The Chaser Report - BEST OF: Julia Zemiro

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

BEST OF: Julia Zemiro - Julia Zemiro of Rockwiz, Home Delivery and many other fabulous things joins Gabbi, Dom and Charles to explore how ordinary people can get their voices heard in Canberra – and maybe even get elected. Her new podcast about this is called ‘Who Cares With Julia Zemiro’, and will be in the A Rational Fear feed. 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. This is our best of interviews week. It is Tuesday the 28th of December. I'm Domit, Alex Volovich and Charles Firth here. And Julia Zamiro joined us at one point during the year. I'm going to bring that one up. She was talking about the new movement to bring independence and activists and so on,

chosen by their communities, back into Parliament. That's still very much a thing. We talked to... Well, we talked to Joe Dyer a couple of weeks ago, and it's really started to gain traction. Yeah, it may actually affect the election result. I think it's really because of this interview that that's started. Oh, definitely. So it's a history-making interview, and it will begin right after this.

Hello, Julia. Welcome to the Chaser Report. Oh, look, I'm delighted to be here. What a thrill, Charles, Gabby, Don, lovely. And welcome to podcasting as well. Look, as I say my first episode, really, Julia, you want to bring another podcast into the world. We don't need it. And look, in essence, I don't disagree.

But I guess I'm only doing one a month for six months, so there's only six. And I'm, you know, less is more. I'm dipping my toe into it. But look, I'm genuinely doing it because I'm shit scared, really worried and wanted to just channel my time into something where I might feel a little bit better. And not just be hopeful. I reckon hope is turning into a completely useless. emotion and it doesn't do anything.

It's about action. So I guess it's wanting to talk to interesting people who've taken action in doing things that change minds, maybe. And it's called Who Cares, isn't it? Correct. Have you figured it out yet? Who cares? Who cares?

Who cares? No, well, I tell you what it started as, and look, you know, in a way I'm fine-tuning it and, you know, by the sixth episode, I'll know what it is. But, you know, at one point I was looking at all our lack of leadership and thinking, God, how do these people get there and they're hopeless and let's stop wishing for Jacinda Ardern because she's got a job, you know, we can't have her. But then I thought, well, hang on, if you look the other way, who are the followers, who are us, who are the voters and who are the people?

And I guess I'm talking about people who, you know, they've had a good education, they know how stuff works and they're totally disengaged with politics. So if you start talking to them at a party or a coffee or whatever, they're like, yeah, no, I'm not really into it and I don't really like to talk about it. or they have such strong opinions that seem to me to be so old-fashioned that if you just scratch a little bit and have that one-to-one conversation, they go, oh, yeah, maybe. Like, I've had people when I've talked about the podcast say,

you know, I don't really vote or care much about voting. Okay, at first that blows my mind as a sentence. And then they've gone, and maybe I should think more about it. And these are switched on people in their 40s and 50s. And so I guess I was, I'm trying to do, not that it's literally going to be about politics every week voting, but I think, and it might even seem like I'm dumbing it down slightly, but it's just trying to talk to people about, they saw something they didn't like, and it wasn't about

organising a rally straight away, it was picking up the phone and making a call or writing an email and getting another few people interested, and we're allowed to do that, we're allowed to find choice in what we do. And I think Australians, they're too lax, there's too much apathy. And I still don't know why that is. I haven't quite figured that one out, I don't think. I've always thought that this government, particularly how it's been the last couple of years, has decided to weaponize apathy in this country. I feel like there's two ways of doing it. Half the country is apathy to a point of complete disengagement.

And the other half really value tradition. And that's how I've always found when people are voting super old-fashioned or super conservative, I feel that it's more often than not because it's an emotional attachment to what their parents did or what their closest friends and relatives did. and it doesn't really come from any cognitive thought of their own. I think what you're trying to do with this podcast is really important, particularly for young people, because I still have,

