The Chaser Report - BREAKING NEWS: QUEEN DEAD

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

The Chaser bring you a somber news day, as we announce the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Perhaps preemptively, we don't know. Also John brings you the latest stories from Scott Morrison's photo-op adventures, and Charles has a theory about Australia's rising tensions with China. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to this very somber edition of The Chaser Report for Tuesday the 22nd of February. That's right. I'm Charles Firth. I'm here on this somber occasion with Gabby Bolt and Alexer Vulevich. Wait, is she dead? The Queen may or may not be dead. We don't know. You keep whipping out the song and I keep getting sad for a moment. And then I'm like, oh, no, you don't actually know.

Well, the thing is, yeah, we don't know because we pre-record podcasts. The podcast aren't live. So by the time people listen to this, it could well be. Please rise for the royal changing of the bed sheet. Alexa, you look really sad. I'm sad that she's not currently dead. Well, we don't know. Right, right, right, right, right.

She's both dead and not dead. She's stroding as queen. Yeah, gotcha. I'm sick of her and her dying. I was fucked over by her pretend death a couple of years ago, and I'll never trust a queen's death ever after. How can you get, but she's not dead. How did you get fucked over by her dying?

Because we made this YouTube video where we went to North Korea, and it was a big deal for a very, very limited amount of time. And the project was to get a haircut. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. And the project was like, come on Thursday night, like, we'll interview you guys, it's going to be great. That afternoon, the Palace had some stupid announcement, like, oh, they want a press conference at this time, and they only do this when someone's dead.

And they had the press conference, they didn't announce anything. But in that short block of time, it was like, sorry, we can't have you on the project. We need to follow this old dickhead and check if she's dead or not. Yeah, right. Presumably got invited back on the program. No, no. You just never went back on the project. like they were super like ramping up tensions in North Korea.

And then by the time the queen stopped pretending to be dead, the tensions went down as well. Coincidence, I think not. I think it's fair to say the whole world is on tender hooks. We're either incredibly glad and happy that she's still alive or incredibly sad and depressed that she's still alive. Yeah. Good delivery.

But coming up on the show, we're going to talk about, But Scott Morrison, he got into trouble over the weekend. Again. For going and welding some stuff. Yep. I think we've all probably seen the footage by now. Yes. We're going to just...

Welding the prayer room shut. And also the whole conflagration in rambling up tensions with China, we're going to actually have a look at some of the tactics that the Chinese are using against our patriotic people. You know, patriotic planes. All the news says ramping up tensions, but they never clarify what kind. Like sexual? Yeah.

Now that's entertaining. Oh, with Dotto. Oh. Okay, with that image in mind, let's go to Rebecca Day and Muno with the Chastin News headlines. Her Royal Majesty, the Queen, has miraculously recovered from COVID since contracting it this weekend by offering the virus 12 million pounds to quietly go away. Coincidentally, the news of Queen Elizabeth's illness has resulted in a busy day for journalists across the globe

as they hastily add the addendum of COVID to the first sentence of their standby obituaries. After train outages across Sydney, Scott Morrison has blamed the New South Wales Trains Union for why he hasn't been able to get any work done for the last three years. Upon being informed that the delays weren't caused by a workers' strike, but by the state government, Morrison awarded Premier Perratae with Employee of the Month.

Opposition leader and Red Under the Bed Anthony Albanese has been placed onto ASEO's list of top terror suspects this week after shocking leaks revealed he once ordered Chinese takeaway. Urgent AFP raids on the Labour Leader's House have also confirmed further links to the CCP with fine china plates being located in his cupboards. Those are the latest half-cooked headlines from the Chesa Satire Bakery. I'm Rebecca de Unamuno. Okay, John Delmenico is joining us, but before we do...

Come on! You're so proud of that. The Queen may or may not be dead, we don't know. John, how are you going? Good. So related to people almost dying, someone decided to give Scott Morrison a welding gun on the weekend. Oh, good.

And that obviously, as everyone probably knows, was a disaster. Yeah. And why is that, John? He bragged that he knew how to weld and didn't need to be shown how to weld by the guys were going to show him. And he said that he's been on the tools before and then had to clarify that he doesn't,

that he's never actually worked with tools before. Yes, he has. He works with Peter Dutton, Josh Reitman. Yeah. He's well versed in tools. Well, he ended up not putting his mask down and almost blinding himself by welding directly in front of his eyes. Nice.

