The Chaser Report - Cold-Call Me Maybe

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Hi, I'm Charles Firth calling from the NSW ALP to ask for your thoughts on The Chaser Report. On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is "Great" and 10 is "The Best", how do you feel about The Chaser Report? Plus, who do you think is actually in charge of the government right now?---Listen AD-FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] 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 with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles, and today we have another instalment of Charles explains everything according to a theory that he had. So buckle up, listeners, because this is going to be, well, I don't even know what it's going to be, Charles. You promised to explain the inner workings of the federal government, and frankly, I am a Yes, that's right. I have special expert insight into this because I've got a little bit of confession about my past, which is not particularly savoury. I don't think it's going to make

anyone feel better about me. But yeah, I kind of know how the federal government makes its decisions. And let's just say, it's not pretty. If you're on the fence about Charles Firth to this point, you're going to jump off the fence. Definitely. So that, I mean, I'm here just for that. That's great. I've been wondering about you for at least 40 years. Well, I figure, look, it'll probably hurt the ratings long term, but this app is just going to be juicy as. Yeah, yeah, truth bomb incoming people after these ass. So I've got a bit of a confession, Dom. Back in the mid-1990s, when I was still at university, I used to have quite a lucrative job.

It paid, well, on weekends, it paid $15 an hour. It's slightly less. Whoa. I know. Back then. Money bans. Yeah. Three hours, $45. It was like fucking cash in the bank.

But, yeah, so, and the job was to do phone polling for the ALP. All right. You got a job with the Labor Party? A member of your family? With the New South Wales Labor Party. So this is like Bob Carr era. The only surprising thing is that it was only for three hours a week rather than your entire career. Oh, no.

It was three hours on Saturdays. I think it was two hours, maybe it's two or three hours. You got paid less during the week. Anyway, and the point is that, so early on, it was just all like, do you support Labor or liberal? It was fairly conventional polling. But as you got closer and closer to an election, the questions would change. Right.

And instead, from about a year out, what they would start doing is they'd start doing this thing called message testing. Right. And you'd run all these different phrases. Some of which would then turn up coming out of Bob Carr's mouth a few weeks later or even a couple of months later. But they'd be testing exactly what was most acceptable to the population, right? It was a sort of form of focus group testing, but done across sort of mass audiences. And what was quite interesting is because they'd been polling all these people for years, they'd built up data on what sort of voter each person was.

so they could put it in a grid and work out, oh, right, we need more of the sort of outer suburb racists on board and stuff like that. And then they'd message test for that and see which messages were most appealing for that. Charles, can I ask. We need more inner city lefties. Were you chose more lefties we needed for labour. Did they choose you for the job because of your resonant Bobcar-style radio voice? You know how Bobcar always had that very commercial. He should have been on AM on 2GB or 2UE.

And I can't believe you didn't have a career like that. Well, it's funny you ask because the whole methodology behind this polling was based on completion rates, right? Because actually the way I got the job was not because of my vast ALP connections. It was because I was doing statistics at the time at university. And they wanted people who understood statistics. And the whole point was you had to, because of the way, the methodology required you to actually make sure that as many people who you asked actually answered the thing. So it was actually based on the friendliness of your voice.

And in actual fact, it was quite a cruisy job because if, say, you got three people hanging up on you in a row, right, that was sort of burning three leads, basically. And these were valuable leads. Like, these were the people that they wanted to talk to. What they do is they go and say, go and grab a coffee, come back. You're obviously in burn mode at the moment. You've got to sound more friendly. You've got to be all relaxed and happy. And then people will want to talk to you for 10 minutes.

Get all grilled about your political opinions about things. So, yeah, no, it was, yes, it was entirely because of my wonderful outgoing personality that I got selected. This amazing. Hi, I'm Charles Firth from Labor. Have you heard some of our latest messages? Bob Carr is fantastic. And that other person, I don't remember who it was back in those days, is probably a criminal. Did you do push polling?

Well, it sort of veered into that territory. Would you change your vote if you knew that the leader of the opposition was a dangerous criminal wanted in six territories? It wasn't so much there. What it was was if I, like right before the election, when obviously it didn't really matter, you know, it was just literally ringing people up to ask them to vote for you, basically. But it became things like, if I told you that Bob Carr had introduced 1,200 more

frontline police, would that make you more? Or would that make you feel safer or less safe in the community? Well, actually, it depends who you ask. I'm sure there's people who would feel much less safe. If you're a criminal. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. If I'm running one of those Bitcoin in return for murders scams, anyway.

