The Chaser Report - Dictator Dan's Reign Of Terror Is Over | Sami Shah

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Dictator Dan has ceded power! The communist nightmare is over! Dom Knight is joined by leader of the Victorian rebellion, Sami Shah to unpack the historic news of a man who decided to quit while he was ahead - like a total fool. 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. Now, Charles is off, I don't know, in the Dane Tree or somewhere, and he's missed the biggest political story of our times, the death of a dictator. Australia's first and let's hope last dictator, dictator, Dan, I'm only assuming he's died because why else would a dictator? leave office at 5pm. Was it the photo with the SIGI that did it? Was it Victorian spontaneously rising up against his oppressive regime?

Was it the brilliance of the Victorian Liberal Party? What is it that did him in? Perhaps there was another set of stairs that's to blame for this. The one man who can explain it all for us is Sammy Shah. Sammy, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. I'm here reporting live from the streets of Melbourne, where, yes, you are right.

We have seen the fall of a dictator. It has been a violent and tumultuous. time rebel groups encircled the parliament house and dictator Daniel Andrews was chased out into the streets where he was then killed much in the way Gaddafi was killed with a shotgun

up his ass it turns out I think that's how they killed Gaddafi I don't know like yeah it turns out the dictator steps down sometimes sometimes dictators retire what are you going to do? We'll find out after this but this was quite the bombshow wasn't it I mean I don't live in Victoria

let's be honest I try to avoid news from Victoria lest I'd be tempted to move to Melbourne on a permanent basis but we've rushed into the podcast studio to try and make some sense of this news and where Victoria goes from here everything I've read about Dan Andrews Sammy tells me that he was a terrible premier who basically ground the population into the dust

they hated him and there should be singing and caroling in the streets of Melbourne all night it should be another white night really in Melbourne shouldn't it? Is that what we're expecting? Yeah absolutely Victorians overall hated Daniel Andrews so much that in the last election they returned him to office as premier with a landslide victory, the likes of which hadn't been seen since his previous victory and the victory before that. So, you know, as you can see, we in Victoria, we express our love through lots of votes and enthusiasm.

Look, he's, his thing, if you, I didn't anticipate this, no one anticipated this. In fact, it led to an argument between myself and my partner because I was on my phone and she said, you're always on your phone, you need to get off your phone and be present in the moment sometimes. You do have a baby you should be focusing on. I said, yes, yes, yes, fine. I put my phone down. After 15 minutes, I couldn't help myself. I picked my phone up and Daniel Andrews had resigned.

And she was about to start lecturing me again. There's a lesson. And I said, look, look what happens when I put the phone down. Next time, I'm not putting the phone down. And she was like, yeah, you're right. We should always be on the phones all the time. Let's neglect the children. So, yeah, he resigned.

He's suddenly announced a shock resignation starting tomorrow at 5pm. I don't know when people will be listening to this. It might be today at 5pm or might be yesterday at 5pm, depending on when you hear this podcast episode. Well, it's 24 hours now. We should say we're just kicking off the final 24 hours of the Andrews regime. So I'm imagining that the shredders are going to be running over time. There will be killings in the street.

Basically, all the things that Dictator does before they leave on a plane for a friendly regime. I mean, where is he going, do you think? where all dictators retire these days? Dubai, probably. I'm assuming. He's going to end up in Dubai. But, yeah, I mean, most dictators, when they leave, they make sure that anyone who spoke badly

about them pays. And so I'm anticipating gutters red with blood, as you say. And I know for a fact that Peter Kredlin, Andrew Bolt, all of them are being rounded up as we speak by gangs to be sent to the gulags.

So, which of It'd be easy to do because they're probably completely drunk right now in celebration. I don't anticipate anyone sober in Sky News headquarters. Well, I mean, let's point to that, Tammy, because if there's one group that's been consistently opposed for the Andrews regime, he's been pointing out the, it's had the bravery to call out, you know, the sort of boot heel that he's grounded in the face of Victorians for so long. It has been The Herald Sun, and it has been Sky News. And look out, our sister site, the shots written a lot about their efforts covering Dan Andrews. sure the editor, Dave Milner, often called by Charles the voice of Melbourne, by the way.