Yes. But before you go, what an idiotic thing to do, I would like to just do a counterpoint to that, John, which is, don't you think the problem is that when you're doing a photo op, the key is to be in the photo op. And the whole problem with welding with a mask on is that you can't see who's doing the welding. It could be anyone. And so the point is, like, it's not like he was going to ever do welding.

It's like with the cubby house thing where he didn't have the nail. Like, it's not like you're actually doing the thing that you're doing the photo op for. The key is to be in the photo. So in actual fact, as a practitioner, not of welding, but of photo opps, actually having the mask off was the correct way. to will. What scares me about this is Charles is making a joke here,

but I'm convinced that is 100% the rationale. They said we really need his face, no one's going to believe it's really him. Well, because Albo did the same photo op last year, but he put his mask down like an idiot, so no one remembers that one.

Yes, exactly. Yes. Labor and their chaos and mismanagement on photo ops. So now his face is going to be seared into our brains like a very, very bright line. Oh, shit. Well, Scott Morrison has actually defended what happened,

and it wasn't that defence, sadly. He said that it's a camera bubble issue to criticise his welding and that it's an attack on all apprentices around Australia to criticise what he did. Yes, exactly, because badly trained apprentices probably do do that. I think that this is his new strategy, right? Because that's exactly the same talking point. he had for the ukulele, wasn't it?

Which is anyone who criticises me for playing Cuba under the Sun where it's called. April Southern Cuba, good one, keep going. Is like anti-normal... Anti-dragon. Or anti-normal suburban dad just trying to... I suppose that's true. My dad was in a pub rock band, and I know that song Off by Heart because of that reason. Was he offended by people make fun of Scott Morrison?

Don't know, I haven't spoken to women or month. So the whole strategy for Scott Morrison is to do incredible acts of incompetence and just awful attract criticism and then say, well, hang on, I'm the victim here. Well, my thing with that specific response to the ukulele thing is if you actually read the full statement he said, before he got to the part where he claimed that every Australian's play the ukulele.

He also compared playing the ukulele on TV to welders welding. Yes. And that it's the exact same thing. Yes. Which I'm assuming was just his PR team foreshadowing this event. Yes. This is all very planned.

No, no, no. They are the same thing. They are the same thing. The segment of government is arts and infrastructure. They are the same thing. Yes. Well, I thought because Scott Morrison clearly just wants to go down this route of having the most memorable photo ops that's ever happened.

Do you guys have any ideas for jobs that he should do next to take it up to the next level? Like, I think he should be a pilot next and just get in the plane and give it a go without any help. I think base jumping, I reckon I'd like to see him base jump. If he's going to do all these sort of odd jobs, I reckon he should just just. come to my house and fix everything that's broken. I'd be happy to take photos of him while he does it, but I got like ants coming under my kitchen table and like cracks in the wall,

my bathtub has a crack in it. I once went down to the sewage plant. Nice. Bondi, North Bondi. Sounds fun. And because they were dealing with, they had a particularly big Fatberg. Do you know about the Fatberg?

Yeah, I remember the half of Fatberg. And the what? So the thing is that if too many people put fat down the drain, and oil down the drying. Oh, right. Okay. At the sewage processing plants, they get these huge iceberg-like things called fatburgs

that can't go through the filters and out to sea. And you're just stuck with this fatty lump of poo, basically. Great. And, well, I just thought it was very funny. So I asked to go to see it. I went and saw it. It's the elephant's foot of Australia. It is our Chernobyl.

But it did strike me that that is the perfect. job for Scott Morrison. Like, you know, like if you're wanting to really connect. Keep your workers' job. Connect to... Blue collar. I mean, the little party's already basically a fat burg. Yeah.

I think that's Freidenberg. No. One day you'll be like me, Charles. You'll get there. The Chaser Report. Less news more often. Now, guys. Oh, no.

