The Chaser Report - Give Us Freedom (And Covid)! | Dave Milner | Dan Ilic

Episode Date: October 17, 2021

After a week off, Charles, Dom, and Gabbi are all freedom-ed out. Fortunately Dave Milner (The Shot) is here to remind them of how sweet freedom really is. Meanwhile Dan Ilic (A Rational Fear) debriefs after the huge success of his billboard stunt in New York, and gives a teaser for his plans to come. Plus, Rebecca De Unamuno delivers all the headlines you can’t trust! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by skinny tea companies, promoting eating disorders under the disguise of a wellness beverage that's pretty much just laxatives and grass. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report on Monday, the 18th of October 2021, which is Freedom Day number two in New South Wales. And we're back live with you, well, live-ish with you once again after a week off. If I'm dumb night. Hello, Charles Firth. Hello, Gabby Bolt.

Hello, hello. Hello. How are you weeks off? Are you full of joy and well-rested and happy? Oh. Just being extremely hung over after celebrating for an entire week count as being happy and well-rested. Well, it counts as you being back to normal. I'm not to say, that's a normal work week for you, isn't that, Charles?

Well, this is the thing. So on last Monday, we actually took. took last week off the podcast, and it was Freedom Week, and the whole idea was we would actually go out and enjoy all our new freedoms, catch up with friends, we could have 10 people at home, blah, blah, blah. And instead, this terrible thing happened, which is I just got drunk, literally every day, every single day, there was another lunch to go to or people to see at night or party or whatever.

This is horrible. I think we should go back into lockdown. You know what I've realised is actually more horrible than the week you had? the realisation that I think you have more friends than me, Charles. I had one dinner and it was your house. But to clarify, I don't like any of the people I got up with you. It was all more social obligation. I'm glad that your friends probably support you in listening to this podcast

and all just found out that you don't actually like them at all. No, no, no, but I'm very sure that they don't like me either. I went to Charles's place as well, which was fantastic. It was a really nice chance to catch up with a lot of old friends and Charles. I mean, it was horrifying, to be honest. It was, I mean, the food was nice, the company was nice, but it just got so loud and so, everyone got so tipsy and strident.

And the amount of aerosols going around, I just felt like I pashed everyone. I went home and had a shower and I just had to do mouthwash. I hate it. It's horrifying. I just want to stay at home. Charles, next time we want to catch up, it's Zoom, mate. I'm sorry. I don't want to breathe your air.

No, no, I agree with you, Dom. Like, we would have had a much better. I would have had a much better weekend had I not had to drink those three bottles of wine while shouting loudly at you all at night. Like my whole weekend was ruined by having to catch up with everyone. I have a bone to pick with your bloody weekend, Charles, and here's what it is. We came over as interns for like a nice lunch and I brought the only cheese I could afford, which was Mercy Valley and some grapes.

And when I brought it out, you were like, oh, that's great. We didn't have anything like that. Thanks for bringing some cheese. And as I'm leaving, as I'm leaving your house, I see you prepare this. What I can only assume is a very expensive charcutory board full of very nice cheeses. And who should I see as I'm leaving? But Rebecca Dayunamuno walk past and go into your house. I'm not sitting, oh, I wasn't worth the expensive cheese.

So I wouldn't be coming over to your house again either. This is what happened. See, if we'd just done it on Zoom and self-cated like before, there would have been none of that awkwardness. Gabby would have felt she was still top priority rather than not making your top. top 10, Charles, which Beck did. It's now super awkward and horrible. And I don't even have any plates in my house because I lent all of my plates to Charles because Charles didn't have any plates for some reason, or cutlery.

So we're now eating off paper plates. The whole thing's a disaster. And the moral of the story is let's go back in a lockdown right fucking now. I can't agree more. And thank you for those plates because at the beginning of the lockdown, we actually chucked out all our cutlery and crockery because we said, we're never going to see anyone again. We're never going to have a dinner party.

