The Chaser Report - BOB KATTER'S CONFESSION - EXCLUSIVE!

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

Is Bob Katter in parliament illegally? You be the judge! In a Chaser Report first we have actual reporting to do.Lachlan has a spicy scoop after he had a phone call with the Member for Kennedy who made a (potentially incriminating) revelation about his legitimacy as a member. We checked with our lawyer, Michael Bradley, to confirm it's cooked.Lachlan and Jono are hosting 2SER on November 1st to complete the assessment this was all supposed to be for. Check it out here. 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 for Tuesday, the 18th of October. Very special episode today. I'm Charles Firth, and with me is Dom Knight. Hello. And our producer, Lachlan Hodson. Hello there.

How are we doing, Jans? Now, Lachlan, you've got a bit of a scoop. I do. I do believe that for the first. time in Chasea report history, we're about to report something, something exclusive. And in actual, I think, because this isn't another attempt to do producer notes, is it? Because if it is, there's been a terrible wind-up. I'm quite excited, so it's better not just be producing notes. No, no, it's absolutely not producer notes. Okay, so just for listeners

who don't know who you are, Loughlin. Yes. You are still studying at university, aren't you? I am. No, it's this very elaborate cover that I've worked on for stunts where I've gotten myself into tens of thousands of dollars of student debt just so that I can keep up this front of being a university student. Yes. And you study amazingly podcasting at university, don't you? I do indeed. And pray till, how are your marks going in that course? Somehow, I managed to score HDs in just about everything. So what you're saying is, if you want to get HDs at university, all you have to do is become a producer in the top 30 podcast of and do a podcasting degree.

And get nominated for Australian Podcasts of the Year, Comedy Award, 2021. Yeah, that's right. Hang on a second. We should enrol at university, Charles. Pretty much better than we ever did before. What's the scoop? So I had to do this assessment. I was doing it with a university friend of mine, John O Wakely,

where we just had to interview someone, anyone really, or on any topic of our choice, and we figured we'd get some pretty decent marks if we interviewed a public figure. Yes. And we're both interested in politics. Again, I thought that I could use some chaser connections to make things a bit easier.

Yes. Not easier. No, no, no. I wanted to work really hard on my assessment, if you're listening, Helen. Yeah, my lecturer. No, we thought, yeah, it'd be cool to do an expose on what goes on inside the mind of a politician.

And we thought that Bob Catter, he's known for clips like this. People are entitled to their sexual proclivities. Let there be a thousand blossoms, blooms, as far as I've consumed. But I ain't spend it any time on it, because in the meantime, every three months, a person is taught a pieces by a crocodile in North Queensland. So what goes on inside the mind of a politician? We thought, what goes on inside the mind of Bob Catter? Let's find out.

That is the most important question in the whole of Australia right now, that we could address, sorry. Yes. So I managed to book an interview with him under the guise of being a university student, not for the chaser, not for work. It was in my off hours on a Saturday. Good, because we would have docked your pay. And he has time when not representing people, Kennedy,

on a Saturday to talk to you. Yes, and I thought he might just talk to us for 15 minutes. It would be a nice casual conversation. Jono and I got off the phone to Bob Catter one and a half hours later. And we probably got in each about three sentences. Yes, I've heard he's a bit of a long talker. Yes, yes. Well, actually, I went to my lecturer after we did the interview,

and she just kind of went, yeah, no, Bob Catter is kind of known as a do not interview. figure, and I thought it'd be funny to let you guys learn the hard way. But that surely isn't the scoop. No. Bob Talker is known to chat. Yes. So this is what we... You just called him Bob Talker, which is a Freud slip that says at all.

I think Bob chatter is probably the better one. He could talk for Australia. Talk coherently, though. It might be more of a challenge. That would be a scoop. Yeah. So we were talking to Bob. It was very, very hard to get direct answers from him.

But John and I realized we could use this to our advantage. We could probably just let him trail down whatever detour conversationally that he wanted to go down. And if we just got a quick interjection in, we might find gold. So while we were on the phone to him, Bob Catter made a potentially self-incriminating statement. Do you want to hear it? Yes. All right. Ever since I was a little kid, about eight years of age, I refused to stand up for God save the king or queen or whatever it was then.

and for the rest of my life, I never have. You've got to sign when you go to state parliament, middle parliament, that we pledge our allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. I mean, do you seriously think I'm going to sign that document? And did you? I say, don't, and I write no on it. No one knows. I'm getting so old now.

