a film.

Yes, I have. I've directed a film, bizarrely. A bit of a big deal to direct a film. It was. Although, yeah, look, you say that. It's extremely time-consuming and painful. Like, it's just an absolute gut-wrencher. So did you have this image that Stephen Spielberg just, you know,

It becomes director, it's a few days work, and then Star Wars gets produced or whatever. Is that what you imagined directing was? The problem is this, right, is that Stephen Spielberg is in the edit suite of the movie that Steven Spielberg is shot, right? But you see, when I'm in the edit suite trying to edit it, it's been shot, you know, directed by me. And that's just the real size. You're going, where's the coverage? We don't have the shot for that. Somebody should have thought of it.

Yeah, exactly. Shots for this. Why do we do this? Thankfully, Christian Van Viroirut is brilliant, so he could always provide something. But, you know, just me cleaning up after myself the whole time. So what is it about? What's the film about? It is about democracy, and it's about money and politics and influence and all of that kind of stuff.

It starts as somebody you may know, actually. Sam Dastiari is in it. And it is, it's interesting. Oh, my God, did he tell you that you were being recorded when you interviewed him? Yeah, that's right. He told me, yeah, that was the great thing about doing recording with Sam Dostari, is that you're like, oh, if the audio guy stuffs up, the Chinese government will have this.

He's supposed to be able to get a backup file. An AGO will have another backup. Yeah, yeah, and Acio as well, yeah, that's right. But it's actually interesting, like, literally last night, I had a kind of, you know, a chat with lots of people who'd seen the film for the first time. And in the kind of online chat, the comments from people coming through, people are like just, I can't believe how honest San Dastiari is about it.

Because he just kind of... It's not a word that you were. associate with Sam Destiari. This is the great thing about Sam is that ironically he's like so on it. He just lays out everything kind of really truthfully about how it works. Because he doesn't think there's anything wrong with it. And he's obviously trying to lie in some other way. But he doesn't realize that that's the bit he should have been lying about it.

That's great. No, but he is fantastic actually. He's like it's, you know, you do these really long interviews. This is what kills you about making a documentary movie. And he just likes really long interviews and you've got to cut them down to small bits. And Desiari, there was just so much gold. It was actually really important. It was so hard to actually fit it in.

Because the thing about Sam DeSTIari, for people who don't know who he is, is he was in the thick of ALP politics for many, many years. He actually ran the New South Wales arm of the Labor Party. Bodies are buried because he was the one he could. Yeah, well, shot them. Yeah, because he was the one burying all the bodies. And then he became a senator and then he just committed a bit of light treason. And then because he got so jettisoned by that whole institution, he's now able to speak honestly

about it. It's an extraordinary arc. But it is interesting because he was like the biggest fundraiser of the party's ever had. And essentially, you know, the thing with Sam is he's quite a brilliant guy. So, you know, he's put in charge of fundraising. He just absolutely nails it. But then just to hear him talk about that process is just, it's quite frightening. Is it a depressing movie? No, well, this is the interesting thing about like it, what, we filmed this over a period of kind of in and out of lockdowns and all this kind of stuff. And the first part of like

The first several months was all kind of filming the problem of money and politics and influence and all this kind of stuff. And it got really depressing, to be honest, it was actually quite fundamentally depressing. But we ended up also filming some other parts, which kind of looked at, I guess, push back against things like the voices for movements or different kind of movements or different communities that kind of stood up and pushed back against things. And it became really like at the end, I was in tears, but just because it was really uplifting actually. So there's kind of, there's both. It's kind of, there's depressing parts. As Sam, I just lays out here, everything happens. And you kind of see how just normalized all this stuff is, actually.

And then there is kind of, there's a bit of uplifting stuff as well. But, yeah, I don't know. It was also amazing doing it, though, as well, because doing a movie about democracy in Australia and one of the problems with it, like kind of money and influence on this, the hardest part of it was that there was so many other scandals dropping about different other parts of how shit our democracy is. We kept having to go, no, no, focus. focus. We can't cover all of the shit bits of our democracy at once. We literally only have

several hours to do it. So are you going to run for office now that you've seen how it works from the inside? Oh, God. This is the thing. It's kind of, it's depressing. And what I think's fascinating about it is that a lot of politicians hate it too. Like, they don't want it. And this is what's the, kind of the uplifting part about it is because a lot of the change has to come. Some of the change can come from outside, but a lot of the change has to come from within politicians are making changes. And that has happened at times. Like different states have made great changes to laws and tried to fix this a little bit. It hasn't always fixed it, you know, but it's made step changes in the right direction. And that's because there are lots of politicians

in each party that hate this kind of fundraising and this kind of bullshit and this kind of influence. So there is, you know, it's not like all the politicians love this stuff, you know, there is a kind of hope that you could get positive change here. Well, the Liberal Party ran in the last election on the platform of setting up a national Integrity Commission. So, clearly they're on board. How's that going? What happened with that?

