The Chaser Report - Did We Call The 2025 Election Last November???

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

We hate to admit it, but if things keep going the way they are, then Charles might actually be ... right? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and without Charles today. Apologies again, we've done, I think it's 894 episodes now of this podcast. We love doing it daily. However, Charles and I do have to do other gigs to pay the bills. This is the joy of the gig economy. Maybe one day we'll make enough money out of podcasting just to do that.

but for the time being, we occasionally do get busy with other things, but it seems like a good day to look back on a massive call that Charles made on the 1st of November last year when Charles called the election. He wanted to be first to call the election. I don't normally like to praise his ability to tell the future, and things may have changed again now that Peter Dutton has released the details of the seven places where he wants to build nuclear power plants. We'll talk about that soon, I'm sure.

But I want to acknowledge that the last news poll, it was conducted between June the 3rd and the 7th, had the coalition and labour neck and neck for the first time in three years. Charles probably won't ever hear this. So I'm happy to say, maybe his predictions looking good. Let's look back on what he had to say after this. Now, Charles, it's 18 months until the next federal election, until Anthony Albanyi takes on presumably Peter Dutton.

He's, well, certainly a bit of paint's come off with the voice. He's had a little bit of a little bit of shine taking off. but the polls have mostly, I think, been okay. Yes. And yet despite this, despite the fact that Alba clearly wanted to get all this difficult voice stuff done a long way for the next election, you're prepared today on this day. Yes. At the beginning of November, 2023, you're prepared to make a call on the 2025 election?

Yes, I'm ready to call the election. I've seen enough. I've seen enough figures. I've seen enough of the vibe of what's going on. And I'm willing to call the election. Seriously. You're going to call it now. Well, ladies gentlemen, the first to call, the 2025, forget you're at Nick Green.

No. Forget whoever, whichever goobers they get on Channel 7 and Channel 9. First is first. Again, didn't you do this with Donald Trump? I did this with Donald Trump, and I was correct on my dad. It's actually true. He was on Australian television on the day. Channel 10.

I mean, in much the same way that a stop the clock is correct twice per day. Charles went in very early. And look, on that occasion, you're absolutely right. I think this is a big call at this stage in the process so far from the election. Yes. But that's what makes it gussing. That's right. But also, you know, you can wait 18 months and you'll find out that I will be completely accurate.

Like, I'm willing to call, I'm not, this is not just some sort of speculation. I am calling the 2025 election now today. Let's see if he has any kind of an argument. You can think of me as the Anthony Green of Australian elections. Yes, if Anthony Green's computer were broken and he just, went on a bullshit theory. Sorry, a well-informed theory. What's your theory?

But the thing is, and I just want to set this up correctly, which is the problem with Andy Green is that he uses linear computers, right? And we've talked about this recently on the podcast, right? So linear computers use ones and zeros to calculate everything. Yes, with actual data. Yeah, that gives them a whole certainty about reality

because things can only be one or zero, right? There's a winner and a loser. I mean, you either vote for Labor or. the coalition. You can't, I suppose, all the greens of the tills, but you can't vote for two people at once, the way that a quantum computer can exist all possible, can vote for everybody at the same time. What I do is I bring a sort of quantum computing approach to the next election. I don't work in this field of, oh, let's look at the polling data and put that into a linear computer. Is that because you're recording every possible outcome,

like a podcast predicting every possible outcome for the next election, including like a teal's victory and Adam Bant winning? And I don't know. Jackie Lambie becoming queen? No, no, it's because I'm doing the thing that quantum computing does, which is take the vibe. Like, nobody actually understands how quantum computer works. Yeah, and I don't understand how you're polling process works, Charles. But the vibe is probably, like, it's the sort of Schrodinger's sort of,

you just take all the different inputs, all the different realities. Schroding is bullshit theory. You can still come up with the correct result. Like, you actually, the whole point about it is it gives you the, correct result because it can test everything at the same time and it will tell you what the actual result is going to be. And I can tell you that what will happen at the next election is that Anthony Albanese will be defeated and Peter Dutton will be the next Prime Minister of Australia. Well, there is one bit of evidence. To my surprise, as I went looking to see if

anyone agreed to it at all in the entire country. There is one bit of evidence. Because I was about to scoffingly go evidence part, but go on, tell me this evidence is valid. There was a Morgan poll about a week ago. Ah, yes. Which found that... Morgan's hopeless, though. That the coalition were ahead for the first time since the election. Morgan's great.