I can probably reveal that. Wow. Did I just hear Bob Catter say that he doesn't pledge allegiance to Her Majesty, the Queen or indeed the King as it is now, when he takes office in Parliament? That reminds me of another media story this year. What I'm thinking of? Oh, are you fair chance, Dom, thinking of this?

I, sovereign Lydia thought, who solemnly and sincerely affirm to declare that I will be faithful and I bear true allegiance to the colonising, Her Majesty Queen, Elizabeth the Second. Senator Thorpe. She actually did it, didn't she actually pledged allegiance to the colonising queen? She actually was more elageful. Allegedful.

Allegedful than Bob Catter, who just refuses to sign it all. That's really interesting because not only because clearly there seems to be a little bit of double standard from what you're saying, but also it sounds as though Lydia Thorpe is a sovereign citizen, and that's a very weird political stance for a green to take. Now, so hang on, I'm in a little bit of two minds here, which is we've got a proper scoop on our hands here, which is Bob Catter allegedly, is not legitimately in Parliament. It has not legitimately been in Parliament for not just the 29 years he's stood as the member of Kennedy,

but for the 22 years where he was just a state politician as well. indeed, probably in the school council when he would say, but I'm in two minds because I kind of agree with him. Like, good on him for refusing to pledge allegiance to the fucking queen. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. So what we did, just to sort of cut the story to the chase, which is... Hey, no, you can't do that when you're talking about Bobcatter. We need to go on a very long diversion about building standards in North Queensland.

But we, so Lachlan did this interview last week and Lockland, you seemed quite animated about it. You were very amazed that you'd got this scoop. I know, yeah. And I always sort of poured a bit of cold water on it because I thought, you're not going to, like, you're just a uni student. You're not going to sort of get a proper scoop or something like that. So on Friday, we emailed a lawyer. actually Michael Bradley who's the lawyer at Mark Lawyers you probably follow him on Twitter if you're on Twitter

and asked him whether he thought there was anything in this quote and this is what he said what does it mean if Bobcat is telling the truth in that clip well yes he's saying the truth so what he's done and each time he's been re-elected to Parliament he stood up and made the oath of allegiance to the Queen and then signed the oath that written no, apparently, on the question of whether he was swearing allegiance.

So, sort of contradicting himself. But the Constitution requires all members of Parliament to make the oath both orally and in writing. They have to sign it. And it says that until they've done that, they cannot sit or vote in Parliament. If he's telling the truth, he's at no point been eligible to sit or vote in Parliament. Wow. And what does that do for all the legislation that's been passed by a single vote that has been party to? Does that unwind that legislation or is that just in the past?

I mean, look, as entertaining as that would be, probably not. It is arguably analogous to the situation where an MP gets declared ineligible under Section 44, for example, if there are foreign citizen, which has been very popular in recent times. And often that means that someone has been sitting in Parliament for quite a long time, it turns out, it was never eligible to be a member of Parliament in the first place. But the High Court ruled way back in 1907 that that didn't invalidate any of their votes in Parliament. It didn't really have a good reason for that other than it would have been terribly impractical. Any other way, I expect if after the court would say the same thing about this situation.

And so what's the consequence? for Bob Catter does he just have to put the piece of paper in front of him and say, well, come on, you've got to sign it or does he have to pay back all, you know, his wages for the last few decades?

No, well, again, Constitution actually provided for a fine for members who had been determined to be ineligible not with that sort of enforced but it doesn't say anything about this particular failing

It was just assumed that everyone would actually do it and presumably someone would actually read what they'd sign to make sure they hadn't been drawn a penis on it or whatever but clearly no one has been or Bob Catter is making shit up which is probably the most likely scenario but no he yes he could just fix it up going forward and they presumably would make him but otherwise yeah he's

he'll get off of fraud. Right. Well, and so that was my question was, is there any way to confirm that what he's actually said is true? Because I don't know how to get my hands on the pieces of paper that he's allegedly written no on.

Might be susceptible to an FOI claim, I would guess. But, yeah, presumably there's a file in the basement protected by a person who hasn't seen daylight for many decades. So is FOI, because I thought FOI only related to sort of ministerial,

things, not parliamentary documents? There was pursued in the parliamentary letters case. I mean, government is answerable to FOI. So, yeah, it's an interesting question

because, yeah, I mean, Parliament is not part of the executive legislature. Yeah, and because I know, like, the Morrison government used to, Morrison's own political staffers used to be under his whips name,

so their emails wouldn't be F-O-Iable. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, he started this new regime to sort of reduce transparency. Yeah, he also declared himself a cabinet committee of one. He could claim cabinet secrecy over everything he ever did or said. Wow.

