The Chaser Report - Boomgate Gate | Sami Shah

Episode Date: June 30, 2021

We ponder how the government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on car parks, and find out what Australia's front of the queue for – it certainly isn't vaccines. Plus, Sami Shah lives it up in Melbourne while the rest of the country asks what isn't wrong with Victoria? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Welcome to The Chaser Report for Thursday, the 1st of July 2021. The first Chaser report of the brand new financial year. Dan Illich, happy financial new year. Thank you, Dumb. I've already gone out yesterday and bought 10 bits of electronic equipment I didn't need. A big shout out to all the sole traders out there. Hey, yes, it's the time of year when everyone's happy except an accountant.

I should mention this is the Delta variant of the Chase Report podcast. Dan Illich is my co-host for this and next week from the A Rational Fear podcast. Dan, we've got an accounting story top of the show today. Yeah, a pretty interesting story that's come to light this week. I want you to cast your mind back 100 years to 2019. There's one thing that this government hates doing more than their job, and that's being scrutinized by anyone when they do their jobs. Now, this week it came to light that the day before Scott Morrison,

called the 2019 election, he spent $660 million on a critical bit of infrastructure. Can he guess why that infrastructure is dumb? Oh, I think maybe the metro rail line in Victoria that everyone was talking about, the very, very exciting infrastructure that would transform a generation. Well, it's actually, it's adjacent to that, like literally. It is about car parks. He spent $660 million on car parks, $660 million of critical infrastructure, Dom, that will be built in places where the only thing that's critical,

is the need to win an electorate. How do you spend that sort of money on car parks? Like, is this the largest multi-story car park ever constructed? Does it stretch all the way to the moon? Like, can you catch a plane from the top of it? This is coming from the Auditor General. Now, the Auditor General says that, you know, it was kind of split in Sydney.

Six car parks went to Labor, six car parks went to the LNP. But in Melbourne, it was slightly different. In Melbourne, five car parks went to Labor and 25 car parks were put in coalition seat. in Melbourne, 25 car parks. And there's one electorate in Melbourne, Goldstein, that got six car parks. A whole electorate got six, six car parks as part of this scheme.

One thing I know about Melbourne people is they love to commute by bike. As far as my maths works out, they have more car parks than actual spaces for actual cars. It's very exciting. That's Tim Wilson's electorate, isn't it? It's formerly known as Freedom Boy. He's the man who loves the freedom to park in a big old car park. He wants an investment car park as well. Yes, that's right.

He wants everyone to be able to use their super to build a car park if they were. Okay, so here's what the Auditor General said. In total, 47 car parks were spent as part of this $660 million, right? But how many of those car parks do you think were given the green light as per the Department of Infrastructure's recommendations? Approved the day before the election. I'm going to assume, Dan, that the highest standards of probity were in place with public funds. and therefore all of the expenditure was approved by an independent body with no political interest.

If you want to think that independent body was Scott Morrison and Alan Tudge, then yes. That is the independent body and none of those car parks were approved. They chose to put car parks willy-nilly in marginal electorates. I think there's a couple of problems with this. Okay, first of all, the media are calling it car park rorts, which is so boring. You know, when Boomgate or Boomgategategate was just sitting right. there. Also, Michael West is calling it pork and ride, which is delightful. That's pretty good. It's not for this time slot. Also, here's the other thing we know

about the auditor general, right? This is the independent public servant to the parliament. They kind of acts like choice magazine for parliament. They look at everything that's being spent and they kind of say whether it's value for money or not. And they've been in a bit of a role over the last year or so. It was the auditor general that pointed out the $100 million sports rorts was a bit unsportsmanlike. It was the auditor general that suggested that Peter Dutton's $5 million community safety grant was a bit suss. It was the Auditor General that referred the infrastructure department to the AFP. Yes, an entire government department to the AFP when they spent $30 million on a bit of land

for Sydney's new airport that was only worth three. Yeah, that's a $27 million, whoopsie. No wonder you pay $8.50 for a long black at an airport. Now, would you believe that the government doesn't necessarily agree with all this criticism? Yes, yes, I would. And in fact, I would strongly suspect that at this point, plans are being drawn up to convert the Auditor General into a car park. That is absolutely correct.

The government, which also pays the budget of the Australian National Audit Office, they're actually cutting their budget by $7 million. Well, car parks don't build themselves in a marginal electorate. You have to ask yourself, you know, now the Auditor General can relax and put those spreadsheets aside. If a bag of money falls in a marginal electorate and no one is around to audit it, does it make a headline? That's the big question.

