The Chaser Report - Comedian V Economist V Chaser

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

Charles from The Chaser Report is joined by Adam and Thomas from Comedian v Economist for an Acast Crossover event!Together Adam, Charles, and Thomas cover everything you need to know on the federal budget. Petrol prices, slightly faster trains, cheap beer, and more! You can listen to this special episode on both The Chaser Report and Comedian V Economist. 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 The Chaser Report versus comedian versus economist. I actually have no idea who's fighting who right now, but it is tremendously exciting to be working today with Charles from The Chaser Report. Hi, Charles. How are you going? Hello. Very well. Excellent. For people who are listening to The Chaser Report, this is an episode of The Chaser Report. Don't be confused by the fact that there are other people.

this is still, I'm not being held hostage, is what I'm saying. This is why we need to bolster the cybersecurity budget because we've managed to infiltrate the Chaser report. Yeah, that's right. And also, and for people who are from like trying to listen to the Comedian versus Economist podcast, right, I should explain that the Chaser Report is an incredibly funny, amazingly erudite daily podcast that you can subscribe to

and then you don't have to listen to These shitty people, sorry, these boring people, you can just get, you know, undiluted chaser report. You don't have to wait a whole week to be bored. You can be bored every day with the chaser report. Exactly. Perfect. Nice.

Well, it is nice to be working with you, Charles. This is, yeah, I guess this is what we call a crossover episode, crossing the river, maybe even jumping the shark. My name's Adam. I'm the host of the comedian versus economist, podcast from Equity, Mates, Mears. that I host with my little older brother and real-life economist Thomas. Say hi, Thomas. Yeah, gooday, Adam.

How are we going? How, Charles? What's your role, Thomas? Your role is to be the boring one? Is that how it works? Yeah, I like to call it insight and analysis, but... Yep. Oh, right.

Yeah, you're now it at first time, Charles. The boring one. I try and make the boring interesting, which is incredibly difficult, but yeah, that's... My role on the Chaseraboard is to be the eye candy. The eye candy? Yeah, yeah. I provide all the sort of beauty and handsomeness that our listeners demand. Really shines through on a podcast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Explain to a sequin bikini you've worn to the recording. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. If only people could see. You look amazing. I'm dressed by Suzanne today. It's just a thing of an up market.

I'm dressed by Yves Saint-M-Wan today. That's right, exactly. So, look, we're joining forces today. We're going to revel in the world. the glory that was the federal budget that happened last Tuesday, lots to pick through, lots to unpack from the federal budget. I'm keen to get both of your thoughts. But I wanted to start, I thought a nice way of kind of gently easing us into this mashup

was with a little quiz that I've put together. I just wanted to see really whether you've been paying attention to the budget. And I was going to call the quiz, have you been paying attention? But obviously, that's taken. So I'm calling this quiz, budget or budget. and the name came about because trying to prepare for this show I thought I'd head online and get some up-to-date budget goss so I headed over to budget.com.com.

You'd write to the source, but found out, of course, that's the car hire company and not the government's budget site, which is, of course, budget.gov.com. What struck me, though, is some of the specials and the deals and promotions available on the budget rent-a-car website sounded a lot like what was being offered in the federal budget. So what I want you guys to do is I'm just going to give you some terms, some phrases, some commentary and ask if you can tell whether they are from the federal budget or the budget car rental company. Do you think you're up for it?

This is a great idea for a quiz. I just assumed when I heard budget versus budget, budget or budget, that you didn't have access to a thesaurus. But no, this is a much better idea. All right, well, here's a little practice one just to test you out. All right. So the first phrase, was this phrase in the federal budget coverage or from budget renter car? Free SUV upgrade.

Oh, man. That's sort of, who gets to ends in me or Thomas? Why don't we buzz in? Your names are your buzzers. So buzzes in, if you like. Your names are your buzzes, Charles. Not make a buzzing sound with your tongue. Oh, okay.

So can I say, I think, I think it's. It's a trick question. I reckon it's both. I reckon both budget and budget have that. You really don't have any faith. I said we'd start with an easy one. Oh. Just to warm up.

A practice question. You think I've launched straight into a trick question. Well, you'd be right. Oh, yay. Free SUV upgrade. I guess it's, to the letter, it was from the budget car website. But, of course, with the fuel excise being cut in hard, then potentially there is now room for, I think, a free SUV upgrade as a result of the budget.