He's putting together a piece on the Andrews regime. It's their advocacy, isn't it, that's twisted Victorian's minds, or perhaps just Dan Andrews' mind. Maybe they, maybe he read one Herald's tonne editorial to too many and decided that, look, if I'm not appreciated, I'm going to go somewhere where they like this kind of thing, as you say, possibly Dubai or Saudi Arabia. Well, I mean, why not it? That's what they did to Mark McGowan in W.A., right?

It was basically the top-notch reportage by W.A. today and all the other News Corp outlets that basically highlighted what a brutal dictator he was and how he completely botched the COVID lockdowns for W.A., which resulted in most of W.A. living a fairly COVID-free existence while the rest of the country was in lockdown, that forced Mark McGowan out of his job and not obviously the promise of a really high-paid position in a mining industry. here's the weird thing is there's never been any follow-up on that there seems to be a spate of now two becomes a spate of Labour premiers suddenly retiring mid-premiers because they want to spend more time

with their families and if there's one thing we know politicians don't spend time with their families In fact the family is probably grateful for that Getting into politics Yeah exactly Sammy I had to correct you But there's it's three

Because the person who started this trend Was Jacinda Arden Of the sudden smoke bomb Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's really, it comes back to her. She kind of made it seem cool and then swung around the world getting various accolades. She went on Stephen Colbert yet again. She made it look like it was possible to walk away at the time of your choosing.

Is this the quiet resignation thing we keep hearing about? The great, the big resignation that, you know, everyone quit. Yeah, I think maybe this is what it is. It's a little louder than quiet, but, you know, maybe that's what's motivating everyone. is at some point you reach a certain age and you go what am I doing with my life and am I, is it really worth it just to be the focus of so much ire from the Liberal Party

where it's actually interesting to see some of the coverage right now I went on, of course the age has some fairly balanced articles there's some of columns you know detailing his achievements and then his failures and there are both I'm not exactly a Dan Andrews fanatic myself

if he was a dictator there are times when I would have been shot on the streets So the other times I would have been celebrated as one of his big supporters. But if you go over to the Australian, the descriptions are a little less charitable. I think they describe one of his big achievements as he made euthanasia, which started in Victoria under Andrews, spread like a fire around the country. So I don't know if you know about this,

but according to the Australian, everyone's is being euthanized now. Yeah, Andrew Denton campaign for that. He just wants the mass killing. And perhaps that's why Andrews, A bit like the guillotine destroying the leads of the French Revolution. Perhaps he stepped away before it could be subjected to euthanasia. And then Victorian opposition leader John Pesuto has said that Daniel Andrews trashed Victoria's reputation. And John Pesuio should know about that because he trashed his party's reputation.

So he knows about trashing. So no need to be charitable on the way out the door. No, not at all. Has anyone sought comment from the stairs? I did see someone on the platform formerly known as Twitter posting that they were right next to where the stairs were if anyone wanted to reach them for comment. I mean, really the only force in the past nine years in Victoria

that's managed to stop Dan Andrews is a very, very short staircase of two to three stairs. Well, it's funny you say that because on news.com.com. They've got outgoing Victorian premier Dan Andrews' biggest controversies revealed, right? And the controversies are, and I'm listing them over here, by order of appearance on the website, which I'm trying to navigate, but I can't because the ad keeps popping up every time I try going there.

Right, side. That's what journalism is now. All right. So it says Commonwealth Games controversy. Fair enough. He did promise to bring the Commonwealth Games here in the last election. And shortly after winning the election,

he announced that we're not doing them anymore, which is not a good look. COVID quarantine. I don't know if it's controversy. Most people think he did the right thing, but anyway. Branch stacking allegations, fair enough. Yeah.

