The Chaser Report - Covid Road Trip

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

Why are NSW and Queensland suddenly wrestling with multiple COVID exposure sites? Why are the SA Police taking potshots at the ABC Logo? Why should someone called Siri get a free computer? Why is El Salvador legalising Bitcoin as a currency? These are just some of the many questions not answered in today's Chaser Report. 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 for Friday the 10th of June. Now, Dom, I was hoping you'd be able to help me with a little bit of a problem that I'm facing. Okay. On our other website, our sister website called The Shot, we wrote an article yesterday about Jerry Harvey. Yes. So he's the guy who took $22 million from JobKeeper, even as the profits of Harvey Norman soared. and refused to give it back, and then argued that none of his workers should get any more money.

So we're trying to work out what is an apt description for this man. Like, do we call him a, I don't know, a homemaker appliance seller, a philanthropist, entrepreneur. Welfare recipient. Yeah, welfare recipient might be one. But I'll just run by you what we finally went with this afternoon. We call him a decrepit anus. Does that sum him up? I can't picture his face at the moment,

but I can picture what an anus looks like. Do you think? I think the problem is you're risking litigation from decrepit anuses. Coming up on the show. I want to just express, that was my firmly held opinion. It's not a factual claim. Jerry Harvey is clearly not an anus. Although he has anus, I presume,

and it's so tight that he's not giving any of the job keeper back. Is that the first thing to lead with? I guess it is. We're going to take a look at the COVID road trip that has shut down two states and counting. And we're looking at South Australia Police's shooting practice practices. Shooting practice practices. There you go. That'll hook him, Charles. First, let's go to the Chase Newsroom where Rebecca Day and Emuno is on leave. So we have the wonderful Gabby Bolt.

A Victorian newspaper cannot decide if they should print a headline tomorrow advocating that Premier Dan Andrews is a dictator and need to be stopped or if they should defend the use of concentration camps instead. Minister for Energy Angus Taylor has decided to take a break from the corrupt world of federal politics and instead decided to follow his passion and get involved in the corrupt world of state politics instead. The news comes after revelations that New South Wales Deputy Premier asked for a $50,000 grant that was being awarded to Angus Taylor's Brothers Company to be disguised as a contract payment.

Mr Taylor has released a letter clearing him of all allegations against him signed by the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore. The Prime Minister has given his best wishes to all Australians over the Queen's birthday long weekend. Scott Morrison stated that he is looking forward to the day off so he can spend some quality time with his family, particularly after an arduous week of separating immigrants from their families. That's the latest news you can't trust. I'm not Rebecca Dayuna Muno. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Chucking Asicky.

You already have a three-day weekend coming up. Why not make it a four? Chucking Asicky. Proud sponsors of the Chaser Report. Now, before we begin this story, Dom, I just want to say when it comes to COVID contact tracing, it's very important not to prejudge anything. Okay, noted. Yeah, because, you know, you don't want to shame people because then they'll be more hesitant

to not tell the truth to contact traces, right? Oh, that's a good point. So you cannot shame people for what they've done when they get caught with having COVID, right? So if you actively spread COVID and being very selfish and responsible, still can't say you. Don't prejudge. Don't be a stigma. Never prejudged. Okay, got it.

Right, okay. But I do want to talk about this story. But here is a clip from the news to prove that this is a real story. Three states are now on high alert after a positive COVID-19 case drove from Melbourne to Queensland over a five-day period. Yeah, so it's a little bit embarrassing. This came out yesterday. That's a very long way. So they went into lockdown

Melbourne went into lockdown on the 27th of May And at that point Nobody in Melbourne was allowed to go More than five kilometres Away from their home Five days later On the 1st of June This couple left Melbourne

And they travelled to Dozens of locations Including in Gillenbar Forbes, Dubbo Marie Gundewindi Tawumba and the Sunshine Coast Now, of course, I'm not prejudging here. I'm not prejudging, but I will go out on limb and say,

I think that that is probably more than five kilometres from their home. Now, but your public health experts do agree that when you're fleeing a lockdown and potentially have a pandemic illness, you should make as many stops as possible. That's right, along the way. It was an 1877 kilometre road trip. Not that I'm judging, not that I'm judging, which is 1,800. 172 kilometers more than they're allowed to go without judging, yeah, obviously. The Queensland medical officer, when they finally arrived on the Sunshine Coast and found out

their head covered, said this. I don't know the details, why they left, what their reason was. I'll tell you why they fucking left, because they were avoiding the fucking lockdown. Not that I'm judging. On the news last night, there was one little indication about, you know, maybe what was going on. And it appears they broke quarantine rules. Do you think? Do you think?