I'm only 25 and I have friends that donkey voted in the last election. Yeah. And I got so angry about it because it can be. Yeah, but you're a bogan, Gabby, like, of course you know people who donkey voted last week. No, but I think it's really important because it's also, politics also gets shrouded, like talking of politics and being politically engaged,

also gets shrouded in this world of classism as well. As we just heard. Somebody less educated would also disengage because they think they might not be smart enough. But the reality is politics should be for everyone and it should always be understood on every single level. And if somebody isn't understanding it, then there should be resources out there to help that person understand it because it's like government represents everyone. So I just wanted to say my two cents and I think that what you're doing is a really admirable thing because it's necessary. Well, I guess too, you sort of want people to go into voting as if they've studied for the exam. Yeah. You know what I mean? They go in and I've had that, I used to have that in my 20s a bit going, I don't really know what's, I want to go in there going, I know what I'm going to do today. I do actually know. And I think I know, I'm pretty sure I know how. So, you know, preferential voting. People don't understand that. I had two terrific young guys clearing out some stuff in our garden because, you know, I've got no muscles left and I can't do it. And I was chatting.

to them and they're interested in finding out about politics, but they've got no idea where to go. And I think you're right, Gabby. I think the government loves the people don't know where to go. I think they're loving having us shut down a little bit. We can't go anywhere. It's, yeah. So you've got one episode in the can. It came out on Friday.

What's in it? Well, Mark Kelly is an interesting human being. He runs a surfboard company. And basically, a few years, a couple of years ago, he was watching the same-sex marriage vote for Warringa where he lives and two thirds of that electorate voted yes and there was Tony Abbott clearly a no and he thought hang on this guy doesn't represent who we are so he emailed a couple of friends and said what do you reckon do you believe in him or what and he just started getting a little group and he started printing a few t-shirts and built this kind of grassroots movement and grassroots you know every

word you used to describe something then it kind of loses its power but basically started asking his neighbors, what do you like about Tony Abbott? Do you think he's doing a good job? Do you think he represents you? One by one by one by one. And he asked them to buy the t-shirts. He didn't give them the t-shirts. You have to wear it. And slowly built up this following where people were going, actually, I don't really believe in what he does. I just didn't want to say anything. So different to the French, right? I'm half French. Bloody hell, they'll open their mouth any time about politics. But it's almost like people needed permission to disagree. It's crazy. And he built this kind of movement. And by that point, the question was, if we got an independent to actually really serve us, would you be behind that?

So he creates the group before he creates the independent. So instead of spending time trying to trust the independent or go, who are we, we don't know. It's we know who we are. We think we know what we're after. Well, this person presented to us and there's different people kind of, you know, audition for the role. And that's how they got Zali Stegel. And the way he describes it in the podcast, it sounded like a joyous thing, like a positive. thing like something that brought people in as opposed to it's difficult it's hard it's it's

violent it's you know all that stuff yeah joyous is not generally a word that's attached to a candidate selection process for a federal election no and kathy mcgown speaks of the joy in her campaign as well when she was running for indy she felt that she had the support of everyone behind her so it felt like she knew where she was going with it and even if she failed or it didn't succeed there had been people with her along the way, not a party, actual people. And then coupled with that, we've got Sally Rugg, who is an incredible campaigner, an activist, has just stepped down from Change.org as executive director there, and wrote a fantastic book called How Powerful We Are About. She really wanted to document what happened with marriage equality, because for a minute

there, she thought Malcolm Turnbull was going to claim it for his own, some kind of victory, and she went, oh, no, no, no, that's not going to happen. So there are a nice little couple, too, two activists coming at it from different ways and me really being the innocent going how did you do it? You know, I ask questions that might seem a bit simplistic, but I think sometimes I listen to podcasts and I think, how do you know that about government? How do you know that? I don't know that. And it's because they're in little groups that know all the stuff. Well, I don't know that stuff. I didn't know you're allowed to drink in Parliament House. I didn't know alcohol was freely available. Had to watch Ms. Represented to find that out. So, you know, it's things like that that you think, really?

alcohol? Are you joking? It's kind of special what you were talking about before about how an independent sort of being scouted by a body of people that that area is represented by is just like when you said it, I don't know what it is, but I just went, that sounds like a much more logical option towards politics than what currently is happening. I would much rather a candidate want to represent the people who are scouting for the right person. And you know what sort of set me off. It was hearing, you know, when Christian Porter finally revealed that he was the person in question in that case. And then there were articles afterwards saying, oh, there goes his prime ministerial career. And I thought, what do you mean? And then as I sort of figured it,