Oh, look, just a bit of a delay. Now's not the time. No, they set up the commission. But before they set up the commission, they needed to make sure everybody in the commission had a place to park. And so they had to... A car park, yeah.

They had to make a few car parks happen. They used all the money on the car park. Little steps. Little steps. They did actually, like, the actual kind of plan they put out for a National Integrity Commission basically seemed to predominantly protect the politicians and everyone else got in trouble.

Yeah, I don't think that's what we were really calling for, guys. I might want to wrap that up a bit. So, yeah, like... I mean, full credit to them for losing so many ministers without a proper National Integrity Commission, but did you find out, Craig, did McDonald's pay for the product placement in Skomar's rumour? Because that would have been a lot of money.

You're always making these... In getting jokes. He has gone on to Carl and Jackie Oe and denied it, guys. And there is no higher journalistic source. Of course. You know, if he got... If he was lying, he would have been called to me. You can lie to Parliament,

but you can't light it to Kyle and Jackie O. Exactly, exactly. And also because Kyle is an expert on the topic. Like, he is actually the expert on this. If you think about it, you know, if you're going to go to Kerry, Brian and Lee Salas, the expert on politics, there, you know. But when it comes to the question of being a piece of shit,

Kyle Sandler is the expert on that. Can't argue with that. The movie is following Christian Van Vuren from the Bondi hipsters, and he is just lovely and wonderful and sing. And why him? He was, literally, well, it's kind of, you know, Firstly, he was kind of, he wanted to look into this initially, and I kind of came on a little bit later, actually. But B, because it's, he's not an expert, that's the thing, he isn't, he's not an expert, he's not somebody fascinated by politics.

So it's kind of seeing things through an average Australian's perspective of it, when you kind of exposed to it. And it was fascinating, actually, in some of the interviews where things that I realize I take for granted, and you'd see it be described to Christian and he's outraged at it. I went, oh, fuck, of course. I've got past the point of being outraged by that. And that was the thing with politicians as well as how they generally just talk about this as if it's the norm. They've accepted this as part of the game. And so to see the outrage that people do have about it. I think that's what leads to that general kind of lack of trust there.

So, yeah, it was great to kind of, he's not only the love of this guy, but just to kind of actually see that through his eyes is really nice. I was outraged as well many times as well. But there were some things that you go, shit, yeah, that is bad. Is it massively depressing as a result? Yeah, no, you know, I only cry at upfifting things. I don't cry at sad things. That's why, you know, Huggies commercials really get me. But it is the case.

I've watched this movie now fucking millions of times, like to the point of just killing me. And there are still bits that I cry out, like each time I watch them. It's really bizarre. And bizarrely, it's interesting, there are different bits in the movie that different people who watch cry out as well,

which always I find really interesting. So it's supposed to be in cinemas on the 16th of September. Yep, and Gladys is in charge of that. It'll be fine. So basically that means, it'll be, like what, in Western Australia and Tasmania, you'll be able to see it in cinemas on the 16th of September. What's the plan?

Are you going to be able to dream it or something instead? Yeah, look, that kind of stuff is changing all the time. You can kind of follow Twitter and there's a big deal.org as the website. I'll make it a big deal.org is a website. And we'll keep posting updates on the chaser socials as well. Yeah, we'll tell you where it's going to be. It might be just broadcast by the chaser. report.

Do you have the name of the movie yet? Oh yeah, sorry, it's called Big Deal. Is that a Democracy for Sale? It's interesting you say that, Gabby, because we almost, like, we literally didn't have a name for the movie until pretty much right at the end. Titling everything is like, if you, if you ever try and start the name, have a debate about names, you basically, it takes days, the whole project stops. You cannot do that, you know, that's why, I presume that's why this is called the

Chaser Report, because you're like, should we come up with a good name for it? You're like, no, let's not, extract it. We've got to put it out. That's why I should name and move on. That's why I was to warn everything. That's exactly how I was named. Makes you wonder why kids get named actually straight away. Yeah.

Actually, it's true. The name Craig. My parents would just like give up. To think, imagine if they'd waited a wig. You could have had a name like, I don't know. Pastertron or something. Blastertron. That would be a great name.

Never reproduce, never reproduce. I don't plan on it. When I watch Huggies commercials, I cry, not out of joy. Well, I'm looking forward to all. the sort of laser battles between spacecrafts and things. Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. A lot of special effects in there.