Anyway, so the point is, so that's just by way of context, right? Yeah. And it always struck me as, you know, a fairly expedient way of running a state, right? because the whole point is you're not in any way testing, oh, well, what's something that we want to do and we'll test that out and make sure it's popular enough. It was just literally testing out what people reckon, the vibe of the people and just making your messages as close to what's popular at the time, right? Like, it's a very, you're then at the behest of the people.

And if you look at the record of the Bobcar government, you know, it will go down in history in New South Wales as one of the worst governments. ever, because they never reinvested in anything. They never built a bridge or a highway or a train line or anything like that. They just literally listened to the public and messaged. That's all it was. It was just repeating back what people were talking about in their pubs. I think wasn't it national parks?

The one thing that was very big on national parks. Yes. They did. I can't remember much else. I mean, the perception was that a lot of the infrastructure degraded during those 10 years. that was discussed by a lot. Yes. Yes.

Because they, well, they wanted to make sure that they balanced the budget. Also, just to fact check here, didn't they build the airport line, which was a fantastic public sector invest? Oh, no, that was built by the private sector and cost quite a lot, wasn't it? Yes. Airport line had the Olympics. It was the era when they had all the, they built all these toll roads, which were in. Oh, the public-private partnerships. Yes, it was all the Macquarie Bank.

Like, a Macquarie Bank became very rich during the event. Anyway, this is. by way of getting into the topic of today, which is how does the federal government make decisions? And I want to say, like, I am pretty sure that they still use pretty much the same methodology that they were using back in the mid-1990s, right? Because if you think about it, the federal government is run by people who were trained in the 1990s in New South Wales about how to run the Labor government. Like, it's the same people, right?

Do you mind? I'm sorry to distract you. One very brief point. I was just looking this up because sometimes I like to fact-check what you say. Guess what Bob Carr did? Bob Carr was premier for 10 years, a very long time. Left at the time of his choosing in August 2005. Do you know what he did in October 2005?

A couple months after leaving office. Went on a holiday. He wrote a book about Abraham Lincoln, probably. He actually became a consultant to the private sector. Oh, about toll roads by any chance? He joined a company called, can you guess what it's called? Oh, is it called Macquarie Toll Roads? Macquarie Bank.

Macquarie Bank. It was. Oh, wow. He was part-time advisor on policy domestic international strategic issues. Greens Up House MP, said the Herald. Sylvia Hale said Mr Carr's appointment could be a conflict of interest, with Macquarie Bank having been an instrumental player in a host of major infrastructure projects, including the M7 Cross City Tunnel and expansion of Sydney Airport.

Meanwhile, opposition leader Peter Debenum declined to comment. So there you go. Interesting. And what's fascinating about that period is, as you say, he left on a high. He left at his own choosing. He was actually very popular. Yeah. And it was partly because of the methodology, which was he was just repeating back to

people, whatever they were talking about in the pub. And everyone went, oh, yeah, I really like that guy. He sort of. So the media management. Yeah, it was excellent media management. It was all media management. Didn't do a thing for anyone except for maybe McCrow Bank. but, you know, everyone else.

Trees. Sort of, you look back and you go, except for the trees. And tree, you know. Anyway, but just a little bit of a sidebar. Yeah, let's move on to the federal implications of all. Yeah. So, you know how the Labor Party seems to be going further and further to the right when it comes to immigration, all right?

So on Thursday last week, Tony Burke got up in the press club and announced a series of things. And you sort of go, oh, right, like, they're all fairly technical changes, right? But the whole vibe is we've got to make sure that we get the numbers down. It's all about we've got to get it down to 225,000 people, net immigration and stuff like that. Net overseas migration, yeah. 300,000 down to 225,000 is the ABC. We've got to get it down.

We're going, why are they suddenly so just focused on that? And I reckon it's because they've been doing this message testing and then suddenly in all the message testing, it's popped up. In all the focus groups, it's just popped up that, oh, this whole immigration thing, for some reason, don't really know why. Mass immigration seems to be on the radar of people. Why don't we, why don't we do a few policies around that? We'll just do some messaging around that, right? And it's entirely because Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce have been droning on about mass immigration for the past two years, like 18 months. They've just, that's literally been the thing that they've been talking about. But instead of going, oh, what do we think about immigration?