I was like, oh, right, yeah, of course, you guys get someone who puts their hand on your shoulder and goes, mate, I reckon you'll be it one day. And I was like, well, how do I have any say in that? No. And it's not that I'm anti-party, but I'm anti-how it works. And there's so many factions in both parties, well, let's try, how bad can it be that you've got Helen Haynes or you've got a Zali Stegel, you know, or an Andrew Wilkie who are up there, maybe doing it differently. I think it just needs to be done differently. It's not working. And I guess the IPCC report freaked me out as well. I'm really scared. I'm really scared. And I, at 54, if I never travel again, I'm fine. If I never go anywhere ever again, I don't care. I'm here to help the young people, whatever they

need because, gee, what a mess. The young whippersnappers. Yeah, what a mess. I'm ready here to go, what do you need? Faxing. What do you need? Hosting? What do you need? Sandwich making? Can you do my taxes, Julia? Because that's a mess at the moment.

Gabby, Gabby. And the world scares me. I'll pay for someone to do it for you because I'm not very good with the numbers. But I'll do that. I'll get a friend who can do it for you. Great. There's a big movement at the selection to try and create more Sally's Deagles as well. I think it's voices it's called. They're trying to get out and do this on a wider scale. Are you going to talk to some of the people involved in that?

It certainly might do that. I mean, in my own electorate Hume, Angus Taylor is in charge here in the Southern Highlands or in this big area of Hume. And there's a vote Angus out campaign. And again, as I've said when I've posted stuff about on Instagram, it's not a hate campaign. It's not a trying to bring anyone down campaign. It's saying there might be someone else who can do it better. I think vote Angus Taylor out.

She's a trying to get rid of him campaign. Sure, you might be out. But it's, you know, it's friendly. But this is a thing. It's like they say exactly the same things and do it. They're thinking the same thing in their own electorates, but then they start to kind of use dirty tactics. At least we're open.

You can see who's donating to our particular fundraiser. Then we're not trying to hide anything. And it really comes from a place of people just trying to have a better representation. Because I think after the bushfires, if COVID hadn't come along, I really wonder how it would have played out. I think people were really worried and, really frightened. And then this other thing took over, which was really scary as well. I feel I want to get excited. Don't we all want to be excited about going, could Australia

be that country that goes forward and is doing renewables, is thinking differently, is looking in education going, how do we slightly blow that up and make it more interesting? You know, all that stuff. That would make people excited about being involved. We've got another interview coming up later in the week. We saw Griffith talking about the roadmap for this, which is going to be fascinating. Would you run, Julia, if you've got the tap on the shoulder, would you consider? Thanks, Dom. You'd get Clover Moore's support, I think. Yeah, Dom. I'll tell you, I'll say no to you, and I'll tell you for why. I know my strengths, and that is not one of them. I really am against personalities going up for things just because they've got a bit of a following. I don't know enough

about how it all works. I don't think my skin is thick enough for it. And I know that I'm best at chatting with people, selling an idea or being around them or bringing people together or hosting stuff and doing heaps of stuff for free because I feel like I want to. I know that's my strength. Yeah, no, that's not my bag at all. And beware people who do do it just because they were good at something else maybe. It's unusually politics to find people who acknowledge that they aren't amazing. Like every profile of a politician tends to have it at some point, you know, at the age of 10,

And he was being announced that they wanted to be providence. What I love about Helen Haynes when you talk to her is that she was a midwife for many years and worked in hospitals for many years and has this incredible career, but also went to Sweden and studied Uppsala on environment. If you really, you can find people out there who are also incredible and they've done amazing things and maybe didn't go to all the right schools, et cetera, but, um, and know how to talk the talk. I mean, Zali's an excellent speaker. Kathy's an excellent speaker.

They communicate beautifully. They're real. They're calm. And they've done something with their life before they wanted to be a politician. I think that's so crucial. I was talking to a friend on the weekend who had privilege of being in the first few focus groups that they ever did on Zali Stegel. And after the first one, they did it.