No. Fuck, am I dead? Am I dead? I reckon he's serious this time. Yeah. The Queen may or may not be dead. I reckon Charles may or may not be dead by the end of this episode. But there is another big story breaking today,

which is that we may be very close to war with China. Oh. Because over the weekend, a whole lot of Chinese warships came into the sea between Australia and team warships. There's an exclusive economic zone. Yeah. I mean, they're allowed to be there. Let's be clear.

Like, it's not... Yeah. They haven't invaded. They were coming to monitor some of our military exercises. So we had some fighter jets buzzing over the top of them to sort of see what they're up to. And then the boats, the Chinese boats, pointed a one kilowatt laser at the planes.

And anyone who's gone down to Mascot Airport and done that, for cheap tricks, you know, with the little laser pointers when they were still very easily accessible and available and, you know, sort of it'd be funny, would know that actually you get into heaps of fucking shit when you do that stuff. You reckon these PLA people were kind of just pranksters? Is that what you're suggesting?

No, I actually have a theory about this. Clearly, what's happening is they're going to an election. Yeah. They can't run on their record. Yeah. So they have to make up a scare campaign. And, you know, clearly the good scare campaign is... The Labor Party is just in the pockets of China, and we should be at war with China.

Yeah. But the more they provoke China, the more it can be like, we're strong on China. Never mind the fact that they sold the Port of Darwin to China. Yeah. You know, it's just that's the narrative that they've got going, right? So my theory, and it can never be proven because everything will be secret. Of course. Because it's like defensive stuff.

Yeah. Is it apparently, even if you... you've got some foreign boats in your exclusive economic zone, you're not allowed as, you know, under the sort of rules of engagement, you're not allowed to then take your fighter jets and buzz the ships that are going around. Right. Because, hang on, there might be some secrets in our boat. So everyone respects this rule.

Like, it's basically a rule of the sea and rule of engagement. Right. But you don't go on, because Australia doesn't want, you know, every time they take out a boat, they don't want China looking over there. shoulders and same with America. So everyone respects this rule. And I think that what Australia was doing was that they were provoking China

by breaking that rule. And China just pointed a laser at them to go, fuck off. And like that'll never be proven. But it doesn't check out. I don't know. You guys probably didn't even, you weren't even born

when children overboard happened back in 2001. I thought you're about to suggest we didn't have laser pointers. Yeah, I was like, how dare you? I'd fucking love them. But also, we were also both definitely. alive in 2001. No, but you would have been like one year old.

No, five, but okay, go on. Back then, what happened is the government got a whole lot of photos of what looked like refugees throwing their kids into the ocean to save themselves. Literally, that's what it looked like. And there was this huge controversy. How can we trust refugees when they throw their babies into the ocean? That was literally the campaign that Howard won on. They're just that kind of people.

They're just the kind of people who do them. That's literally what it was. And it was only months later that it came out, oh, no, yeah, well, they cropped the photos, and everyone was trying to rescue this. You know, like, it was just, it was a complete fucking fraud. Yeah.

That's what the laser-point thing is. Like, no one can say it. The Labor Party can't turn around and go, well, actually, China's in the right. But my question is, what is the photo op that sort of solidifies this story? Because the problem at the moment is, you've got the frigates or the Chinese ships,

you've got the laser pointer. But it's all sort of happened off. the coast. There's no news corp journalist sticking around going, oh, look, here's a photo of. And it doesn't really work until you've got, you know, you want the photo of the kids being thrown into the ocean. You need that sort of thing. What is the 2001 election campaign photo? I think we've got it. I think Scott Morrison, the master of metaphor, has provided this for us when he blinded himself on purpose while welding, like stimulating what the pilots must have seen. He should get a photo of...

Him just staring directly into the laser. I stare the laser in the eye. Yeah, yeah. If you make fun of me, you make fun of every pilot that's ever... Laser shot into their eyeballs. Our gear is from road microphones and we're part of the ACAST creator network. I've just realised we're probably a little bit under time today. So, Alexa, can you just say like 10 seconds more of stuff?

Why don't you just play the Queen May or may not be dead? No, don't. Oh, come on. We've overused that, Alex. Like, really? Don't do it. I think it's fine. No, don't tell us.

It's the perfect doubt. Don't do it. No, don't do it. No, don't do it and just get... No! It's the only way, govy. I'm going to sick of this building!