What do we think about, you know, how to sell the idea of a better Australia and, you know, build a bigger, brighter, better future for our children and everything? They just go, oh, well, all this messaging seems to be focused on the number of immigrants. You know what we should do? We'll come up with a policy about the number of immigrants. Because that's what the message has to be according to all our polling. So they literally tailwags the dog style thing where they're being led, like the agenda. Like the government of Australia is essentially one nation nowadays because they're setting the agenda. They're setting the agenda on mass immigration, not just for the Labor Party, even for the liberal party.

The Liberal Party then came out and said, oh, well, we're going to we're going to also pile in on this whole space. And it's because all their methodology would just be about listening to people. And instead of trying to convince them that, oh, no, actually, you know how, you know, mass immigration wasn't a problem a few years ago. and it wasn't even on the radar of anyone a few years ago, and now it is, maybe that's actually not to do with mass immigration being a problem, but actually because Paul and Hansen keeps on going on about it and actually decides to, you know, like,

no one in the federal government is making an argument about anything. They're just literally message testing and then running it by the thing. And then meanwhile, whoever's setting the agenda, i.e. one nation, gets to actually run the country. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happened. I, it's funny you say that. I listened to Tony Burke on The Guardian podcast in the past week. And it's interesting, he wasn't really challenged much by the interviewer.

But it's, he's actually, he's running a, he's spreading a fascinating rhetorical needle with this stuff where he's saying, no, no, no, we're not a country of mass migration. He's really would push back and rejected that. But then he's found all these arguments about why it's just sort of rational stuff like, stopping one of the things that they're trying to do, they've tried to find all these ways getting a total hundred down. They're coming up with a whole lot of announcibles around mass immigration so that they sound like they're doing the thing that One Nation wants them to do. They're falling into the trap because they're never going to beat One Nation on being

anti-immigrant. Oh, they're never going to bet that. But they're going, oh, well, maybe if we can sort of have some announcements will sound like we're as good as One Nation on getting rid of migrant. So it's interesting because the detail about how they're going to do that, how they want to get from 300,000 to 225,000, just get into sort of more serious mode, because I can't really, given my other jobs,

can't really comment on the, you know, who's right and wrong in this, unfortunately, which just makes me terribly boring in all conversations. But nevertheless, the detail about how they're going to do it. Even when you can comment. Fair enough. There's lots of little moments, little snapshots about how to do this. So one of the things they're going to do is stopping national students

bringing their families along. But there's also one of the main things... They're split apart those family. They're trying to... That'll help Australia. They don't want people applying for protection visas on short. No, no. We don't want them to be protected.

But if you listen to him talk on The Guardian podcast, as I did, there's lots of ways of explaining why this, why, where he's made a kind of reasonable argument about avoiding people applying for visas they were never going to get. And then they're here for eight years until the courts get around to rejecting it. Like, he's very careful. crafted a message such that the detail is something he clearly feels comfortable selling. So there's something quite interesting going on whereby the headline is massive cut.

And then when you look down at the detail, people who might be concerned about what this means, they've come up with ways of justifying the bullet points. That's exactly right. They've come up with a whole lot of acceptable announceables, right? That's what I'm saying. What's what I'm saying is so interesting is that they've drilled down. So it's not just a headline number, but they're trying to make everybody. whatever their politics kind of thing, feel like there's something for them, I suspect, in this

message. But it's so, it's so, it's the George Lackoff thing. It's like, don't think of an elephant, so everyone thinks of an elephant. Like, you're literally deciding, oh, okay, well, because we, it's like, oh my God, Pauline Hansen is totally setting the agenda. Every time we phone poll anyone, every time we do a focus group, everyone talks about mass immigration. You know what we should do. You know, like, a normal person would go, oh, we should set a different agenda. We should actually just, you know, actually set our own agenda about what we want to do with the country. But instead, they've gone, oh, you know what we're going to do.