And they got all these sort of like basically Liberal Party voting mums. They all knew Zalie Stegel. Like all them knew her, not just knew of her, knew her. Because they're all in the electorate. Like she was a bit of a sort of star of the electorate. And even the ones who'd gone in going, no, I'm a staunch lib, was saying, oh, yeah, actually, I probably will vote for her if she ran because blah, blah, blah. He said that night, he went out of the focus group, he immediately said, how do I place a lot of money on this candidate winning? And actually being, having respect for and knowing the person who represents you personally, that's such a novel idea.

Very novel. He said in his entire political career, he'd never, ever witnessed such enthusiasm amongst the people who are supposed to be voting for the other side. It's amazing what can happen if an MP runs who actually wants to better the area they're representing and is from that area. But also the people, you know, Mark Kelly, who's in the podcast in the first one, he talks about how conversations start happening and they'd meet and at the beach and every Sunday they'd go for walks and people were going, oh, I know.

you and I know you and I get to get when do we do that and it's really hard at the moment because of COVID but it's remembering that there's something in there was something in the air then and I guess too I think of the women's marches this year there was electricity in the air there were people who had never marched before that were there at those marches and so I think there's a rumbling going on and the system doesn't work when you watch misrepresented and you watch them argue in that Westminster system over each other any designer or architect would say how's that room built for anyone to really solve ideas. Whenever we encourage people to solve an idea, being in a drama class, you sit in a circle, be it in any other cultures, our incredible indigenous cultures, you know, you're in a

circle, you're in a group. When you go to Alcoholics Anonymous, you're in a circle. It's all about facing each other and working the problem out. What the hell are they doing? Get out, get in the bin, won't have it. I'd love to see the Healing Circle version of Parliament. And I think they'd have to stand up so that the people who are too drunk to vote actually just fall over. I think that'd be very helpful. The other side of sort of decline of politics in Australia is the role of the media. Ninety-seven percent of the commercial news media in terms of actual eyeballs and attention span is divided up between Murdoch, Channel 9 and Channel 7. That's 97% of the commercial news media. Now, like, are you going to, in your podcast, look into that? I'd love to do that.

The trouble with them, we've got a wish list of what we'd like. And also, I want to point out, They're not all extremely well-known people. I didn't want to do a podcast where you're like, oh, someone famous, someone famous, someone famous. With home delivery, I've done that and I've really enjoyed it. And it's great, but I sort of wanted to uncover people that we may not know. But also, how fast are things changing, right? Like when I taped the initial podcast, Gladys was still in charge of New South Wales.

Now she's gone. Things are changing so quickly. I sort of don't want to book anything too far in advance because I'm doing it monthly. It's out once every four weeks. But I definitely want to look at that idea of media, maybe find some of those voices out there that call it into question and also, again, ask the simplistic question of how am I the ordinary person supposed to see through all of that? Of course, I do see through some of it because I have a critical thinking brain and I can figure

it out. But also, again, so many political podcasts you're like, how do you know all this stuff? What are you talking about? How is that not in the papers? It's gossip. It must be gossip. They know what's going on down there. They just don't tell us.

That is terrible. is shocking. And I'm not quite sure what to do about that. None of us are. So if there are people out there who are starting to be a bit more difficult, if all of a sudden we have this election and there's a huge minority and there's 10 independents on the crossbench, good, make a mess, make some chaos. Let's change it. Let's find out what else it can be because I don't see any other alternative in terms of climate change. It's really scary and we need to make some bold decisions and no one is up there painting a vision that counts, that could work. Other people are, our scientist friends and our environment friends,

but not the people who should be. I don't want those people there. I want to be excited and forward thinking about what's happening, and I'm not going to say hopeful. To be fair, Julia, like there has been a lot of action on climate change from this current government. Susan Lee has approved three coal mines expansions in the last term of government. I mean, last month, it is real action on climate.

She's really committed to changing the climate. Yeah, that's right. Committed to change. I'm interested to see, too, with people like, you know, with Susan Lay doing something like that, or, you know, Jeff Kennett, who kind of did some horrible, terrible things in Victoria, and then he gets to be the head of Beyond Blue. I'm interested, too, in this redemption idea. It's like, so can everyone be, is every, does everyone deserve redemption?