Red shirt scandal, absolutely. and then broken back. And that's his controversy. It says in March 2021, Dan Andrews broke his back after falling on the wet stairs in Sorrento on the state's morning peninsula. Premier spent 111 days recovering from his injuries, which included broken ribs and spinal damage but faced criticism upon his return. The incident drew attention to allegations out of the state of Victorian health sector

as well as flaming conspiracy theories about the incident. There's a lot of typos in this because whatever AI chatbot news. The Comder A.U. is using to write this hasn't proofread their own work yet. The Chaser Report. News you know you can't trust. Let's have a listen to Daniel Andrews's own words and see if we can pass anything from them. This is from SBS News. Can I say to you that the moment you're not comfortable with that choice doing this job as a defining feature, your entire life pretty much, the moment you're not comfortable with that decision for you and the people that you love,

then you have to step away because you never want to get to a place where you resent this job, this amazing privilege and important opportunity. That would not be right and I simply won't allow that to happen. Gosh, doesn't he sound scared, Sammy? Scared of the tribunal that's coming.

Exactly the same speech that Salvador Ayende gave just before General Pinochet stormed the whole that presidential Palestine killed him. So clearly he knew that Lockland Murdoch was coming from him. Oh, of course. Well, that's the thing. I mean, Lachlan Murdoch. In the same week, there's two shock resignations. I mean, the Harold's son won't want to do, the roller coaster of this week. But, I mean, it's very similar to the Ardern speech saying when you don't have the fire in your belly anymore, you've just got to give the game away. So not much there. Sammy, I wonder about the Siggy pick a couple of days ago. Maybe he went, look, can't a man just enjoy a siggy in peace? Or maybe it is that Daniel Andrews is so destroyed, Victoria, that the wokeism is so rife that he felt that he just couldn't cope with the judgment of Victorians for having a siggy because you can't do that. Or he felt like he's done his job. He's made us such a woke capital of the world where everyone is now trans-day them and it's mandatory to vote yes. Otherwise

you'll be shot on the streets. That, you know, I mean, that's the way it's being described in other parts of the media, that he feels like jobs done, can't top this and it's time to retire. I do feel bad though, of course, for Jacinta Allen because she's now being touted as his replacement and given the debt we're in, it does feel kind of like the Vanessa Hudson position appointed as Quanta CEO is very much a perching on the glass cliff kind of job, I think, at this point.

Well, how's the polling going? I mean, this is the thing. He's far away from having to face the judgment of the voters who apparently despise him so much. And as you say, Sammy, I've expressed that through re-electing him. I'm keen to get the numbers from you in just a moment. So have the polls been showing that Andrews has done? Is he walking away before the people of Victoria come for him with hatchets?

I think the problem for the people of Victoria has been, even if they come for him with hatchets, there's no one to hand those hatchets too because the Liberal Party, the opposition party of Victoria, is non-existent. I just mentioned the leader of the Victorian Liberals' name. I want to see if you remember it. I do, but only because... The full name.

I looked at the age. John Pesuto, I know that. Only because I looked... This is literally a five-minute memory because I was just thinking at the start of this conversation that I should really look up what the Victorian opposition leader had said and that I could not, for the life of me, remembered their name. There we go.

I live in Victoria. And I just went to the age website. Yep. The age website had it. And I couldn't remember it. Pesuto says he's trashed Victoria. I was like, I'm thinking Pesuto's probably our man here. Yeah.

The man who's just... thinking this is my moment at last. The one thing I haven't been able to do myself, time or fate or boredom or the honest desire of a man to have a Sigi in peace has done. It's removed Andrews as his opponent. See, Labor does historically go to a woman when they've had an incumbent go for a long time. But they usually do it when they're going to lose the next election. Christina Keneally, Carmen Lawrence, Joan Turner, I think in Victoria.

There are some examples in Queensland, too, in the public. Anna Bly, I think. So, I think I might have been the first to win, actually, in that situation. But, yeah, it's interesting to see whether she'll be able to keep the Dan brand alive. Because at some time, Sammy, it did seem as though it was the man, not the party, that was really running Victoria, that no one really cared about anyone else below the top job. I mean, look, they are, okay, and to be put jokes aside for a second, I do think that it had become a dangerously so a party of personality.