Let's just get rid of them. and so it's great that you brought over all your cutlery and grogory because now we've restocked so again thank you for that and thanks for the cheese Gabby that was really nice as well I'm sure you loved it look and I mean I'd be saying let's move down to Melbourne where you know the lockdown will never end except that it is it is ending on Thursday night at 1159pm

we're going to talk to Dave Milner of the shot about what it's like to be on the verge of freedom which probably seems good to them now because they don't know how shit freedom is yet See, this is where I think the ACT government have got it right. They are 99% vaccinated and they're still not out of lockdown. You still can't even go shopping properly in Canberra. That is the way to go. Canberra were on to the notion of freedom and fun not being desirable outcomes a long time ago.

Also today, our good friend Dan Illich on his billboard stunt that's got made CNN, Russell Crows into it. He's embarrassed Australia in front of the entire world. We'll talk to him about that. But first of all, let's go to Rebecca Dayenamuno straight after this. Hang on, Gabby, is it awkward for you to go to Rebecca now? No, I can go to Rebecca. I'll do it.

Ready? Hold on. Here's my thread of Rebecca. But first of all, let's go to the expensive cheese friend, Rebecca Dayanamuno, in the Chase Newsroom right after this. She's worth it. She is. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important.

take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. The Victorian government will end the state's six lockdown on Thursday night after hitting the 70% vaccination target, despite the state having nearly 2,000 new COVID cases yesterday. The change was warmly welcomed by both Victorians and the deadly coronavirus. Sky News commentator Peter Credlin says she won't be coming to celebrate Dan Andrews finally giving in to her demand that the city reopen

as she would be certain to catch COVID. Scott Morrison has announced he has changed his plans and will be going to Glasgow next month as the Queen demanded. However, he will not attend the COP 26 Climate Summit and instead will go on a tour of his favourite pubs in the area as well as visiting the gravestones of anyone he can find on his family tree. Netflix have responded to criticisms of Dave Chappelle's controversial new special by admitting

they didn't actually watch it first before approving it, as they were too busy catching up on Squid Game. Netflix said that the next time Chappelle wanted to get millions of dollars from them, he would have to win them in a series of chilling variations on innocent childhood games. That's the latest headlines from The Chaser Report. I'm worthy of expensive cheese and Gabby isn't. And yum, yum, this Jersey blue cheese is delicious. Yum, yum, yum.

At long last, the sixth lockdown in Melbourne has an end in sight, 1159 PM on Thursday. Things will open up at last. Dave Milner is columnist for the shot. Hey, Dave. Hey, Tom. How you doing? I'm good, but how are you? There's actually a time when Liberty will arrive and hopefully permanently.

I'm all of the emotions concurrently at once on top of each other. It's been a long time, man. It's been a really long time. And so is there any indication for why they opened up early? Because I thought you weren't supposed to be out of lockdown for several weeks. We just want to be like New South Wales. The tables have turned. We're going to copy you guys now for a little bit.

So has Dan Andrews sort of done a 180 and become a sort of freedom-loving libertarian? No, no. I actually think what's happened is that you've been misinformed. This actually is the plan that's been happening the entire. time. Have you been reading the Murdo Papers, Charles? Is that what's it? I get all my information from the Herald Sun. That's your first problem. No, we're about to hit 70%, which is sort of cautious opening, and then 80% is the less cautious opening. And yeah, now we can go to the, we can go to the pub this week. I just can't get my head around it. I'm not going to have

anything funny to say in this chat. I'm just utterly overwhelmed. I can go to the pub. I can go to We've been, we've just done our first weekend out of lockdown, Dave. And I can tell you, it's, it is actually horrible. And by this time next week, you'll be pleading to go back into lockdown. Yeah, Dave, I've got to say, I'm kind of scared now that we're this open. It feels weird. Every time I walk out of the house, I'm like, hang on, where's my mask? I need my mask.

