The Chaser Report - Deves-Dropping | Jan Fran

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

Dom and Charles are joined by the fantastic Jan Fran to talk about her election podcast "Jan Fran Has Issues" which can be found in the A Rational Fear feed. Meanwhile Dom gives a weekend update of all the election news you missed from this weekend, and Charles has the latest daily Election Wrap. Plus Andrew Hansen has an ad for his upcoming live-show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In an election that will determine the fate of the entire universe, there's only one podcast holding politicians accountable. Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese, who will boom? Find out on The Chaser Report, election edition. Hello and welcome to the election edition of The Chaser Report. It is Monday the 2nd of May, 19 days until the election. I'm Dom Knight. Hello, Charles Firth. Yes, and astounding news today.

What's happened? Which is, over the weekend, Labor announced a policy. Are you sure? Yes, they've got a policy. I just thought there was like Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating looking old and weird in Rudd's beard. And Russell Crowe doing an ad for Labor and stuff like that. No, but there's an actual real-life policy. They're going to start buying up people's houses or something.

Really? Yeah, like, so the whole idea is if you want to buy a house, then you've got to raise 2% deposit and then the bank of mum and dad will be government owned. Hang on, so Albo's now my dad. Yeah, is that what it is? Yeah, that's right. He's playing the bank of mum and dad, and the government will buy half your house, and then you buy the other half of the house.

Right. Yeah. So the government owns part of my house, and this helps me. It's basically communism. Right. Okay. But, you know, it's communism where house prices will still keep going up. Because I don't know about you, but if you've got the government starting to buy up houses,

doesn't that, won't they just mean that everything costs twice as much as before? Well, now apparently it doesn't matter if you have an idea that causes inflation. Oh, okay. That's absolutely fine. Oh, right. But I guess the good point about this is that as the boomers die off, their houses will go to the government. Well, this is actually, I mean, this is, this is socialism, isn't it? Like, we're going to end up with the government holding the bag on the world's biggest.

Oh, I see. Creeping socialism. Brombeishop's been warning us for years. Yes. Right. So it's true. You know how a few months ago they said that Anthony Albanese was a communist? It's true.

That's why they didn't mention any policy until the weekend where they basically announced revolution. Is that what's going on? And this is why Labor Party has been so soft on China. because China's communist as well. China will own your house as well. Yes. Well, I think ultimately that's what we're looking down the barrel of. Thank goodness Scott Morrison's going to win the election.

On today's show, I've got a few tasty updates from the weekend, Charles. Oh, and we're talking to Jan Fran, who managed to get an interview with Michael Toke last week. Yeah, that was a very impressive journalism. Unfortunately, she also had to talk to Kevin Rudd. Oh, I'm so sorry for her. Let's have the opposite of that, which is Charles's Daily News Wrap. Welcome to the wrap for Monday the 2nd of May. After three weeks of arduous campaigning, the polls are exactly the same as they were three years ago.

This morning's news poll stuck at 5347 to Labor on a two-party preferred basis. The last time Labor was this far ahead was in 2019 in the lead-up to its resounding victory, delivering the first term of a shortened Plyboset government. Albanyzi headed to Perth to officially launch his campaign and announced that the government would be going halves with first home buyers in their house. That's right, the Bank of Mum and Dad will now be government-owned. A first step in the inevitable march towards an Albanese communist government. Housing Minister Michael Sukha slammed the proposal,

saying that Australians would prefer to own their own homes outright. Zucker owns two homes. So perhaps he can give one to somebody else if he's so worried about, people not being able to own their own homes. Meanwhile, Russell Crow has fallen on tough times, so much so that he's been forced to do voiceover work just to make ends meet. Australia, we can do better. All it takes is a better government with better plants.

And finally, COVID is now the leading cause of death in Australia. Luckily, that pandemic is over, otherwise we'd all be in a panic. That's the wrap for Monday the 2nd of May. We'll be back in a sec. The Chaser Report. Now, Charles, it was a big weekend of news. Let's kick it off with a new segment we call Deves dropping.