Although, as it turned out, he was actually a cabinet of five. You think we have a legitimate scoop here? Yeah. Yeah, to the extent that he couldn't place any credence on anything Boggatter says. Oh, damn. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your time, Michael. Pleasure.

So there you go. We've got a legitimate scoop on our hand as long as Bob Katter can be relied upon on his word. I mean, I'm not known from my probing legal analysis or indeed my journalistic scoop, but I must say I was a little worried when the entire premise rested on something that Bob Katter said.

But it's certainly worth the question, isn't it? I feel like of the three of us right now, Now, I am currently the Bob Cutter expert because I had to talk to the guy for two whole hours on a Saturday. You're also the most legitimate journalist in this conversation. The fascinating thing about him, so we were interviewing him on the premise of, are politicians really down to earth, or are they in touch with their voters? And Bobcat has been in politics for 50-something years, and he keeps getting elected in the seat of Kennedy, so clearly he's got to be doing something right, right?

And it was really fascinating to sort of actually talk with this person who I've seen sound bites of, I've made jokes about, I've made headlines about, and just realized that not only was he not in touch with, you know, everyday sort of issues and politics, his head was not on touch with his shoulders. We asked him at one point, oh, Bob, could you tell us, please, just in one sentence, why do you want to be a politician? And he goes, oh, well, when the Romans were trying to capture Jesus, launched into a five-minute monologue, it was absolutely infatomable. Isn't that, I'm going to have to disagree with you there. Isn't that the perfect politician?

The politician who is so good at stonewalling, so good at not answering the question, that you just give up after a while, after two out. It seems like an eccentric tick, but it's actually a brilliant strategy. Yes. He's probably the savviest operator in the whole of it. Capitol Hill. Yes. But also,

Lachlan, I've got to disagree with you because yes, okay, he didn't want to play a ball with your inner city issues with the kind of things that you're concerned about,

but he's the only person talking about the threat of crocodiles in North Queensland. It's really the first thing in the mind of Kennedy voters when they enter the polls and reelect him once again. Well,

this is the fascinating thing. Do I think that Bob Catter will follow through and meet Section 42 of the Constitution by signing the document that he has to sign if he wants to be a minister? Or do I think that...

To be a member. Sorry, yeah, to be a member. Or do I think that Bob Catter will do a much more likely Bob Catter move, which is go, buggy is I'm not signing this thing and resign out of pure disdain for the monarchy. Yeah, and you will have brought down a staunch Republican. What a great legacy you've got, Loughlin. Well, as far as the university assessments go,

I think taking down a longer standing member of parliament should earn me some pretty good marks. I think you should get an HD. Unless the lecturer has to listen to your one and a half hour long time, which goes to fail. This also raises another question for me. We now have in the Albanese government an assistant minister for the republic who's sworn allegiance to King Charles or probably the queen would have been the queen. Is he a traitor to his own?

Let's get Matt Thistleweight. Let's get him on the podcast and we'll put to him that paradox. Yeah, because he is. That's treason. He should be arrested. And probably... He won't be able to have him on the podcast next week. He'll be locked up outside Bob Catter.

But the other thing that comes to mind is what happened in all the other cases of Section 44, people like Barnaby Joyce, they had to have a fresh election. Yes. So it is entirely possible. I know Michael Badley said that he could just sign it and fix it. Yeah. But that may not be ultimately the case. He may be found not to have been properly sworn in.

Yes. And there might be a by-election, in which case, I think Loughlin's getting sent up to Kennedy. Yeah, your punishment. He's you have to cover the Kennedy Bylet. I think, in fact, he should run. Oh, run. In Kennedy. Well, because clearly they needed an MP who actually knows how to swear allegiance

and be validly elected. It's a low bar and one that I think, Lockely, you could probably cross. Haven't I been through enough, guys? So, congratulations, Lachlan. Well done on the scoop. I assume this will be all over the press tomorrow. Oh, we're sure hoping, yeah. Oh, Bob Catter's people are calling me right now.

No, Bob, I haven't got an hour. and a half oh classic thank you Lockeland you did an amazing job and I'm genuinely embarrassed that someone's done some genuine journalism on this podcast our group is from Obe we're part of the ACAS creator network catch you tomorrow but I I spend it any time on it