I've been paying attention in this interview. It actually sounds a bit like episode one of Star Wars, if you think about it. It's about the Senate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Man, I was just like, that was me trying to go, what is episode one of Star Wars? I was like, like, lost totally. That was one of the other problems with me directing was that I've never seen a movie before. Earlier in the week, the IPCC, which is the international – no, what is it?

The intergovernment panel – intergovernment panel on climate change. Is that right? Yeah, you've got the vibe, yeah. Yeah, something like that. Anyway, it released this massive report, about 3,200 pages, I think. And, I mean, of course, we've read it here at The Chaser. But, you know, just to make sure we're across the details a little bit more. We're going to get an expert to try and help unpick some of the findings of this incredibly important report.

Joining us now is Katan Joshi. Now, so the report is about 3,200 pages, isn't it? 3,949. Okay. I obviously missed a few of the appendixes. But so, wait a minute. And have you, I mean, we've, of course, read it here, Jason, of course. It's been riveting, reading, but have you read it all?

I've read, so you get, what they do is they release this thing called a summary for policy makers, and it's like 30 pages. And that's relatively readable, you know, I read it. It's the cliff notes. What we want from you is a summary of the summary. Right. And I suppose a top line question, I think this is the one we've, on everyone's mind, is, are we all going to die? There's two answers to that question.

so this gets into some really existential and philosophical questions about how much we control the future so I won't get into that even though it's what I've been thinking about for the past three days there's two parts to what the IPCC report is telling us the first part is what's already locked in from the emissions that we've already released right like 2. something trillion gigatons since the mid-1700s and that amount is going to cause an amount of warming that we know for sure is going to happen right um so they quantify that they use physical science to quantify that um and then on top of that it's also worth noting there's like momentum in the systems of like human society right like so it is actually true that you can't shut off the world's cold plants overnight

um because you actually need to replace them with something else and it takes time to build a wind farm and a solar farm and and you know batteries and stuff so what i'm hearing from you is that Barnaby Joyce has got a point and is it totally... In the worst faith possible and, you know, arguing against a completely different point, yes, he does. And so, but, you know, basically the second story in the report is what we can still avoid, right? So, depending on how fast we reduce emissions, it's like a completely linear relationship between how bad the impacts are, right?

Like, it's, it's, um, there's a graphic in the summary that is just like a scatter plot of like how much emissions, how bad are the impacts? And it's just like a straight line, right? Because every gigatone that we don't release is reduced climate impacts. And so the physical science has actually been directed towards the future as well to say, okay, if we release a lot of more greenhouse gases in the future, what are the impacts? If we manage to curb them, what are the impacts avoided? And what's kind of still baked into the system. But why can't we just sequester all that carbon like I got into a fight earlier this week with somebody who just went well hang on like why don't we just invent a machine that puts it all back in the ground

like why is that so impossible what what's the problem with that this is hard to invent machines uh I mean you know like in the in the 60s and 70s we didn't have wind and solar and those had to be you know basically developed um into technologies that was commercial enough that you could deploy them around the world really cheaply. That happened. That's an amazing thing, but it was hard. It was a really, really hard process that happened over many decades from like government subsidies and deployments and fights about subsidies and fights about wind farms. But is there a machine? Yeah, there is a machine. So there's two ways you can suck a carbon from the atmosphere. The first is using a machine. So you can, like, there's some technologies

in development. One of them is called direct air capture, for instance, right? And it's literally what it sounds like. It's getting carbon dioxide from the air, capturing. it and in fact in some case you could potentially use it for stuff right because carbon is useful once you capture it um so they're trying to also try and make it like into a commercial thing so some companies are doing that the other way you can do it is is what are called nature-based solutions so um the natural like basically the restoration cycle of living things on earth um that photosynthesize they actually consume carbon dioxide um and so the idea is if you plant a bunch of extra trees. Those trees will suck in more carbon, but there's a huge, huge problem with that

in that, first of all, that carbon stays right on the surface of the earth. And secondly, you know, bushfires and wildfires, they burn down trees. And we are expecting more of those things. When the federal government sort of goes, oh, no, well, we're going to invest all the money in, you know, the technology side, like the carbon capture side, because that's how we can keep coal green. What, like, is that just bullshit? shit is it like that that's actually a really important that's actually a really important distinction um so you've described carbon capture which is um there are so many different like types of categorizations right so what i was talking about just then was taking carbon from the atmosphere and trying to remove it um yeah

very hard very energy intensive also very hard and energy intensive is if you know it's easy just burn more coal to run the machines to capture the yeah you joke but people are proposing this it's like a real anyway i'm not going to get into that that's a that's a my blood pressure can't handle it this week um what you're describing with the australian government is is carbon capture so that's actually not taking carbon from the atmosphere but trying to prevent it at the point of the of the fossil fuel power station right so so before it even gets released into the atmosphere you have a machine you have something added onto your coal plant that captures it before it actually ends up in the sky um and then hypothetically you could use that carbon to do something