Oh, that's good. I love that. Yes, the most important figure in this campaign, of course, the doomed liberal candidate for Waringa, Catherine Deves. Now, she went to... Did you get the feeling that... The Libs ran it really hard in the first half thinking, we're on to a, this is a cultural war, and now they're backing away going,

oh no, don't talk about Catherine Deves! They wanted to talk about trans athletes. Instead, everyone's talking about Catherine Deaves. So she made a big mistake, which was leaving hiding, to go to a liberal campaign rally. Always a mistake for a... When running for office. I mean, she should be just on the running bit, really, shouldn't she?

Yes, which everyone's favourite crusader for the right of idiots to vilify trans athletes was chased by journal. And this is the thing. So the problem was it was a media event. They were shoving cameras in her face. And look, she didn't have a lot to say. She actually said nothing for a very long period of time.

Hang, hang, hang, hang, hang. Why was she doing a media event if she didn't want to appear in front of the media? Oh, I think it was a broader event. And so she was hoping to sneak in. Right. And then the press pack immediately caught it. Like, it was like a wounded gazelle and they swooped. And I want to pay tribute to one particularly sassy journal.

And I cut this together from a longer. clip that was published by SBS's Nazine Razique. I have a listen to this attitude from the journal. I love it. Do you stand by your comments that you made in brief and time in the past? Are you ashamed of your comments and do you stand by them, Miss Deeds? If you win the seat, you're going to have to answer some questions, Miss Deed. Put some great kindergarten teacher vibes there.

That's great. But the other mysterious thing about that event was that they were playing ACDC's Thunderstrike. At a liberal party, even, more like dumbstruck, I would think, in Deavis' case. Well, I think actually, you know, the ACDC, like, didn't they pioneer sort of slippery, non-binary forms of masculinity? You can be AC or DC? Yeah, exactly. I don't least Catherine Davis is involved. The other big news from the weekend, news poll came out, and Scott Morrison still, to the extent that you believe polls, he's still in trouble, 53 to 47, two-party professional.

but even worse for Morrison. Now, this hasn't been reported widely because it was in the Daily Mail. But Alan Jones has come out against Morrison. What? I know. It's astonishing. He was the only commentator who tipped Morrison last time. Everyone thought he was being ridiculous as usual.

Yeah. But he was right. Have a listen to what he had to say. And I'm not going to do the impression because I'm not Danny Litch. But he told the Daily Mail, Morrison is the handbrake. The electorate hate him. His own cabinet doesn't like him. The party knew it, but it was too late to make a change.

to keep government he's got to hold every seat that he's got and win to him or he's got no hope said alan jones of all things that's shifting with the wind isn't it like he's good at reading the wind that ellen jones yeah makes me think um albo does have a chance and particularly the line he used on albo when they asked whether he was a bit too obscure and no one knew him albo has been to every pub in australia well that'll do that's that's enough so it's a big bit of breaking news for the daily mail the most amazing thing is that the daily telegraph didn't cover it first and they just stole it. Yeah, that's the weirdest thing that I've ever heard about the Daily Mail.

But, but Dom, who does, Alan, does he still have that YouTube channel? Yeah, he just brought it back. That's why I had to talk to Dalai Mal because he can't make comments on his own show. No one will report. No one report. Because didn't he, like, when he had that show, when he launched on YouTube at the end of last year, we covered it. And I am absolutely certain that it rated in the hundreds, didn't it?

It also broke. Australian platform broke, so yeah. Well, look, if you want Alan Jones, he's there, but I would rather read him in the Daily Mail, to be honest. But you can tell Morrison's getting a bit worried about this selection. His Instagram over the weekend, his post was, it's nice to have a night at home, so back on familiar things. So curry it is, Sri Lankan, Tamarin eggplant, Nokra Curry,

and a classic chicken cormer, and then he writes, and this is what makes me think he's rattled, strong curry, strong economy, stronger future. He's now parodying himself, Charles. Oh, dear. I mean, mind you, I don't know. I think it was a good line. Frankly, like, it swung me.