Morgan's very accurate. 50.5, it's 49.5. Oh, right. Two-party preferred basis. So, I mean, obviously, we did the margin of error. I think the polls are following me, I think, is what's going on here. We did a margin of error, Charles, but their margin of error is a lot, lot smaller than yours is. So let's just unpack what's going on.

So just to set the scene here. The whole strategy with the voice, which, you know, clearly a disaster in many ways at this distance, but, and we've pointed this out since the get-go. I've been saying it's on the podcast since the timing became clear. Albo clearly wanted to have the voice referendum a very long way from the next election, right? So he's had it now. It's all done with. It will be very far in the rear view.

I mean, people who are directly affected, you know, First Nations, people, people like Stan Grant, who's just come out and said that we won't see any progress during his lifetime. I'm not sure how long he's planning to live. But they're affected on an ongoing basis. But from Albo's perspective, things have moved on. You know, he's been to America. He's going to go to China shortly. He's putting it all behind him.

Do you really think that what we see now, the moment, the mood of the nation now, will that hold for 18 months at a time when, you know, 24 hours is basically everything's old? Well, I think Peter Dutton's just getting started, though. Because, yeah, I don't know whether you've seen him in the last week, but he's got this spring in his step. And I think when you deny a voice to Indigenous people and you're Peter Dutton, you're an ex- Queensland cop. It does give you a spring in your step.

Is it like that beautiful moment at the station where the new phone book's come in? Yes. And they just unwrap them out of the plastic and just test the heft of them. Because every year, Charles, back in the day, there'd be more people in the phone book. They get a bit heavier every year. Yes. A to K would have more names year upon year. Yes.

And it smells fresh, these fresh souls you've harvested in the last year. Interesting. And so what Peter Dutton has been doing, which I think has been incredibly remarkable to watch. Remember, Mark Texter was running the voice campaign. So he was completely... There's a whole podcast episode on that, by the way, if you want to know more. He was completely unavailable.

But he was, you know, Linton Crosby and Mark Texter, Texer Crosby, are these stalwarts of Liberal Party messaging, but also conservative messaging all around the world. Yes, Boris Johnson relied on Crosby, Texter, and that's why he's now Sir Linton Crosby, by the way. And they, you know, stop the boats, the very basher refugee. Three words slogans.

Three words, they wrote the script for Tony Abbott. They came up with all these three-word slogans. Even Scott Morrison, I think, didn't they help delect, yeah. Well, actually, one of their staff members became, I think, Scott Morrison's chief of staff. He did it again, this whole episode on this. So are you saying Crosby Texter a back mastermining, or are you saying you're following the playbook? Yeah, you know, you can see, you can absolutely see that, you know, now that the voice distraction is over,

they're back writing the scripts for Peter Dutton. And Dutton has become like Tony Abbott GPT. So you're saying a smart version of Tony Abbott. Well, with the ability to generate its own new ideas. Generative Tony Abbott. Generative Tony Abbott, which is he's just, he's going very simplistic and for the jugular and just going absolutely negative on every single thing that Anthony Albertinezzi does.

And you've got to remember that Anthony Albanese got elected on the promise. of not promising to do anything, right? That was the genius of the campaign. Yeah. And he's gone through, he's gone through. Actually, I saw him not long ago going through and going everything we said we do before the election, we've done and gone through all the things that they do

and tick them all off because they are all reasonably achievable. And the great thing was, Charles. He promised so little. He was able to get everything he promised done. Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the kind of radical things that he was promising to do at all, or let's just say, the new things like the National Anti-Corruption commission and so on. They're all things that the teals would have made him do anyway. So

they're things that, you know, he had no choice in any case. So there was nothing other than the voice, which was literally, this is my new thing that I'm going to build the campaign on. Everything else was like, I won't frighten the horses. And guess what, I'm not Scott Morrison. But the thing is, the thing about reality is that new things come along. And when you are leading a country, you then actually have to take a position on those new things. You can't just be like you were in opposition and sort of go, well, that's a bit of a curveball question. I'm going to duck this and not be Scott Morrison. Are you sure you've got to take a position?