I'm not a fan of, I think the Liberal Party is to blame for having such a terrible opposition and not being able to thus keep, you know, for example, labor to account because there were many failures. I don't count COVID as a failure. I think what they did at the time with the extensive lockdowns was a decision made with the best information they could have at the time. In retrospect, you might be able to criticize it, but I do think it was the right choice for the right time. But there are a lot of failures, and I think if we had a competent opposition, we might have been able to keep those failures limited to a degree. But because it was a personality, politics at the end of the day

and it became Dan's state you couldn't really push back on too many things and there are things that needed pushing back on overall though it is funny to kind of see some of the articles that have been coming out

because the way they paint them and these articles being written by journalists in Victoria even but they're so completely out of touch with the average Victorian because the average Victorian doesn't see COVID lockdowns as a massive controversial mistake

that he made it's mostly just you know if you write to wing journalists or opinion columnists to see it that way And I think overall, despite his failures, he's being counted more for the successes than the failures and it has an overall failure. And I think that might be why he resigned because he was still on top and the only way from there is down, which is, you know, very similar to probably why Mark McGowan resigned. It is rare.

Well, it's become trendy, as we've said. But before this, there weren't many examples. Bob Carr left bang on 10 years. Mike Baird, liberal premier, left New South Wales, bang on. I think getting a good job offer from the NAB. B, he wasn't there for very long. And I'm just looking at his Twitter slash X feed here. Let me fly to conspiracy theory that might explain it.

There's a video this morning posted. The last one he posted before the one saying, you know, thank you, Victoria, basically. He didn't actually tweet that he was leaving. Ah, he just tweeted, see ya. And there's actually a picture of him turning his back. He's turning his back on Victorian voters, Sammy. Oh, he can now.

It's like he's just a civilian. Yeah, and his back's fixed. I'll tell you what it says. It says Victorian-made trains in a Victorian-made tunnel. It doesn't get better. than that. There's a video of him going on the new, the Metro link going through that tunnel that's been so controversial. What I'm imagining, Sammy, is that the train broke down and it's been suppressed and that in fact the train. It says, welcome to Metro. It looks as though

it works. It's CGI, Sammy. There's no tunnel and there's no train. All be revealed in a few weeks time and someone goes down to have a look. And by then, Dan Andrews will be off in Dubai. We just feed up the bourge al-Arab or something like that. Laughing at the suckers who voted for him 600 times over the past nine years. I will quibble with one thing that he said where he said it doesn't get better than this Victorian-made trains with a Victorian-made tunnel and I think an airport link

would be significantly better than that because that is the one thing again and again I cannot believe that Melbourne doesn't have and we have yet to have a Premier deliver and maybe the Liberals promised that they might have better look but look I'm from a country where the last dictator only left after we had

nationwide protests and the war and the war on terror and America basically had to force him out and then he moved to Dubai where he died and before that we blew one up in a plane with the cream

mangoes. So, you know, which is an amazingly stylish way to do it by the way. That's what I feel like. This is such a disappointing.

A case of exploiting mangoes. I read that book. Yeah, by Mohamed Anif, it's a great book. And, um, but yeah, I feel like overall,

um, this is a bit of a disappointment. It's a shock thing, but, you know, you want some beheadings or something to happen as he leaves. He takes out his enemies,

you know, Knight of the Long Knives or something. Sammy, he has 24 hours. to make the streets of Melbourne, to make Swanson Street, run red with the blood of everyone at Herald Sunnick Cours. Let's see what he does. So, I mean, thank you for joining us.

We'll catch you on News Weekly. You'll probably have a wrap of this at the end of the week. Oh, I'm very grateful to give me something to start the week of the top stories of the week off with because otherwise I always struggle. I'm like, what's interesting? Thank you. Otherwise, yeah.

It's going to be this or Justin Trudeau having a Nazi in parliament. So yeah. Nobody even wants to hear sort of depressed jokes about the voice at this point. No. So there you go. from Road, we're part of our iconic class network, and we'll catch you next time in Afria Victoria. Goodbye, Dictator, Dan. Bye.