The only thing that then swung me back was, did you see the picture that he posted? Yeah. Yeah, so the, but the, he forgot to cook the chicken. The chicken, have you seen it? The chicken is uncooked. Yeah, but Charles, that would require forethought in preparation. He's going to kill his family with that curry.

can you imagine the thought of him coming back home full time just quick oh man so he's worried i think morrison but someone who is um ridiculously optimistic is josh friedenberg the treasurer he's in kuyang monique ryan is looking very very good in that seat apparently you were saying before you were recording she's a genuine chance of knocking him off and this is the potential next liberal leader well this is the thing so the problem that josh friedberg faces is that as i understand it pretty much no one in that seat is preferencing him right so he feels that slips too much below 50% in the primary vote, he loses. And the polls apparently have him swinging between about 41 and 43% primary vote.

That is not enough for him to win. So he could be in trouble, Charles, but he brought out his secret weapon on the weekend at his campaign launch. What? Have a listen to this guy. This is a guy on the stage in a Liberal Party Friedenberg t-shirt. I don't quite know how he managed to get up there. But this is what he did to entertain the crowds.

and I think it is brilliant. You know, Liberals will win because of Josh, but I'll just finish off with a bird core too, Cooberberra. Which is also the sound Fridenberg made when he saw the poll numbers. But of course, the big event, we mentioned in the intro was the Labor campaign launched. They went all the way to

Perth and then all came back again on the red eye. But as you mentioned, yeah, they got Russell Crow or the ad, like a bit of a coup. They got rusty to voice it. But I've got to say, I took issue with this line that he very deep voiceedly said in the ad.

Australia, we can do better. All it takes is a better government with better plans. Too many people are working multiple jobs just to keep their heads above water. We can do better than that. Russell Crowe is not an Australian.

He is taken a job from a deep-voiced Australian, such as yourself, Charles. Yes, I could have done, man. You could have done that for some Kiwis coming in and stealing Aussie jobs. What are you doing, Albo? You're a joke. Get Australian deep-voiced voice over us. Charles, you can do that. I can do that, and I won't steal jobs from hardworking Australians.

So in summary, fuck all happened this weekend. Election News You Can't Trust, the Chaser Report. It's time to welcome back on the podcast, Jan Fran. And she's got an election podcast out. It's called Jan Fran has issues, and it's part of our good friend Dan Illich's A Rational Fear podcast. Hello, Jan. Welcome back.

Hello, Dom. Hello, Charles. Thanks for having me. Hello. Have you been enjoying this scintillating piece of democracy over the past few weeks, You know what, I'm not going to lie. Elections are like my Olympics.

Like, this is what I nerd out. It's, I find them just really exciting. So I have been following it pretty closely and exasperated most of the time. Yeah. Have you been surprised by how little has happened? Like, usually, usually elections sort of, yeah, it's this content feed that just keeps giving. But I sort of, you know, have to. write a sort of election rap each morning.

And I sort of go, what happened in the last 24 hours? I don't know. The polls remain the same. Like, everything's just the same as it was yesterday. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like there is a fair bit going on. I do feel like sometimes the media. I know I hate calling the media the media because, like, hello, we are the media.

And it's not a homogenous entity. And I'm pretending like I'm not part of it. But I think there tends to be a focus on the personalities, on the polling, on speculation, on, you know, those kind of things. And Anthony Albanese's had COVID. He was out for a week. We didn't see him. We saw his doggo.