So the only time that this has been useful, and currently the only sort of existing model of this working in the real world, is when oil and gas extraction facilities capture carbon in the process of extracting fossil fuels and then use that carbon as a tool for extracting more oil. It's called enhanced oil recovery. So the only current proven model for CCS commercially is worsening climate change by extracting more, more oil. So it's supercharging your oil world. Enhanced oil recovery does my head in. Like, it's completely wild how they're basically trying to claim the carbon credit for worsening the problem. It's so, it's so frustrating. Is there any hope then?

Like, it seems like it's all going to shit. All the graphs are going in the wrong direction. You've got all this catastrophe. Where's the hope? Why should we just not give up? So fundamentally, I think there's something really important to remember, first of all, about history. So what we're seeing very clearly now is that all of the projections from like the 2010s were of coal, oil and gas going absolutely wild, right?

Like, you know, by 2020, coal would just be absolutely skyrocketing, so would oil and gas. And we've actually avoided that future. that is something that you don't see in the IPCC report because they're not doing like historical like socioeconomic analysis of how well climate action worked they're basically just taking the physical science and saying well we did this and this happened and if we do that then this will happen in the future but in the past we've actually seen emissions can be avoided Australia's renewable energy target is a brilliant example of that because it just worked right like it has avoided emissions Australia's emissions would be higher without the presence of that target

all the efforts of everybody who brought it into existence and all the people who defended it. And that's been operating on a scale around the whole world, right? Like, it's obviously not enough. We need to be doing way more of that. But the fundamental thing is that we know that climate action actually works to avoid emissions and therefore prevent climate impacts, which would be worse today if we hadn't bothered in the past. The same, of course, applies to the future, right? So if we try twice as hard, then, you know, we prevent even more emissions.

And around the world, it's like a big power struggle. but something I've really noticed, you know, over the past, like, say, six months, maybe even a year, the coal industry in particular is becoming really, really, really vulnerable. Coal power has basically lost its financial viability, not compared to running new wind and solar, but even to building new wind and solar. So for, like, a decent proportion of the world's coal plants, it's actually cheaper to shut the coal plant down and then run wind and solar instead, including the costs of integrating wind and solar into the grid.

So like, you know, power lines and batteries and all that sort of extra stuff, it's still cheaper to turn the off switch on your coal plant and then pay to build entirely new stuff and run it because wind and solar would just become that ridiculously cheap. But so what's going on in the brains of, well, essentially the entire Australian federal government who were trying to prop up these. They're giving subsidies to coal mines

to expand. You've got NAB giving out sustainability loans to Whitehaven to expand their coal mines, to Newcastle Port to expand their coal ports. What is going on, in what way is that a rational thing for them to be doing? Yeah, so obviously those subsidies shouldn't be happening, right, on principle, because you shouldn't be subsidising harmful activity. Do they not believe it? No, I would actually put that in a really important context, which is that the reason that those subsidies are actually picking up pace, particularly over the past two years in Australia, is because the markets are supporting those projects less and less. So lenders, insurance companies, thanks, you know, largely to activism and sort of pressure

on those companies, are making those projects far less viable, which is actually why they need those subsidies, right? But of course, they're basically... They've captured a part of the government, and they're just running down the... timer on whatever they can squeeze out of it. Yeah, absolutely. But it's a losing game, right? Because the realities of those markets are actually beginning to really catch up.

Coal in Australia is a really good example. What we're probably going to see is coal plants actually closing earlier than their scheduled retirement dates over the next sort of decade. That is an extremely good thing in terms of emissions because you want to remove the emissions. Like coal is just like a huge, huge chunk of Australia's emissions. But it's an extremely bad thing in the sense that there are communities like people who are working. The whole community, whole workers. Yeah. So basically what is happening is there's this idea that you can basically sustain coal for longer if you just kind of give it a government, you know, intervention push to

help coal stay in the system longer. But all it's actually doing is making those communities that rely on the like economic benefits of having power stations in their communities, it's making them more vulnerable to when it all kind of suddenly all comes home to roost. Yeah. And look, those communities know it. Like the Hunter Jobs Alliance partly exists because, you know, that whole coal mining community, they know that it's rubbish that it can go on forever. And that they're much better transitioning to something else.