Do you think they broke quarantine rules? Charles, look, you've got to understand that having difficulty with numbers is tough. Yes. It's so easy to confuse a five kilometre radius for a 5,000 kilometre radius. That's what it was, wasn't it? They just, they didn't know. It was just a few decimal points. It was an innocent mistake.

Innocent mistake. Now, Charles, I don't know what's going to happen next, but I note that Melbourne now has a 25 kilometre radius. Oh, wow. So I'm assuming they're on a plan for London. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by chucking a sickie. Because there's almost a 100% chance that your workplace is exploiting you in some way anyway. Chuck Asicky, proud sponsors of the Chaser Report.

Now, Charles, you and I have spent a fair bit of our working lives at the national broadcaster, the ABC. Yes. So I don't know whether you were as concerned as I was. at the news that the South Australian police have an ABC logo prominently displayed on the wall of their shooting range. Dom, Dom, Dom, you've got this all around the wrong way. This is not because they were shooting at the ABC or dreaming of shooting journalists. That's all complete rubbish.

Now, that's the federal police. They explained it themselves. They said that the reason why they had that ABC logo there was to just make it look. look like what it would be like being in a place where there was a shootout. Yeah, it says here that they wanted to replicate a realistic training environment. And I mean, this makes sense. If you're in the military, if you're about to be deployed to Iraq, you train in the desert. If you're about to get sent to Indonesia or something, you go to the rainforest.

If you're about to be sent to fuck up some journalists, you go and train with the ABC logo. But this makes it very clear. They're not shooting at the logo. They're shooting at the journalist next to the logo. So anyway, Charles, in response the ABC has released a new Kids program that is very pro-police. From the creative team behind Poor Patrol, ABC Kids now presents a new TV show, Piggy Police. I got to apprehend this sneaky-looking bunny,

but my fat little piggy-hoofs can't run that fast. Oh, Stinky, that's what your piggy pistol is for. Silly me. Take that bunny. You shot ten bullets, Stinky. for self-defense and nine for fun. Ten bullets, ten bullets, the number of the day. Join Porky and Stinky on their adventures through the judicial system.

Order, order in the court. Well, Stinky, I don't think you should have extrajudicially executed that bunny. Porky, do you think Stinky did the wrong thing? No, Mr. Judge. Stinky was following proper pig procedure. Always stick up for your friends. Even when they do something wrong. And they really tackle the hard problems. Stinky, I don't feel good about the fact that my job only serves to enforce a system built on historical and systemic exploitation.

I'm not a very happy little piggy. Oh, Porky, you don't have to like what you do. You just have to stay quiet when your colleagues do it. And for our special Piggy Police pals, check out the ABC Kids Online Player for all your first. favorite Piggy Police songs. When you're in a jam, Turn off your body cam. Hawky and Stinky are the Piggy Police.

Now airing on ABC Kids. Cats pajamas. Or cats piss. All right, this is the segment where I pitch a bunch of real news stories to you. You tell me whether they're cats' pajamas, which means good in our weird. language or cat's piss which means bad. A woman by the name of Siri has written to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, asking for a

free laptop after years of jokes about her name. What do you think should she get the free laptop because everyone going, hey, Siri, you and find that very funny? Yes. Did she have the name before Siri though? Like, because she changed it to that. No, no, it's a, I think it's a Scandinavian name. Oh, is it?

Oh, okay. So there's lots of people. No, I think that this is cats. piece because like then what does Amazon have to give everyone called Alexa an Alexa and everyone we've got someone here in the office called Alexa so that would be a good thing and Google would have to you know give everyone whose name is Google yeah a free laptop Google at least Googled whether there was somebody else had the word Google first that's why Google has Google as their name it's no one else has got that name well isn't it because also if that was what they

Google before they had Google, then they wouldn't have been able to find anything because the internet search is so shit. If only Bing had searched Google, Bing on Google, geez, I'm confusing that. So you ever somebody called Alexa in the office? We do. We have an Alexa. So if you say things, like she'd turn the lights off and stuff like that. It's a hymn and, um, no, he's very disobedient, which is actually exactly like my

experience with the Amazon Alexa, which is the shittest. You know, Angus, my 10 year old came downstairs the other day going. Elexia is the worst device ever. Yeah. It just doesn't ever... And you're like, checks out. Yeah. Oh, okay.