Well, I don't know, maybe, but I'm sorry. I'm going to find it really hard to ever look at you in a different way, any of them. that are there now, the Susan's, the Scots, that all that, to kind of go, you can't, like Matthias Corman now being a champion of climate, now he's in Belgium where you can relax and enjoy himself and have great food, it's like, oh now, but not for us, for us, no. If we underperform in the average job that an Australian has,

hospitality, retail, whatever else, you are dismissed. You're not sent to the manager position. Well, didn't happen for Scott Morrison after Tourism Australia, did it. I figured out the other day, by accident, that a friend of mine who was two years lower than me at high school, he went to our brother's school. He went to Sydney Boys, Scott Morrison,

and I went to Sydney Girls, and I didn't mix much with the boys, so I didn't really get them. But this friend of mine was a prefect, and I said, how would you describe him? God, you knew him in your 11, year 12, and she said, one word, unremarkable. Brutal. Imagine that that's all we need as a leader, someone unremarkable.

So, Julia, this sounds fabulous. It's going to just pop up in the irrational fear feed, isn't it? people don't have to look for your specific podcast, it's just going to arrive. Yes, because if I'd done something under the ABC auspices, I would be getting into trouble for saying anything political under that. Also, you can't say what you want. The beauty of Dan I'llick saying to me, you can come on once a month and say what you like.

And I said, great. And I'm just giving it a try for six episodes. And I love podcasts. I'm a mad listener of it. I prefer it to music in the last two years. I don't know why. But there's so much to think about. listen to and I guess too I just want to encourage in in each episode to say to people read something

you wouldn't normally read you know read something that's long form just do one a day you know try and listen to different things to have one conversation with someone about what's coming up and about the election rather than just complaining about COVID people need to engage in it and not be afraid to and and if it's about giving them permission then maybe that's what you have to do it does sound inspiring and um I mean we generally just complain about politics but I guess there are other approaches. They're engaging with it. Making a podcast, it's one in a million

thousand different things you can listen to, but I felt so angry and frightened that I thought I've got to put my energies into something. And this is, especially when, you know, we were just in our, you know, second year of, um, hell. Hell, and not knowing. I mean, Gabby, you and I would have cancelled so many music gigs

and work gigs and I'm supposed to be on tour in around the country with Rock Quiz at the moment. Second year it's been cancelled. So much has been cancelled. cancelled. And so to be stuck at home, it was a good thing to put time into. But I'm only doing one a month, so I'm not polluting it too much out there in the world. Oh, it's better than us doing it a daily podcast. We should have done that. It sounds like a good schedule. I'm glad to hear rock quizzes coming back too, because dear God, live music in this country needs attention

and support and the love that you and the team give it. Well, we don't make it for TV anymore, but we do certainly do it live every 18 months or so. And we were supposed to do a tour last October. We had Bookings everywhere all around the country. That's sort of compromised, as you know. And I just find it so stressful every time on social media seeing another musician going canceling these days, postpone, changing. I mean, that's all agents and managers and musicians are doing at the moment

is just moving their timetable. I mean, it's cancelled culture gone mad, really. It is. It's outrageous, Charles. But when it comes back, it's going to go off. Well, I hope so. You've got two years of music to critique, Julia. And, well, just, we've got so much to miss.

I'm looking forward to those first few gigs where everyone's standing around going, what do we do again? How does it work? Don't get too close up. You know, fucking kiss me. You know, whatever. You pick up the saxophone and sit in the session band going, this doesn't feel right. It's going to be great when we finally get there.

Julia, thank you so much for joining us and all the best with the podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I love what you're doing because, you know, you've also got to bend it and look at it and twist it and talk about it and then laugh at it. but um onwards and upwards let's create a little bit of chaos indeed so it's called julia zimero asks who cares turns up once a month in the irrational fear podcast feed so you probably already subscribe to that because you know danny co-hosted our show for a few weeks we love them very dearly and so that's all you got to do thanks julia thank you thank you for joining us for the chat with julia thanks to julia

as well for doing it and to daniel litch for organizing it um aggies from red microphones we're part of the icast credit network and tomorrow we'll bring you will will endison Oh, shall we? Yeah, let's do it. Why not? Catch you then.