Now, I can finally afford to put petrol in an SUV. So in that sense, possibly an SUV upgrade. That's how easy it is. I've got three questions, three proper questions. Are you ready to go? Yep. Okay. All right.

Was this phrase in the federal budget coverage or the budget renter car website? It is practical and temporary. Thomas. Thomas. I'm going to go, the, federal budget on that one? The federal budget. You would be correct. Ding, ding, ding. The federal budget. It is practical and temporary, of course, Frydenberg saying repeatedly that the measures in the federal budget were practical and temporary. But it is actually on the budget renter car site.

Again, that's how they describe a single day hire of a Toyota Corolla hatchback. It is practical and temporary. I love it. It's such an admission, isn't it? that they're saying oh no these are temporary things like we're being nice to you now but we're not going to be nice to you later on and these are clearly terrible ideas economically the what we're doing is a really bad idea this is just a temporary thing

to get us some votes we're not actually they're signaling to the markets no no no we're not going to do this permanently is it almost like the government isn't planning on staying around very long to see it through is it that they they know all already that you know what we'll just put it in just to get us get us over the line we're probably not going to be here in six months it'll be someone else's a problem so here's

some cash we're doing handouts but only a little bit should cover probably this week's rent and then you'll be back to square one i've heard people talk about it being a poison pill for labor that in six months the fuel excise just reverts unless it's extended so it's a tough going to be a tough call if petrol prices are still over a hundred dollars a barrel but you got to remember like labor are the ones who are playing 5D chess here is that they always stuff it up right

like so you know you think and probably they've tricked even the Liberals into thinking that they're going to get in and oh let's put in a poison pill and then guaranteed Labor won't get in

and then the Libs have their own have to consume their own poison pill this is brilliant work by Anthony Albanese like sort of master strategist Very good. All right, next question.

Next question. Was this phrase in the federal budget coverage or budget renter car's website? A dirty bomb. Oh, Charles. Charles. Wow. I'm one of these people who press the bar. Just buzzes.

Surely, surely that's the budget render car website. It's like, you know. We now have Hyundai's, also known as a dirty bomb. Yeah, it was actually a review of one of their camper bands. Oh, right. So it was a dirty bomb, one star. No, it was the federal budget, of course, Lee Sayles describing the end of the fuel exercise after the election as a dirty bomb

that was going to blow up in Labor's face. But as we just discussed, there is every chance. so that it'll blow up in their own face after Labor stuff it up. But also, like, let's trust things here. You know, I think we can assume that given the trajectory of the war in Ukraine, we will be looking at a peaceful utopia in six months' time. Absolutely. I think, you know, petrol prices will be 20 cents a litre, but it is.

Like, the cut to the exos means basically petrol will be free by then. It's interesting, though, isn't it, that they announced the cut to the excise. But it seems like the fuel crisis is only, like, what, a month old, if that? So, I don't know, do we want the government to be, to be cutting the excise even temporarily? No, it's a terrible policy. No, of course it's a terrible policy. It's got $3 billion. Yeah.

You could spend, you could spend that on $300,000, $10,000 subsidies for EVs. You could actually make everyone, you could basically get everyone to drive in it. That's half the number of car sales in Australia per year. You could actually just drive down the price of EVs. In 6-1's time, everyone could be driving around in this Tesla utopia. And instead, we're just going to pump more carbon in the atmosphere. It is pretty late. Particularly in the budget, there's nothing for EVs.

Like, there's nothing for the environment, but there's nothing particular for EVs. And at the same time, you're making petrol fossil fuel cars more cost competitive by driving down the petrol prices. It's... So, yeah, I was going to trade in my petrol car and buy an EV, but not anymore. No. I'm filling up. Very good.

All right, final question for the budget or budget quiz. Was this phrase in the federal budget coverage or the budget-render-car website? Inflation is a real problem. Thomas. Thomas. I'm going to go to the obvious here, but that's definitely in the federal budget. No. Budget-rent-cour-car website.