Because a really effective technique can be to just say, look, that's very interesting. We're going to have an inquiry into that and get back to you in about a year time. Admittedly, that was Kevin Rudd's approach, and that didn't bear very good fruit for him. But kicking the can the can down the road, I mean, I'm just saying, Charles, I don't want you to commit to anything when you can kick the can down the road. Well, I'm just saying that you can do that as long as you don't have a fucking vicious attack dog attacking you for doing precisely that. And that's what Peter Dutton has suddenly found the voice with in the last sort of couple of weeks. Oh, so you're saying someone got the voice. Someone got a voice out of this.

Someone got a voice out of that. And he's found this voice, which is to just accuse Anthony Alvinesey of being as weak as piss on everything, right? And the problem is, for Anthony Albanesey, is that it's fucking true. He is the weakest. I don't know whether you saw that meme going around with Albo B. You know the Albo B. Yeah, yeah. They've just released the zero strength, Albo B.

Oh, wow. That's actually a pretty good word. All right, more of Charles's bullshit theories. Coming from a great place of personal disappointment, if you can bear with us after this. The Chaser Report. News, you know. You can't trust.

And so the point is that Anthony Albanyasy had this one magic trick, which is to not promise anything and then deliver on not actually having promised anything and just being all smug about it. And that's not going to work. Now, why won't he switch strategies, right? So the question obviously is clearly he's going to plummet in the polls. Dutton's going to saw off the back of these three-word slogans that Tony Abbott GPT is writing for him, right?

Why won't Albanyzie suddenly go, actually, you know what, maybe we should come out against, you know, bad things and in favour of good things, you know, like. Well, I mean, Dutton's main line at this stage, whenever Albo does absolutely anything, including measures directly aimed at the cost of living, to say, why are waiting to talk about the cost of living? And this is the thing that was probably the most, I suspect that history will remember that the main reason that the voice lost was because it seemed like he didn't have his eye on the ball, because so many people were hurting financially that they couldn't, they didn't have the generosity of spirit to think about other people. And we know that's what's what humans tend to do, sadly enough.

And so every soundbite of Dutton is, cost of living, cost of living, cost of living, excuse me, cost of living. And that's these three words. Yeah, there's three words. And there's three words he needs. So you don't think Alba is going to pivot, because that is Labor motherhood stuff, right? Yeah.

More subsidies, more, you know, big vision, make things cheaper. But it doesn't have to be true because the cost of living crisis is going to go on, regardless of any government policy that Albert throws at it, because they've got the reserve bank going, well, what we're trying to do is we're trying to drive up unemployment and drive up the cost of housing. Like, literally their policy is to make mortgage holders so stressed that they don't get out for coffee ever again and to make unemployed people more numerous in numbers. The new governor the other day was kind of like, whoop, not enough pay it in the housing sector. We've got to ratchet that shit up. So the point is, they can do all that they like. They can give out childcare subsidies and they can give up PBS subsidies and things like that.

But if somebody's going, but at a fundamental level, Australians are worse off now than they were 18 months ago. And that will be true in 18 months' time, right? And so they will look out of touch if they go, but hang on, we did all these extra measures for you. Because Peter Dutton will be going, not good enough, not good enough, not good enough. Cost of living. Cost of living. You've got to remember the enormous home ground advantage that a Prime Minister has. You've got to think of all the tricks.

Albo can pull out of his bag, try and make these things happen. All the deceptive ads he can run with the government advertising budget. For instance, Charles, would you be worried about the cost of living if you had your very own nuclear submarine? Would you be worried if you had your very own electric car? An AlboMobile for all Australians with interest-free loans that never been to be repaid? I mean, that would require Labor to have some sort of big kind of visionary idea. But that involves them making a promise, right? And the one thing that they're not going to do is make a promise, right?

That's the mythology of the Labor government is we're not going to promise anything. We wouldn't want to commit small targets. Yeah. Because we're the sensible. We're the adults in the room. And you're going, well, I don't care who's in the room because I'm fucking in payouts. Yeah. What I want is, you know, I want the government to basically be the bank of mom and dad at this point.

Yeah, but why fundamentally won't they pivot to, okay, let's just promise the earth and get elected next time? Yeah. And I'll summarize it for you the best, I can, by saying that Anthony Albanese thinks that he's really good looking, right? So, one, apparently, yes, this came out during the week. I mean, look, to be fair, hot elbow, as a young man. Oh, yeah. Pretty good stuff. Yeah.