I mean, the big question is why don't I move to a marginal electorate? That's clearly where the good stuff is, not here. That's right. You should pitch yourself to build a car park that you can convert into a nice house. My best chance of having a property of my own. All right, coming up on the show, we're going to look at all the things that Australia is front of the Q4. Vaccines, not so much, but there are other things. We'll get to that.

And we talk with Sammy Shah from Melbourne. And I think he's going to have a bit of a gloat at Sydney's expense, too. But first, let's go to Rebecca Deanna Muno in the Chaser Newsroom. The Liberals have silenced calls for an inquiry after an audit found they provided funding for 27 car parks in marginal electorates. The government has said they are far too busy for an inquiry due to how occupied they are with rolling out the vaccine to marginal electorates. The Australian government has announced new restrictions for international arrivals

in an effort to prevent unnecessary spreading of dangerous variants. All LMP donors are now forced to cut back to one private jet flight in and out of the country per month. In celebrity news, Gladys Berejiglian has uninvited Scott Morrison from her birthday party after a public falling out between the two. The feud began when Scott said people under 40 could receive AstraZeneca, which Gladys then said was dumb. Then Scott said, your face is dumb and then Gladys said,

I know you are, but what am I? TMZ have described the gossip as spicy as Oreos and milk. That's the latest news you can't trust from the Chaser's home news desk. I'm Rebecca Dayuna Muno. What's better than a well-marbled ribby sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribby sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribai you ordered without even leaving the kitty pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered.

Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fee. fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. This episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by Tourism Tasmania. Don't you dare think about coming in? Yeah, who's laughing about being an island now, you diseased fucks? Our good friend, Sammy Shah, we talked to him several times during the Melbourne lockdown. Be fair to say that Charles and I, we weren't entirely kind, so it seems like a good time. I'm Dan to get Sammy back. Hi, Sammy.

Hello. Here's the thing that I just want to clarify something. I never had a problem with Brisbane per se, Brisbane, the city. It's the entire state of Queensland that I load with every fiber of my being. I just want to clarify that that's who I hate and not the city of Brisbane. It's a good city. Yeah, I'm sure it's great. You know, the river's a bit brown, which is a weird color for river to be.

But still, it might be the only brown thing in Brisbane these days. I want to point out one thing. You know, now that Sydney is going into lockdown, there seems to be a lot of like Sydney siders suddenly saying, oh, we were never mean to Melbourne. We never mocked Melbourne. It's so terrible of Melbourneians to now be taking this attitude towards us. And there's a few virtue signaling Melbourne lefty bores who are like, oh yeah, we're not upset with Sydney at all and we have no ill will towards Sydney. The fact of the matter is, and I remember distinctly, a lot of Sydney siders saying things like what's wrong with melbourne why is melbourne always going into lockdowns there's a lot

of gloating i came to sydney right after melbourne lockdown ended and the amount of self-righteousness i encountered was high even for sydney's normal levels of self-righteousness and so for us now here in melbourne to be denied the opportunity to tell sydney to go fuck itself and maybe it's about goddamn time. You guys stared into the mirror for two weeks. Now all of a sudden we're being told, oh, we shouldn't do that? Fuck you, Sydney. Sammy, you're so unkind. You have such a short memory. When you came to

Sydney, I took you to lunch to show you what a cafe was like. I do remember, Dan, I was a little insulted when you held up a muffin, pointed to it and said, Sammy, in our part of the world, we call these muffins. And then swoosh it in my face. Hang on a sec. I remember a huge

self-righteous wave out of Melbourne going, you can't possibly understand what we've been through. A lot of us accepted that and we're very, we were on eggshells around Melbourneians. There were no eggshells. This, okay, for starters, that's not self-righteousness. That's defensiveness. You're confusing the two because it's a city that lacks nuance because your radio presenters include people like Alan Jones and Kyle and Jackie O. As a city that only speaks in one by decibel, I understand that's subtle. of language might be lost on Sydney.

However, worth saying that, no, you can't understand what we went through. And even now, watching Sydney Siders, three days in or four days in going, I can't handle this anymore and I'm talking to myself, you bunch of weaklings, grow up and put on some big boy pajamas. But, Sammy, I've walked to every cafe near the beach where I live. We've suffered too, Sammy. No, and look, that's fair. Right now, we're suffering here in Melbourne because we're missing out right now.

because, you know, Queensland is going to lock down. New South Wales is in lockdown. We've got, you know, South Australia's, I think, in lockdown. We have a W-A's in lockdown. Everyone's going into lockdown. And here in Melbourne, where we did it hard for the rest of the country to have it easy, it turns out you didn't appreciate it. So fuck all of you.