This time a review of a space saver tie in the Nissan X trail. People saying that just simply not enough. Terrible. This quiz had real potential. Thomas, you're an economist, everyone's talking about inflation. Is it here to stay and will wages catch up as promised or will inflation come down? What's going on with inflation? Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting one.

in the sense of the budget, typically, like, when you've got, when you're worried about inflation, you try to rein things in a bit. You want to stop the economy, economy running so hot. So you either, like, raise interest rates to slow things down a bit, or you cut back on the fiscal levers, which is fiscal government spending. But we've gone, you've gone the opposite way here. So there's a whole bunch of handouts for people. There's, you know, what is it, like, 8.6 billion cost of living package. So a huge amount of money that's going to pump into the economy. That's at the time that we're worried about inflation. So it's hard to see that not sort of fueling the very inflation that's trying to combat. Yeah. So there's definitely

nothing here in the budget that sort of really helps inflation other than it helps people at sort of the lower end of the income spectrum. And the promise is that wages will catch up, right? Is that? Yeah, that's the promise. That's the line. You look at the Ford estimates, unemployment down of 3.75%. That's the lowest since the 70s. They've got inflation picking up. into the, ironically, into the range where the RBA feels justified in hiking rates. But those estimates have typically been terrible, like they've never hit those wages estimates. Wages have always underperformed on the forecast. I think I'm skeptical still, but with an unemployment rate at 3.75%, you're going to have to have some wage pressure in the

system, you'd think. I don't think there's anything here in the budget that deals with inflation at all, other than sort of a bit of a sop to voters to try and help, like just, I think, and just because it's in the news right now. Like, I feel like the budget is really responding to two months' worth of news. Petrol prices are up, inflation's up, here's a package that kind of deals with that. But there's nothing there that sort of, in the long run, helps with the inflation story. Josh said it was a plan for the future. I guess he didn't stipulate how far into the future, did he?

He just said it's a plan for the future. The future could be next week. You know, I've actually just come up with a way that you could plug the hole in the budget, which is just thinking about it they didn't address attacks on photo opportunities and had they done that see because we've had massive inflation

in the number of photo ops done by Prime Ministers over the last three years like we're now I don't know correct me if I'm wrong Thomas but I think it's something like 3.7 trillion photo ops per day or something

have you got the stats handy Thomas have you got the numbers there I mean, a 20% excise on photo ops would bring in, by my calculations, around $45 trillion billion quadrillion dollars per day. And that would dampen inflation, wouldn't it? And the fuel excise is only going to add to the photo ops because it's going to make transport cheaper. So shipping politicians around to flood-affected areas,

war zones, anywhere like it's only. going to increase. I think they've... You're right. They've completely missed a trick there. I've heard that Google Maps has a whole problem in Australia at the moment, which is that apparently every time they put out one of their Google Maps cars, Scott Morrison hears that there's a camera and runs beside it trying to get photographed

by the camera. So all the photos of Google Maps, there's Scott Morrison in them. Just out of the front of a series of houses as he's running along. Look at your house on Google Maps. I guarantee you Scott Morrison is in the photo. In Hivey's as well. With his face blurred out because he didn't realize that Google Maps actually his 4 million photos of Scott Morrison outside people's houses with a blurry face.

Because you know how whenever there's a national crisis he goes missing for a few weeks? That's what he's doing. He's doing the Google Maps thing. Very good. That ends the quiz. Was anyone keeping school? I think it was one all. So well played.

Although, because of inflation, it's too all. It's too all. That's right. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often. Charles, what did you, you would have tuned in and consumed the entire budget, no doubt. Oh, yeah.

What caught your eye from the budget? Well, I mean, you know, I think, for me, I thought it was a very realistic budget. I thought it was really good. I mean, it's obvious in the election year budget. It wasn't buying votes, though. It was the budget that was just handing out big bundles of cash to voters. Oh, no, yeah, yeah, nothing to do. It's unrelated.

You know how there's always the promise of a fast train in the lead up to the election? In this budget, they didn't do that. What they had was a faster train, right? Which is very different. It's not going to be fast. It's just going to be faster than the really slow. low trains that are at the moment. Right.

And I thought that was, that's a sort of upgrade because it's like going, oh yeah, it's not going to be fast. But it's just going to be a little bit faster. I think that that's, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, Thomas, but you don't normally see from a government something so sort of realistic in the budget papers. It's pragmatic. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Anyway, so and then. Dare I say a train is definitely something people can get on board with as well. Hey, no. Yeah. See what I did there? That's why they pay me the big bucks. I also think it was really good news for the arts this time around. I thought they announced a 20% cut to the arts.

Yes. Which people have been saying, oh, but they cut 20% from the arts last time. But it's actually smaller this time round because the arts budget was 20% less. So actually proportionally, even though they've cut 20% from the arts, that's actually less than last time, right? Because, you know, and that means that, you know, in a few years' time, a 20% cut to the arts will only be like $1, you know. I think that's sensible too.