Which was, I thought that was great. Great strategy from Albo. Get the doggo front and center. Yeah, take him on the campaign trail, mate. Let him launch the Labor Party's campaign. But I think there's a lot of issues. I really do. And whether or not they're getting the cover.

that they deserve, that's another question. But it feels like a big election to me. But maybe that's because I am like trying to like invest in the issues deliberately and not the personalities. No, you reckon, I know the reason why you're saying that. It's because you're a woman. You're a woman. It's because the polls show that men basically have not changed their vote at all

since the last election. Scott Morrison has exactly the same support amongst men. men, as he's had three years ago, yeah. But women are totally, have totally changed their opinion on Scott Morrison. They're listening and engaging. You are just a woman and therefore you're saying that there's something interesting happening. Well, you know what it is about women.

You know, us women, Charles, we're thinkers. You know what I mean? I assume the people were on board. I know what you mean. As soon as he went to one Bunnings, that was it. The men of Australia were like, yep, that's our guy. I don't care what he does from here. Yeah, he didn't exactly sway the women by washing hair.

You know, I think he was trying to appeal to the women by doing a bit of hair washing. And it went a bit, it went a bit sideways. It's like, please don't touch my hair or anyone else's hair. So what issues do you think are cutting through most? Like, what are the things that you reckon are actually driving this potential labour victory? I know, we shouldn't say that until it's real. But, you know, it's looking pretty positive for our boat. yeah i'm so like wary about polling i i genuinely am but you're right he's on the two-party

preferred basis lab is doing quite well i think the main issue that's cutting through is cost of living because it's just so ubiquitous it's coming at all of us in so many different ways there's rising interest rates there's the cost of petrol that's spiked there's the cost of you know groceries and everyday household items that are going to affect everyone doesn't matter where you live or who you are or what your situation is um there's also the cost of housing, not just house prices, but also rents. All of this stuff is kind of coalescing at the one time. And so I think, you know, regardless of who you are and what kind of position you're in, there will be people who are immune from it. They're people that tend to have

more money than others. But everyone's feeling the pinch here. I had a friend complaining about the price of lamb the other day. I don't think I've ever heard of complain about the price of groceries, maybe ever in a 15-year relationship. Why doesn't she just buy a house, Jan? Why doesn't you just do what the PM suggests, and maybe more than one. I mean, that's such a good question, Dom. Why don't these people who are earning low sums of money just get out there and buy houses? It's that simple. I'll tell you what has plummeted in price over the last three years, which is the price

of government ministers. Like, from what I'm hearing, you can get them at a real discount nowadays, like, you know, access to Angus Taylor's office, Matt Canavan. It's really cheap. Alan Tudge. Alan Tudge. And it's good value. It's really good value.

I've got to say, Alan Tudge would be an offer that would be fairly easy to refuse. Do you want some touch? No, no, thanks. I'm trying to give up. Isn't that really, really expensive to sort of interact with Alan Tudge? That's true, actually. Oh, no, well, I suppose it's good.

Yeah, it depends. For tax pay. Okay. Tell us about a few of the people you've been interviewing, Because at the start of the campaign, you came out with this interview with Michael Toke, which was an amazing piece of audio. I was just listening to it earlier today. And Joshi seems like a nice bloke.

Yeah, I think, I mean, he does seem like a nice bloke. He's, so for those that don't know, he's the guy who was running for the seat of Cook in 2007 against Morrison. And he claims that Morrison sort of used his race and heritage against him to undermine him in the seat of Cook. Toki's Lebanese, his Lebanese, Maronite, which happens to be the same community that. that I'm from. So I had a particular interest in kind of reaching out to him and wanting to chat to him. And, you know, when you're Lebanese, you kind of lean on the good old village family connections and you employ a bit of passive, aggressive guilt. And it just works every time. So I thought, I just, I'll reach out to him and I'll just, you know, introduce myself so, hey,

this is who I am. Do you want to have a chat? And surprisingly enough, he kind of wrote back pretty instantly and was like, yeah, he's like, I'm feeling a lot of calls from a lot of Jernos, he's like, but you're one of the ones that I wanted to speak to. So that was nice. So, yeah, had him on the, on the podcast. And I sort of had him in the back of my mind, actually, because I've been meaning to write a book, which I haven't done yet. But I did take money. So there's that, yeah, which is sort of about growing up Lebanese in the shadow of the Kronella riots. So he was a person that I was interested in speaking to for that book, because what happened in the seat of Cook happened two years after the career.