now with an orderly transition than to fall off a cliff in 10 years time. Yeah, so when we talk about like borrowed time, it's not just on emissions, you know, it's for like the people who are exposed to a sudden and chaotic, you know, hit of reality catching up with all of the denial. Like that's a real, that's such a huge risk. And there are a lot of good people, you know, who work in like coal and gas and like, you know, those industries who don't deserve to be like scapegoated. or made vulnerable, what should really happen is, like, the leaders of those companies

and the government should actually be stepping in and saying, this is absolutely inevitable, but we're going to actually manage this decline to protect you. So what's going through the mind of the executives and things like that? Like, for people who actually control these entities, they're just, like, nobody, like, are they just evil? Are they just people who are, you know, just want to see the end of the world? or do they know that it's happening, but they sort of think that they can buy their way out of it or they can go to Mars instead?

Like, what is, what's your, what's the vibe? Yeah, some people do. Like, obviously the people who are sort of up top, they're really, they are quite evil. Like, it's a really sort of, they're very conscious of what they're doing, and they very callously are aware of their own power, and they know that they can basically delay action on this

to their own benefit, even if it hurts people. But, and then, you know, people often talk about like the sort of the worker side of like people who are like, you know, blue collar and like working on oil rigs and stuff like that. But I think there's an interesting sort of middle where, you know, sort of like mid-level like managers and, you know, people like me who sort of work in like sort of comms and like, you know, things like that, right? White collar professionals who are seem to be going through this interesting process of basically sort of convincing themselves to some degree. And so you see stuff, you know, you

you see it actually in a political level as well where a lot of the content that looks like greenwashing or it looks like trying to convince the public of something is actually them trying to convince themselves of something. So like, you know, like those folks are probably reading those climate plans or whatever and being like, you know, I'm so glad that I work at a company that's actually dealing with climate change. I initially felt bad, but actually, you know, this company is doing the right thing. I went on down this rabbit hole a few months ago looking at um tobacco company um internal comms like there's all these amazing leaks you get from like tobacco companies um and their internal comms are the same as their external comms right like they

they're telling their stuff like look we care about health you know we're researching safer tobacco options and we actually want people to not smoke cigarettes and like that sort of stuff right and you see exactly the same thing with fossil fuel companies and to some degree with like say the Australian government as well, right? Because they have MPs and senators who want to feel like they're doing the right thing on climate change. So you see like Dave Sharma or Tim Wilson, like they'll post tweets about like how much they support renewable energy or how much Australia is doing really well on renewables. But they don't really engage with the huge gaps and the huge problems with the government's climate policy because you sort of, I don't know, I look at that and I'm like,

I feel like they kind of just want themselves to feel like. a little bit better about what's going on here. I just want one final sort of hopeful message, which is, what is the one thing that we can do as ordinary people to actually do something towards this 3,900 page disaster document? I mean, like, often I give an answer that's sort of a specific action, but I think I just want to give a more general sort of answer about the way we think about this, which is basically that every ton of greenhouse gas emissions is avoidable. And, you know, I completely, it's okay to engage with grief and think about what we've lost and think about, you know, everything that we've

kind of, you know, failed to do so far because all the power imbalance was just completely against us of the past. But at the same time, recognize that we're actually far more capable of more things than we realize. And a lot of, we have a pretty decent long history of things that we've won, if we can just expand on that in the future, just keep that principle in mind, which is basically that we have a bit more control than we realize, and it's understandable to feel helpless, but that's mostly because the people who are making this problem worse like it when we feel helpless. So, yeah, just keep that in mind when you're thinking about what you do. Keaton, Joshi, I admire your naive optimism, and I wish you well.

Thank you. So this is it. We've reached the end of 2021. From next Monday, we're going to have brand new episodes never published before with the original Chaser team talking about how we made, the television that we made, the stunts, the stories, the accidents, frankly, the serious body-destroying accidents in Chaz's case. Yeah, and I think it's fair to say that the next four weeks of podcasts

are going to be some of the best podcasts we've ever made. Quite sincerely, we had an absolute ball recording them for you. because we've already done it because we want to have a holiday in January. And I reckon it's going to be a lot of fun. So wandered out in memory lane, and let's face it, it's going to be a much better way

to spend January 2020 than talking about January 2020. Yes. I suspect. Our Gears and Road microphones are part of the ACAS creator network and we'll catch you next year. Have a happy new year,

but you won't. But try. See, is that the message we want to leave it on at the end of the podcasting Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Can you put in some firework.

work sound effects, Lachlan, to pretend that we're being cheap. Actually, you know what? We've got six weeks of holiday. That is actually exciting now. Okay, I'm just going to open a bee.