I mean, throughout the pandemic, if there's one sector of the economy that's had it really good, it's the arts. I think, you know, the amount of performances and live shows that have been going on throughout lockdowns in Melbourne, in all over the country, I think they've just thrived. and what's the purpose of the arts anyway the purpose of the arts is to help us process large traumatic events in our lives

you know catharsis that sort of thing you don't want to do that after a pandemic you're too exhausted you just want to get on with you just get on with you get back of work stop flapping around being artsy thinking about the eternal verities no we've got widgets to ship

but we can't because we've got You've got supply chain bottlenecks. But look, but I think the budget was all about the beer. And it was good to see that that was the first leak, you know, 20%, sorry, not 20%, 20%, 20 cents off your beer. I mean, that is, that is huge. That's going to make a big difference. Oh, yeah.

I mean, I've already put my 20 cents savings into the stock market. Admittedly, the stock market's crashed and I now have 10 cents. But, you know, like that's 10 cents. over time, that could become, I don't know, 15, 16, maybe even 20 cents. I mean, here in South Australia, we get 10 cents a can refund. So now we're talking 30 cents. 30 cents. That is pure profit.

I don't think it, does it apply to cans? Does it apply to cans? Or is it just tap? Oh, there probably is some exclusion like that in some condition. It only applies if you're buying a pony, I believe. No, I think it only applies if you're doing a photo op with the PM. Ah, yes. statistically is very likely.

So the PM is getting 20 cents a beer off his photo opportunity beer. That's the reason he did. He went, oh, I'll save about $4 million this election. If you shake his hand, he gets 20 cents off as well. If you shake his hand, no, I think the rule is that he shakes your hand. He shakes your arm. He shakes your arm and then offers you a discounted beer for allowing him to shake your arm.

And then the final measure that I thought was really interesting. And, I mean, it really does show Australia is growing up as a nation. It's the extra $9 billion that they said that they're going to spend on cybersecurity. Did you see that? Yeah, huge. I mean, that is huge. That is great. The way this government has, you know, they're so good at delivering technology.

I'm really looking forward to what they're coming forward to what they're. up with for this nine billion dollars like you know you're going to roll out some cyber though you worry about that i actually have a theory that it's um it's to train all the bureaucrats in canber how to get the are you a robot things right the capture it's actually yeah the google capture it's to help people get around the problem of especially for people like peter dutton they have a real problem and getting around the capture. Choose all the images of the PM standing in front of the house. Which way up is the potato standing, right?

His face is blurry. They're just a photo of me there. Thomas, what stood out for you from the budget? I feel like I'm kind of just pause for a second. I feel like I'm just going out for some really boring. Absolutely. That's what we expect of. Change of pace.

And now for something a little boring It's Thomas What caught your eye on the budget It's just boring shit Let me do another quiz Yeah Are you just depressed Is that what's going on?

You had to watch it Did you watch the budget? See that you never watched the budget It just makes you depressed for days after I just feel like what I'm offering at this point Is sort of out of tone with the rest of the show Well, I want to hear the boring stuff. The Chaser Report listeners are very used to boring.

Don't worry about that. We've got a guy called Dom Knight on our day. It's not an exciting budget overall. There's not a lot that's exciting there. There's 17 billion discretionary there that's sort of money that could have not gone into the economy, but it has gone into the economy. You've got 8.6 billion with the cost of living package. So you've got like a bit of a stimulatory boost.

It's a little pump of the accelerator pedal on the economy. But it's at a time where it's not the case for pumping the accelerator pedal isn't really there. You've got massive gains coming out of commodity prices, lower welfare payments because unemployment's down. Unemployment rates tilting towards 3.75%, the lowest rate since the 70s. So you're pumping the accelerator into an economy that's already going pretty great. You know, retail spending is up 19% on where it was pre-COVID, and you're just going to give consumers and household to a whole bunch of extra cash. So it's really hard looking at this budget to see the economic rationale for the measures that are in place.

Having watched a few budgets isn't surprising. It's an election year budget. All budgets have their eyes on the election, and that's sort of what you've got. And then on top of that, you look at the distribution of the infrastructure packages. it seems like it's pretty clearly kind of some form of pork barreling. Only 21 of the 144 projects that have been announced have been endorsed by Infrastructure Australia, which is supposedly the body that ticks off and recommends these projects.

And the other thing that really got me is zero for federal ICAC. So the last election, Morrison promised we're going to get a federal ICAC or, you know, Integrity Commission. That was delayed and delayed and delayed and then finally just didn't happen. and now it's just come out of the budget altogether. There's no funding for it at all. So the Morrison government seems to have just completely abandoned any commitment to a federal ICAC. Well, I think we've fixed it, though, didn't we?