I'm going to get in trouble. So you guys don't need to wear masks outside? Is that what they do with? No. Well, we still do. Oh, because you're sensible. in Melbourne. Now, that's right. The biggest adjustment for us here is going to be, we got used to beating coronavirus. Every time we've stepped out of a lockdown,

it just hasn't been around. And now we've got to do the neoliberal live with it thing. And that is definitely going to be an adjustment. Absolutely. I'm not sure how people are going to feel about that. We had 1,800 cases today. That's a lot of cases. Did you see all the new scientific reports are that if you get COVID and you get the vaccination, it's like double immunity? It works really well if you also have COVID. So I think it's sort of an argument in favour of just letting it rip. We're all going to get COVID eventually, Dave.

Let's not give people too irresponsible advice. Don't get your medical advice from this podcast. We're idiots. No, no. It's in the Herald Sun. It was fine. I don't know what you're talking about. Don't listen to the Herald Sun.

Don't listen to Charles Firth. That's my advice. But it's going to feel weird, isn't it? Because, I mean, we at least, fortunately, have lower cases. But the call on whether you actually go to the pub might be challenging, might not if the numbers are in the thousands and thousands of cases around the inner city. I think so. I mean, this becomes that personal responsibility thing.

Do we? How comfortable do we feel doing these various things? I'm definitely only going to hang out with vaccinated people. And, I mean, part of that is I don't want to hang out with time being precious. but also, yeah, they're more like that have the virus around. And I, you know, despite what Charles has just said, I'd rather not get coronavirus. But does it worry you? Because here in New South Wales, if you're unvaccinated, you can still go to church.

Does it worry you that every time you go to church, Dave, you'll be around unvaccinated people? Yeah, and I'm just at church all the time. No. It's going to weigh on me quite a lot. Cramp, cramp your style. I mean, you know, I've been indoors for 200, and it'll be 264 days come Thursday. Bloody hell. Yeah, it's quite, it's been quite an ordeal.

And it's like, because your son's, what, three years old, it's about half his life, isn't it? Yep. Hey, I'm trying to keep it together, all right? This is a live cross. Let's talk about that. Let's go back to how much I've been missing church. Again, I'm just completely overwhelmed. I don't, 264 days is just a staggering amount of time to spend.

doing whatever the fuck we've been doing. You know what? I haven't spoken to you. I've been congratulations in your lockdown ending. That must have been nice too. Dave, how long is it going to be? Because you're a great Murdoch watcher. How long is it going to be from when Melbourne finally reopens,

as the Herald Sun has been demanding for more than a year now? How long until they start going, Dictator Dan, for opening too early? Thursday, I imagine. Yeah, Thursday at about 11.59 p.m. It's been remarkable. I wonder if they will try to claim credit for this. The paper that saved Melbourne. That's what I hear.

Yeah, yeah. We'll send down some Sydney correspondence to do some proper political journalism on your... They've tried that. They sent Peter Credlin down to cross-examine Dan Andrews and ripped the whole edifice of this government apart. It didn't work, but we have done that. So please, please no more, no more. What are you going to do on Friday, Dave? Far out.

Just lots of crying, I think. I will go to my local with some friends and, yeah, just lots of crying. It is nice actually being able to chat with people without a sort of Zoom link delay. You sort of suddenly realize, oh, that's the point of life, isn't it? You do. You sort of, I don't know, I got really anxious. the lockdown and then suddenly it's like all dissolved because you know catching out with I don't even like people and I know this yeah I saw Charles on the

weekend Dave and I mean I'm done till 2023 but it was nice well it's that you know microsecond of latency on Zoom that just makes everything 100% more awkward and stressful and that not being there in real life I imagine would be quite nice also like you know again, 263 days since I've seen some people, just I can't remember what certain people look like. There's birdsong in your background, Dave. It's beautiful. It's fantastic.

It's exactly the vibe. Even the birds are happy. Well, they heard. They watch the press conference with me. We are like a Disney cartoon. Yeah, they're done. Andrew stands, aren't they? The birds.