We've got to answer to Paul Enhanson's agenda. And so, like, it's just this, it's this fool's errand to go on. This is the whole thing. You're right. It can be very, it can be very clever. And look, I have no doubt that it's sort of the methodology works, but it'll work until it doesn't because what's going to happen is, yes, they'll probably get another term in government because they've got all these tricky announcements that makes people, but no one

didn't solve anything. Like, the mass immigration thing is a trick because it doesn't solve anything. So why bother, like, going down this false track of stuff that's actually not going to work anyway? And then in the meantime, you're also doing things like really hobbling your university sector. Like, they're trying to take it down from, I think, 400,000 people to about 190,000 people on the thing through the family immigration stuff and everything like that. And you're just going, that's the second biggest industry in the world in Australia. Like, it's like would any other industry put up with being hobbled to the point where a third of your actual, you know, customers are going to be prevented from coming to your

country to be part of your. Like, it's just, would the mining industry put up with that sort of being punched in the face? No. Well, maybe that's what the university sector needs. It's to open its own minds with international students working in them while they study. Oh, I see. So we have mining universities. Yeah, so you get degree credit for your efforts.

The University of the Pilbara. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, I like that. But also things like the regional holiday visa, you know, the working holiday visa for backpackers. They're cutting the second year out. They're turning it into a lottery ride. And the whole way you used to get the second year was if you went and worked in the regions,

picked some fruit for Aussies and for Aussie farmers. Yeah. Then you get your second year. Now they're turning it into a lottery. So actually, people are not going to be incentivised to go and pick blueberries for us. Well, I mean, that's, that is good. We have too much fruit at our house. It's getting expensive.

There's too many blueberries for my daughters. Well, hang on. It'll be more expensive. No, we just won't eat them. You just won't eat them. Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry, girls. There's no backpackers picking the blueberries.

You can't have them. But Charles, just to come back at the broader point here, and I'm frustrated that I put a, but, you know, I'm restrained in what I can say for various reasons. But the, this is something we've seen from Labor before is that sometimes rather than having the argument about what's important and saying, no, no, no, for instance, I could say migration is good for the economy or whatever and actually argue with the premise that we need numbers to go down. And this, this reminds me about all the things to do with mandatory detention, right? But even though I'm saying accepting the premise. But that's my point. point is they could challenge the premise and say, no, numbers shouldn't go down. It's good when numbers go up, actually. And Tony Burke did say some things positive about migration, right,

but he's conceding the central point that numbers need to go down. Whereas, I mean, it was the same with mandatory attention when they're arguing about that. By saying we'll do the same sort of thing as the others, but not as much or something like that, they do concede the argument. This is the whole, this is the whole issue is that when you concede the ground about what the debate is about and what matters, when you're doing this, you're saying this is the thing that matters most and that you should judge us on. It's happening also with national security. Remember, John Howard always wanted the debate on national security because he knew that

if the argument was about national security, it didn't matter what Labor said, they were perceived as being worse, right? And so I wonder with this, does Tony Burke actually, is he just trying to shut down the issue or does he actually think that they can convince voters that Labor will do a better job of bringing down numbers than one nation? Because I suspect that will be quite, if you're going to vote on the basis of who's going to bring the numbers down, I don't know. that Tonya makes you, it's going to be Labor.

You're never going to win that. Yeah. You're just never, ever going to win that if you're Labor. So it's always the fight over. What's the debate about? What actually matters is the real fight in the election. But the problem and this, you know, uncovers the key problem, which is they don't know. They don't know what they want to do.

That's the whole problem. Albo, at his call, he just wanted to be prime minister. And he's got that. So he doesn't, there's nothing he wants, like, it doesn't matter. Like he can just literally message. And same with Bob Kay. Just message test his way. I saw it through.

I thought that I thought what Alba wanted to do is build a fast train, but apparently not during his lifetime. It would seem. Unless he's planning to live to 150. Look, I will have no. That is just completely unfair. I have been the high speed authority hub in Newcastle. Does the high speed?

Does it refer to the speed of the train or the speed of the build, Charles high speed? 242. That is high speed. That's high speed. Compared to 20. Compared to never. But Charles, just to go full circle on this one, there is a solution here,

which is that if Labor wants to win the next election, Tony Burke doesn't need to go down to the National Press Club and make these arguments that he's been making. He doesn't need to go on the Guardian podcast and try to convince people that he's got a middle path that's humane and strategic yet also brings numbers down. What they need is Charles Firth back on the phone polls. They need your voice and your convincing demeanor.

They need to pay you. And you're going, right, it's $15 an hour. They need to pay you $15 an hour to ring up photos and saying, have you heard about the wonderful job that Anthony Albanesey was doing? I wonder whether how much they pay now. It'd probably be $16 an hour, wouldn't it? They might. Well, we should look into that.

We are part of the Iconic less network. Are we? I don't know. Are we? Check the phone polls.