and the claims that his heritage and Arabness was used against him by the man who's now Prime Minister, again, all of these allegations was very interesting to me. So yeah, I reached out to him for a number of reasons and we ended up having a very long chat which got condensed down to 20 minutes. And he was pretty forthright about how it all went down and how fucked it was and how fucked it was and how his heritage was used against him and stood by all of his previous statements, basically. Is he still a member of the Liberal Party? That's a good question. You know what? He might have told me that he is, maybe a particular branch. But I, I mean,

don't quote me on that, but he certainly, I don't think, has any aspirations to get back into politics. Well, there may be a vacancy in Cook. In a month's time, they might need to pre-select someone to run and cook. It's true. I mean, Lebanese maronites. Yeah, that would be perfect for that seat. Lebanese maronites, Jan, famously not Muslim, right? And this is the weird thing about that whole story.

Oh, my God. Do you want to know actually the weirdest thing? We're getting a little bit into the weeds here. But that was the funniest thing to me was hearing the private minister say that, or, you know, the allegations that Scott Morrison said that Tote is maybe a Muslim or actually a Muslim. That was one of the allegations in the Saturday paper. Anyone who's, first of all, you know how sometimes it's racist to be like if you see an Asian person and then you're like, oh, do you know my friend Steve who's also Asian?

And you're like, don't do that. That's a bit racist. Every time someone says to me, you know, oh, are you Lebanese Maronite? Do you know my friend George from Granville? And I'm like, come on, mate. That's not a cool thing to say to a Lebanese person. But yes, I do know. You know what I mean?

It's like if you're Lebanese Maronite, I will know your mother. Like, that is just a fact. And it's because the community is so intertwined. And actually quite a close-knit community that you're able to trace where people come from in the old country, what religion they are, usually what kind of like old country political affiliations they may or may not have. Anyway, long story short, toaks come from a village called Pshare in Lebanon. And Pshare, I would wager a bet has more churches than it has people.

Like you cannot swing a cat in this village without hitting a church. impossible. It is the most churchiest village in all of Lebanon. So for a to be called a Muslim, it's like, wow, it could not be further from the truth. But you have to understand the nuances of the community to get that. And obviously, the person allegedly making those statements, nuances. It was not about nuance. No. I mean, aren't we all maybe Muslims? I mean, I might be. You can't say I'm not definitely not. The Firths from Northern England, the notorious Muslims. So you had Michael Toke.

That's a fascinating interview. And then this time, you've got a Prime Minister. Kevin Rudd is on the pod. Talking about foreign policy, Jan, how many hours was the interview? How many hours did you record? You know, the interview with Michael Toke was actually longer than the interview with Kevin Rudd because we went in prepared. And, you know, because it's me and Dan Illich.

And I said, Dan, you are the traffic cop. You jump in. Because Kev, he, I mean, he knows his shit. And it's China and the United States and the relationship between those two countries. So he can, you know, he can talk forever about that. But no, he was very good. What does he think about the Solomon Islands thing? I think he thinks that it's pretty messed up that the deal happened.

But, you know, of course he would say that. He's a Labor prime minister. I don't think he's going to go, you know what, everything's fine. Full credit to Morrison. Yeah. It's funny because I had dinner. with a couple of de-fat bureaucrats a couple of months ago. And they were complaining about how,

so Julie Bishop used to be the foreign minister. And she knew the names of everyone. Like, she'd get off the plane and she'd know who the foreign minister was for whichever island they're on and who the prime minister was and how it all worked. She was the Maronite Christian of her foreign... Yeah, exactly. And she knew, for all her fault, she knew the realm, right?

And, you know, it really matters in those places. But the current woman, what's her name? Maurice Payne. She doesn't. She doesn't know the names even after she's got off the blame. And apparently that's a huge thing. And that's why I thought maybe Rudd might have a perspective on that. Because everyone in DFAT seemed to know that Maurice Payne was just not up to.