I'm going to go to a really expensive cafe, eat lots of food and go attend an orgy or two because I can. But meanwhile, I want you to look at your hands every time you sneeze into them. Oh, gosh. Sammy, I'm really excited. to come to Melbourne tomorrow and spread my COVID down. Today's episode of The Chase Report is brought to you by Tourism Tasmania. From our boring wilderness to our uninteresting museums to our flavourless COVID-free air,

there's absolutely nothing here worth visiting for. Tasmania, say the fuck away. Biggest story in the country is still definitely the vaccine rollout or lack thereof. And to discuss what's going on, three people who can potentially get the AstraZeneca vaccine, They're not just you, Dan, but also two of our interns, Gabby and Alexa, hello, a potential vaccine ease. Hello, hello, hello. Yeah, the vaccine rollout's been a bit of a PR disaster for Scott Morrison, right? I mean, yeah, last year he said we'd be at the front of the global queue for vaccines.

A sovereign vaccine plan, which will keep Australia right up the front. Obviously, a year has passed and we've barely vaccinated, you know, 10% of our initial target. And we're now number 113th in the world. one behind Kazakhstan and Cambodia, which, you know, looks kind of bad. It looks a little bit bad, but Scotty's a marketing guy, right? He hired so many PR advisors. There's about 30 and growing.

So chances aren't one of us will end up working for him. So I think this is a good opportunity to maybe practice some spin. You know, if we could work out other things that we're the front of the queue in to kind of detract from being at the back of the queue for this specific issue. That's a great idea. So let's go around and have a bit of a brainstorm. No one? Well, I mean, we're currently at the front of the world for methamphetamine addiction. Yeah, excellent. That's great.

Gulling it. And of course, if we're in front of the world for methamphetamine addiction, we must be front of the world for unbelievable strengths. Yeah. But, I mean, to be fair, we achieved that in April 2017. It's an old news. It's old news. But it still takes a lot of work to stay at the front. I've got one from this week. We are definitely front of the queue at nudist startled by D. requiring police rescue. It's a queue of one, but we're at the front of it. It's amazing to me that we're at the front of that queue

and not like anyone in America. Or Norway. A lot of like the more deer populated places, it's harder to be nude outside. It's a lot colder. Quite frankly, the more dear populated places, those people are used to deer. And Australians just aren't used to deer.

Not startled, I suppose, yeah. Yeah, I think we're soon to be the front of the queue for fossil fuel-run petrol cars. Because the rest of the world is moving to electric cars That's pretty amazing Think of all the money will lose I've gone really meta And I said we're at the front of the queue

For waiting to find out Where we actually are in the queue For the vaccine rollout Yeah I think we're also at the front of the queue For saying we're at the front of the queue And then not being at the front of the queue We are the silent K at the front of the word queue

No? All right We've got the world's largest herd of camels Oh The number one in Camelhurts We're actually beating Saudi Arabia But I guess they're focusing I mean they vaccinated more people than us

So maybe that's what they were doing Instead of brilliant camels I like the research on this I like the research We're in front of the queue Pretty much every rugby league world of rugby league No we're not No way

New Zealand's always at the front of that queue I think after this week We're clearly number one in the world For completely unnecessary car parks For all the fossil fuel cars that we've got We've got more car parks per car than any other country in the world. And we do very cool stuff in those car parks. You know, we're coming first in the world in burnouts.

Yes. At Suminat's 2019, we had 126 cars doing burnout simultaneously. Oh, my gosh. Actually, coincidentally, Saudi Arabia was also the second runner-up. They had 119 cars. So we're beating Saudi Arabia on all fronts apart from vaccines. Well, speaking of burning, we're actually at the top for an amount of burnt land. So it's good to know that, I mean, COVID does die.

at specific heat temperatures. So I suppose a fair amount of this country would be considered sterile considering the bushfires we've had in the past. Maybe if we just had, I mean, if we just burnt the entire country down, COVID would be eradicated. Well, did you not know?

That's actually the ALP's policy for being COVID. Vaccinating. They just want to start a fuckload of bushfires. And they'll be like, great. Clean slate. Yeah. I would think New South Wales as a state is the front of the queue when it comes to pokey machines.