So we should try. If you say set sleep timer for 50 minutes to Alexa, it will say, your sleep timer is set for four hours and 50 minutes. Like, then it just is the how it works. I mean, I would have said maybe you're not loud enough, but I remember you're the loudest human on Earth. Is maybe the problem is, have you connected your Alexa here in the office to the Wi-Fi? Is that the problem?

Oh, I see You've got to set it up properly Yeah, okay Now, we were talking about TikTok And how Charles's son was obsessed with it There's a 40-year-old husband here Who is so obsessed with TikTok He's forgotten about his family

He totally missed dinner Because he was just scrolling on TikTok Basically kind of divorced from his family Because he's just on TikTok all the time I'm sorry, what's the problem here? Yeah, that sounds like a good thing Yeah, actually reading the story It just says we have two young kids

and I think he just does it for peace. Isn't this story, just keep reading. This is Charles, I think. This is Charles. But hang on, so where does he do it, though? Does he just sit on the toilet all day? He just pops upstairs just for a little bit. Maybe he's having an affair.

It is very addictive, the TikTok. Yeah, I've heard this. I mean, I think that's an outrage. I'm actually quite against this, and I think this person, this father should do what all other fathers like me do, and that is spend all your time on a different social media, like Twitter. Yeah, or, yeah,

Yes, exactly, because that's more sort of age-appropriate. Yeah, be age-appropriate. So get off TikTok. Or if kids to be distracted from their entire life. If he wants to be really healthy, he should take up smoking. Spent a bit of time outside. Get out of that. It's true.

My dad goes outside so often. Fresh air. It's a beautiful thing. A couple in the UK have saved 15,000 pounds a year by choosing to live instead of in a regular house in an old police van. What they do is they live in the van. It's very eco-friendly. Craig, they drive all over the UK in the old police van and it's very, very cheap.

No mortgage, just a van. It's not a great, frankly at all over the country in an old vehicle. They have a terribly high carbon footprint. They're in an old police van and they're driving around. Do they get to arrest people or shoot people and or chokehold them to death? Is that part of the... There'd be the terrible thing is they'd just be parked there, having a sleep. And some other local Bobby would throw some minority in the back.

No, this is not a real police fan. So did they do, is it because they're poor? Yeah, yeah, right. This is like, this is what I hate about this kind of thing. It's like the van life thing. It's like we've made it so impossible for anyone to afford a house in this country. And then we've just gone, I guess we could make them feel really good by, like, on Instagram, making them really famous because they live in a van.

It's an awesome life. Can we stop this segment? Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Chucking a Siki. Why not take a day off to travel? I hear Dubbo is really nice at the moment. Chucking Asicky, proud sponsors of the Chaser report. Now, Charles, before we go, some finance news for you, because I know you love your finance.

Oh, great. And it's not just any finance news. This is El Salvadorian finance news. A first for the Chaser report. El Salvador yesterday voted to become the first country in the world to accept Bitcoin. To accept Bitcoin? As a legal tenderness. So how does it work?

Like you go to a coffee place. Yeah, you get out your laptop. You fire up your mining software. Yeah. And about a year later, you've got enough for your coffee. What is it? Like one Bitcoin per coffee? Because wouldn't that be like $60,000 per coffee?

Yes, it would. But there's another problem, Charles, which is that Bitcoin is incredibly volatile. So you've got to pay your 0.111.1% of Bitcoin for a coffee. By the time the transaction is finished, the coffee is worth, $100 and then when you order another coffee it's worth $1,000 and then that afternoon it's free. So it's a very sensible system. Look, I don't want to cast any aspersions on the El Salvadorian government here, but this sounds like a terrible idea. I'm all in favour of it, Charles. Oh, really? Why? I think we should drop the same law here because it's the only way I'm

going to be able to buy a house in Sydney. For more news throughout the long weekend, subscribe to some other podcast because we're not going to... No, we're having a little holiday. But chase the dot com. From that are you will probably be updated by the Army of Interns. They don't get to public holidays, do they? Nah. Of course not. And if they thought they did, bad luck guys.

In force on social media, we will beg you, as we always do, to leave us a five-star review. Some of you have you, idiots. Thank you. Yeah, actually, there were quite a few ones saying potato. I think that they're a little bit behind on the reviews. They are, yes, they've got old code. So stop using the code word potato.

Instead, I use the code word El Salvadorian Bitcoin. And Charles and I are very happy to take a, tips in Bitcoin. Just leave one Bitcoin, maybe two. Yeah, yeah. We'll be very grateful. Our Geary's thanks to road microphones and the Chaser report is part of the ACAST Creator Network.

See ya.