I suspect Rudd knows the names still and lobbies them all regularly just in case it needs to. Well, I mean, it's very conspicuous that they didn't send Maurice Payne to the Solomon's once word of this deal kind of came about because it sort of blindsided everybody, right? You know, the people in Camber are like, oh shit, this deal might be happening. It's a draft. I don't know if it's going to be signed. Apparently it allows for Chinese military presence, some 2,000Ks off the Australian coast. That's not great.

who do we send? They send Zed Zazelja, who is the Minister for the Pacific Shore, but he does seem like a step down from Maurice Payne, who's the foreign minister. Like, if you thought this was a massive issue, you'd go yourself, wouldn't you? You're not sending your A team, you're sending your Z team. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so I think, you know, he obviously had commentary to make about that. And Albanesey's been out saying, you know, if it was Labor, Albanese would have gone himself or he would have at least sent Penny Wong or someone who was like, Kevin Rudd would have been ready to serve, I suspended it, to go. Who does he think will win the war, the US or China? Oh, I think he'll lose in either scenario? Yeah, 100%.

It's like if there's a war between China and the US, we're all fucked. We've all lost. Let's just say that. That's why his book's called The Avoidable War, not here to plug it, but, you know, it's about how to not have a war between the US and China. You know, the one thing that I've kind of took away from his chat was, like, generally for the most part, both the coalition and labour tend to be on the same page with this. Like they're both spending big on defence. They both understand the importance of China

regionally and diplomatically and economically to Australia. I think they're both sort of very much aware of, you know, where Australia is in our alliances. It's just that one side tends to just run its mouth a little bit more than the other side, aka Peter Dutton, saying that we should be prepping for war, not sure which war. exactly. I think this is World War II based on his media clips. He's very concerned about the 1930s, Jan. Yeah, he is.

Let's hope he's not talking about World War III, which is, you know, stoking the flames there by kind of running your mouth out about it. But I think that was one of the things that sort of Kevin Rudd was saying that, yeah, we're all sort of walking on eggshells at the moment. It feels like we're on tenor hooks. I think what's needed is calm diplomacy. Oh, that's very last decade, Jen.

Yeah, it is. We haven't really been very good at doing, like we, you know, we called, we led a call for an investigation into the origins of coronavirus, which, yes, yes, I think everyone wants to know the origins of the coronavirus, but we were sort of chatting to, when we were chatting to write on the podcast, he was like, yeah, you'd get a bunch more people in your corner before you went out and made that claim sort of thing, you know, you'd get a couple of people on board because it's much harder to point the finger at 10 countries when they're an alliance than it is to point the finger at one, which is what China did.

Which sounds absolutely spot on, although I will note Kevin Rudd's not amazingly good at getting people in his corner, historically speaking. I'm keen to listen to that, Jan. Anyone coming up in the next week or two, you want to plug? Well, we're doing a show on climate change. That's our issue of the week on Jan Fran has issues. The issue is climate change. We're getting a few people locked in, but I reckon it's got to be one of the

independence you know because they're looking to just to fuck some shit up in the lower house mainly around climate and integrity stuff i wish that was on their posters you know allegra spender wants to fuck shit up in the lower house that would be a big vote winner we've got zoe daniel on our podcast on wednesday i'm looking forward to asking her whether she's going to fuck shit up we should well i think you should i mean hey someone wants a campaign manager someone wants some slogans i've got like 10 i can dish him out for free you're very even have to credit me for it. Just fuck some shit up. Thanks for joining us, Jan.

Pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me. Jan Fran has issues. It's on the Irrational Fear podcast feed, which you should be subscribed to anyway, frankly, if you like this one. Our Gears and Road microphones, we're part of the Acast, Creator Network. Catch you next time. Chatswood. Everyone thinks it's a dull, dreary dump. Wrong! Studies show Chatswood is now 83% less dreary than it used to be.

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