Just for balance, we should mention that. There was one photo once. It was literally one photo, but it's a photo good enough to have been put on the wall of the women's toilets at Marikville Metro, as Nina Ayama told us a while ago. But he has interpreted the polling data of women, and women hated Scott Morrison right. And apparently, according to one of his staffers, he has interpreted this as thinking that the actual reason for his appeal amongst women is not because he's not Scott Morrison, but because he's actually really quite good looking.

And the women fancy him, that he's got a bit of the Bob Hawks going on. I mean, Charles, I like that. And it's his charisma and charm and general good looks. I, look, you know I'd be the last person to talk about people's physical appearance, both on principle and, you know, just my situation, shall we say. But he is running against Peter Dutton. Can we just remember for a brief moment who he's running against here? Like, in terms of just not looking scary, he's got an advantage.

Like, what are the thing is? People are going to see the posters of Peter Dutton on polling day. just sort of go, really? But no, but what I'm saying is that is a completely delusional position to have. Like, actually, it's the fact that their policies were better than Scott Morrison's policies about women. Like, women aren't just like, they're not just voting for thirst traps, right? And it's quite delusional to actually interpret just data about voting intentions.

The thing it reflects in any way on your physical looks. And the thing is, at any time in human history, had Australian elections been determined by how good-looking somebody was, then not a single man would have ever been elected to the office of prime minister. They were all ugly cunts. Very mean to Billy McMahon. Anyway, Charles, there's a massive fallacy in your analysis. It's a huge problem.

You've got a blind spot here. You're talking about Labor, right? You're talking about the Australian Labour Party here, Charles. There is no fucking way that Albo is going to. run against Peter Dutton in the next election. If he takes even the tiniest dip in the polls, he'll be nice. He is gone. Doesn't matter how good looking he is or thinks he is.

It doesn't matter how amazing his last victory was or how good his polls were thus far. The slightest dip in the polls against Dutton and they'll panic and put someone else in. The real question is who's next? No, no. See, that's where you've got it wrong. Like, I'm actually just going to be serious here, which is the problem is that Anthony He's not just the front man now, but he's actually the backroom still, right? To put him in Gen X terms that Gen X would understand.

He is the Graham Richardson of the Federal Liberal Party. He is the guy who walks into the Prime Minister's office and goes, mate, you're toast. And the problem is that being the person who's the backroom operator, being the front man, means that there's nobody left in the party because they're all scared of him. They're all terrified of him because he's the fucking, you know, he breaks your knees internally. And then he goes out and promises nothing, you know, and thinks he's really good looking. There is one. There is one person who would not be scared of Albao.

There's one person who will come in and give the tap on the shoulder. There's one person who is impossible to scare. To scare. Who is far stronger than Albuoy will ever be. He's been through far more than Albuoy will ever go through. Who has far more charisma and gravitas and poise than Albo will ever have. Are you talking about Sam Destiari? It is Sam.

No. Charles, it's Penny Wong. Oh, yes, you're right. But she's a senator. But if Penny Wong comes and gives him the tap on the shoulder and goes, yes. Anthony. Yeah, no.

Anthony, he's going to fucking... Yeah, he'd crumble. Get out of there. What did I produce? She used to say? Like, shit through a goose. Yeah, that's right. No, you're right.

Penny Wong is the only woman who can deliver the tap on the shoulder. She can't then become leader unless she goes to the lower house. And Christina can tell you that's not always an assured process. But while they have Penny Wong to, I reckon, you know, He might well be out of, I don't know who the next leader is. They'd probably go for someone deeply boring like Chris Bowen. But, you know, holes go down, Arboe's out of there. You heard it here first.

I'm the first to call, the leadership spill. You give me the first to call Albao losing the next election. I'm the first to call he'll never even get there, child. I just don't think that Labor will ever risk that uncertainty ever again. Like the whole Rudd thing, like the whole ALP law is now that knocking off Rudd in his first term was a complete desire. and should never have been done. So you're saying that Labor is smart enough to learn from its last mistakes.

Yes. And then make it a completely new mistake. Yes, exactly. I say you still have far too much faith in the ALPET. We'll find out, time will tell. We'll look back on this episode in the months and years ahead to see it. And we can always modify it. We can always edit it.

So the one thing that neither of us has been willing to say is that the Prime Minister, bearing in mind that no first-term government has ever lost in Australian history, that he won't win. Because it's not looking, it's not looking great for him. He's got a bit of work to do. He's toast. But he is good looking compared to us.

Agu is from my part of the iconic class network. Catch you next time. See ya.