We cleared up all the corruption's gone from the government, so we don't need it anymore. That's true. Carry on. And also, they had to use that money to pay off all the people who were complaining about all the corruption. That's right. I'm curious to get your thoughts on the deficit, though. So you say that we're pumping the accelerator, but it's pushing us further down into debt. Does it matter?

Yeah, I mean, yes and no, like it matters, but not in the way we used to think it matters or the way that we used to be, the politicians used to tell us it matters. Politicians used to hang their hat on their ability to deliver a surplus. There was never a really great economic reason why a surplus was better than a deficit. You used to get this analogy that governments are like a household, and if a household's got too much debt, that's a bad thing. But the analogy breaks down because a household can't just print its own money. I know you've tried at them but you're not actually allowed to do that so the analogy just doesn't

work so in terms of economic theory there's never been a great rationale for why a modest surplus is better than a modest deficit and then COVID happened and the deficit blew right out and then you know with this one there's no you know Frydenberg hungies you know had that catchphrase a while ago back in black and back on track there's no mention of anything like that now and no one seems to cares. No one's really complaining that we're, you know, we're looking at a budget deficit of three and a half percent of GDP. That's still massive. You've got to realize that it doesn't matter until Labor gets elected and then it becomes the most important thing ever. Isn't that what's going on? The difference is that it's a liberal government who's delivered a deficit,

so therefore it's a good deficit. And then when Labor gets in, suddenly 70% of the media's Press, owned by Murdoch, they don't like the Labour Party. Suddenly, it'll be the biggest crisis in the world. Yeah, yeah. So, I think Labor's in real trouble from this deficit that... The lives also forecast some pretty significant reductions to the deficit, too, over the next X number of years, five years or whatever it was. So I guess they can also, you know, in six months' time, if Labor gets in,

they can say, well, we were on track to reduce this deficit. We had a plan. Yes, brilliant. and you haven't done that. Yes. So you've balls it up again. I mean, clearly the way to get rid of the budget deficit is to keep the photo of tax going. Yeah.

Even without. Maybe that's like, he won't be prime minister, but he's still going to go around and do photo. Just keep having to pay off the debt. Posting them on Skobo's Insta page. But also, it could. The one thing that just seems to me to be a glaring problem with all this is the actual share between capital and labour has just gone totally skew-if in the last really 20 years, like economically. And there seems to still be no plan beyond, oh, well, we've got low unemployment, to actually get the wage growth getting at a proper level. And that's all of so many problems.

Like, actually, if you had year-on-year proper increases in wages, then suddenly houses become more affordable for the next generation. Suddenly, you're changing the proportion of profit between labour and capital, which has to happen at some point anyway. But also suddenly, yeah, you're in a slightly higher inflation environment. But actually, that means that stuff like the debt problems disappear. because suddenly you're inflating your way out of debt. So how do we get wage growth?

It's about power. The problem is we've got a labour force that's not allowed to strike anymore. I mean, it's got to the point where in New South Wales, we had a train. I mean, it's so absurd. It sort of sounds like it's a joke. But the minister thought he could shut down, like lock out the train employees and that that would be a good strategy.

And it's because, well, someone's got to go on strike. And the workers, like, I mean, it was protected action. They were officially allowed to go on strike at that point. But it's got to the point where strikes are so rare in Australia. And the exercise of, you know, collective labour power is so rare. And it's so prescribed by these rules that have been really written by bosses that the actually more common thing nowadays is that the boss goes on strike. It's so dumb.

It's the dumbest system in the universe. Maybe we just need some of the people in top levels of government to go on strike. Luckily, our Governor General has been showing the way. He's been on strike and not working for the last three and a half years. It's amazing. Somehow still managed to catch COVID. What's that about? We're completely isolated from the rest of the world.

Very good. I reckon we might leave it there. wrap up. Charles, it's been amazing working with you. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, I wish I could say the same. Yes. We'll try harder next time, we promise.

All right. Look, if you have liked what you've heard, you can find Chase Report, of course, on all of your podcast stations, Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcast. And if you liked us, comedian versus economists, we do episodes every Wednesday. You'll find them in the same place. It's really not hard. If you've managed to make it this far and you're listening to us, then you, you you know how to find podcasts so hopefully you've enjoyed the show we've enjoyed making it we

will talk to you all again soon thanks guys thank you thank you see yeah