We've got more pokey machine. in New South Wales than there are in Nevada, in America. The poker machines are actually great for social distancing because the more that we have, the less we can contaminate each other by using each other's poker machines. That's true. You get like three each. If we are at the front of the queue for poker machines,

we also must be at the front of the queue for free drinks. Which we then pay for out of our pokey losses. Yeah, that's right. Australians, though, top of the list, are definitely first in the queue to ridicule their Prime Minister when he says bullshit things like We're at the front of the queue for the vaccines when it's just a lie. I've never known a country to just take the pierce more than we do.

So that's nice. That is true, and that's some consolation. You know what else we're at the front of the queue of? I hate to mention it. Unused AstraZeneca that hasn't been injected into anyone's arms. Sorry. Well, if they just simply labelled, relabeled AstraZeneca as first-time house deposit, I would go and get one.

This episode of The Chaser Report, is brought to you by Tourism Tasmania. If you come here by boat, you will not be settled here. Tourism Tasmania. Dan, I don't know whether you've heard this, but boomers are refusing vaccines in droves. They're worried about side effects, blood clots, all these sort of stuff. But there is another dangerous liquid that they're more than happy to inject into their body

despite the side effect. Wine. It has the exact same short-term effects next day hangover might end up huddled in bed with a headache, plus it also has a huge mortality rate. But nobody has a problem with wine. So clearly vaccines just have a branding problem. So he asked our legendary chaser interns to make an ad that would encourage the over 50s to get on the AstraZeneca.

Let's have a listen. Imported directly from the hills of Oxford, chilled to perfection and served in a petite glass vessel. The new 2020 vintage AstraZeneca is a must-try refreshment for a well-aged immune system. With an initial sharp bite, followed by a robust antibody, the AstraZeneca is the vaccine of choice for the lady or gentleman with a more refined platelet. With limited supplies, this collector's edition vaccine is only available for a limited time and is a great addition to any collector's white blood cellars. AstraZeneca, the exclusive vaccine for the mature customer.

Dan, before we go, there's a headline here that will want to throw at you. I'm not entirely sure what's going on. Big Bird Bandits front court over stolen $160,000 Sesame Street costume. This is yesterday. Apparently, a criminal gang stole an incredibly valuable big bird outfit from a circus in Adelaide. What counts for entertainment in Adelaide these days? I know. And, you know, $160,000 is actually the late fee at my local costume shop.

So it's completely understandable. It's not an outrageous amount of money at all. I love this story because the guys left a note behind. behind when they abandoned the big bird costume. And in the note, they were so sweet. Not only was it filled up with puns, but their argument was so simple. It was, you know what, we're having a rough time.

We're just trying to cheer ourselves up. And I think that is a great excuse for anything. Like murder, you know what? I was having a rough time. I just wanted to cheer myself up with a bit of murder. You know, I was having a rough time. I just wanted to cheer myself up by building 47 car parks in marginal electric. Yeah, I don't know.

I would have thought that shit puns. should give you a worse sentence, Dan. They wrote, sorry to be such a big burden. I reckon life for that. Yeah, yeah. I think comedians everywhere would absolutely agree with you. In the court today, the curfew and a ban on the two men contacting each other was removed from their bowel conditions, but a ban on them attending circuses remain.

They're banned from the circus. They can no longer go to the circus. I think that's a win for them, to be honest. Although I haven't been to the Sesame Street Circus, I must say, though, that the notion of a big bird ban it. I mean, if that's not a spinoff movie, then Hollywood's not working the way it's meant to. Big Bird just goes on some sort of crime spree, stealing rubber duckies with Ernie. I don't know what's going on. That's great. You know, Marvel are always looking for their next franchise. This is going to be a great way for these guys to make their $160,000 back, write a screenplay

and sell it to Marvel. I don't know if you saw a picture of these guys, Dom, but they look like absolute rock stars. It looks like client liaison. We're going in court. They look like a synth band. They've got it all. In fact, frankly, they'll be probably presenting this podcast by the end of the week. This story is brought to you by the letter B for bail. Yes, indeed. Okay, that's all we got time for today. But we're back tomorrow.

In the meantime you can get news anytime you like at chaser.com. com. You follow us on all the social platforms that you wish. Don't forget a rational fear, Dan's podcast available every week. So I'll subscribe to that if you haven't already. And leave us a five-star review with the code word from today. Please give me a free car park. Or, can I throw another code word in there?

Have that it. Boomgate gate. Oh, boom gate gate gate. Very nice. Very nice. Our gear is from Road microphones and we are part of the ACAST Creator Network. See ya. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

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