The drips. God. Well, well done. We have no idea what it's like, had to do what we just went through more than double. Can't wait to come down and see you and just help the virus spread. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important.

Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Today's episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by Skinny Tea Company. keeping general practitioners in business 24-7. Now, if you happen to be watching global news channel CNN over the weekend,

you might have seen the face of our dear friend Dan Illich, the host of the Arational Fear podcast with the Billboard stunt that we talked about just over a week ago here on the podcast. It's gone ever so well. Hello, Dan. Hi, Dom, Charles and Gabby. It's good to be with you. Congrats. So it took me a while to kind of get your names out because I'm just used to saying, oh, hi, Jake Tapper. It's good to be with you.

That's what I'm used to saying. We're the little people now. Thanks for dating to come back on the podcast. We brainstorm one of the ideas. It was so cool to just be chatting on Zoom. And then a couple of days later, it's in Times Square. Yeah, it was fantastic. I really enjoyed giving some Billboard space away to, you know,

friends of the podcast or rational free people who've employed me for throughout my career. It's absolutely thrilling to give a little back. And I think that Crocofile Dundee was a real great. a great hit amongst the internet community. I think it's gone viral. People have, I just said, retweeted, retweeted and retweeted everywhere. So you guys have absolutely hit it out of the park. Well, slaps on the back all round.

Our work is done. Climate change is fixed at this point. Well, look, I don't want to say, like at 9.45 a.m. when those billboards went up, Scomo had no plans to go to Glasgow. Then by 2.45 p.m., he held a press conference to announce, oh, no, the night before, we made a decision. We're going to go to Glasgow.

So, I don't know. Maybe it was us. Maybe it was the Queen being disgruntled. But who knows? You know, it just goes to show you, even if it was us just for a little bit. The kind of power comedians can have when they are angry and have been able to work properly and are in their bedrooms for like three months at a time. Well, there's a causal link.

Surely the Queen saw the Billboard. Well, I had this theory, you know, one of the billboards that had a whole bunch of names of people who paid more than 500 bucks to kind of get their name on the billboard as part of the campaigns, a bit of a thank you to all the people that contributed financially. And in it, I threw in a few other names just to kind of make it funny. And so other names included Angus Taylor, Gina Reinhardt, Rupert Murdoch. And so I had this theory that someone, some staffer at the PMO saw that slide and was like, holy shit, Gina Reinhardt and Rupert Murdoch have paid for these. We better tell the boss. Do you think that they're so rich, though, that they would

see that and assume that they actually had. Yeah, I mean, they don't know what they do with their money. You know, they don't know that their money causes catastrophic climate change. Yeah, Rupert Murdoch sitting somewhere in an ivory tower. Like, this seems like a weird thing I would spend my money on. But I suppose I did just unveil the climate campaign across all my papers. So who knows? Exactly.

Rupert Murdoch said to someone, oh, yeah, I suppose we should support Net Zero by 2050. Let's do a 15-page pull-out. That'll help. That'll fix it. Then online, you know, there's been a lot of people who have been very supportive of your campaign. But there's also been a lot of people who hate what you did. And I just want to read out some of the tweet. Please, read out the hate. Bring the hate on. This one's from Fire Haitham. And it says if you were a satire news site who wanted to mock how ineffectual and

pathetic the Australian progressive movement is, you'd make a scenario where people wasted thousands of dollars to make a shitty pun on a 40-year-old Australian reference aimed at people not in Australia. How do you respond to that? Wow. Well, can I just respond to that by saying, Charles, that was the chaser's come? And I don't do, I don't usually would go for that. But I thought it would, you know, resonate with Americans. And yeah, you know, hey, look, I'm all for freedom of speech. You know, I wasn't going to say, I wasn't going to say no to the chaser interns billboard. That is the last thing that cut through from Australia is Crocodile and D.A. Oh, absolutely. No. As someone who lived and worked in.

And Charles, you would know this as someone who's worked in America. People reference Crocodile Dundee to you all the time as if it is like Beyonce. Like Crocodile Dundee still holds cultural cred in America. So that's why I laugh so hard when I got pitched. So I think it was actually pretty good. I thought it was a really clever thing. And I'm sure my friends internationally loved it. As they saw this campaign roll out, I'd have a good friend in Korea,

reach out to me to say that campaign is fantastic. And he said, I know that the Australia-China trade war is bad for Australians, but they haven't burned it. Because they haven't burnt any Australian coal in the last seven days, I have had clear skies for the last seven days and the sunshine. And he said, this is absolutely down to the Australia-China trade war. And I thought, that's remarkable. Like, in Australia, we don't think about how our coal gets used elsewhere, but it absolutely pollutes the skies of Asia. after it leaves our shores. There's a tangible effect.

So, yeah, no, I think that, I look, I defend the pun. I think the pun is good. And I really serve the right audience, right time. There's always a good time for a pun. So what about Idiot Digger? I have no idea how they expect the American public to get this billboard. So, Dan, what were you doing? Why didn't you put the billboard in Australia?

Well, you know, it's not for Americans. It's for us. We're entertaining ourselves here. I'm entertaining 2,000 people that gave. me money to put billboards up ridiculing the government. And also, the press that had got back in Australia was phenomenal. And so that is the point. You're not going to get the same amount of press if you put that pun in Glenair or wherever

you want to put it. Anyway, you know what, I find the argument against these billboards so stupid. And here's why. If a scientist said, hi, everyone, I would like money for my stem cell sciencey stuff. If you want, donate money for my science. And people went, here's a lot of money for your. science. And he goes, wow, I've been found with more money for my science than I ever thought possible. I guess I can make more science with this. No one would care. But when it's comedy,

all of a sudden everyone's like, there are so many better uses for this money. You could have used it for anything. No, the point is that you asked for money for satire. People gave you money going, cool, here's money for satire. And then you used it. Ross Noble can perform at the Athename Theatre for a week during comedy festival and make $150,000, right? can't do that. I can make jokes on billboards in New York City, but my audience is equally just paying for that. So I spent $150,000 making jokes in New York City and around the world at Glasgow, wherever, because that's what I do. I make jokes there. Ross Noble can't do that because he, you know, he writes jokes to do on stage. That's what he does. Finally, Dan, what's next? What's

the next step in the jokekeeper onslaught? So step one, phase one of this comedy event has been done. New York is done. We're on to phase two, which is going to be a little bit of a secret. So until I can book all the billboards where I need to book them, I can't tell you. But I can tell you what is planned in three weeks time for Glasgow. So here we go. We've got some creative here. See if you can see this.

It says Paris targets. We meet and beat because we cheat. That's pretty good. And then I've got Australia, reducing emissions by making more emissions. And this is the final one. Glasgow welcomes, the Prime Minister of Australia. and I'm sure Scott Morrison would be quite happy to see that photo of Rupert Murdoch beaming down upon him.

Very nice. If you want to support, just go to Danny Litch's social or his website and you can find it how to tip in more money for the Jokeper campaign. Thank you, Dan. Hey, good to be with you. Yeah, please listen to a Rational Fear podcast. This week we had Angela Vau-Pierre, Dane Simpson, and we also had Joe Hilda Brand on, and we bashed him for about 30 to 40 minutes about News Corp, and it's a pretty fun

listen. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Today's episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by skinny tea companies. The product is what it does, a pile of shit. Before we go, let's just look back on how packed with content this podcast was, Charles and Gabby. You just reflect on how we don't really need an outro.

This is probably going to be it. That's a great idea. Shouldn't we just mention that our gear is from road microphones? Should I add a soundtrack to this? And we're part of the Acast to create a network. And that's all the podcast. But we are back live. So tomorrow we'll have to do another one of these.

I've gotten out of the habit of that. Damn it. Yeah. let's end with a real wimper okay uh bye uh bye stop recording in three buy our shit two all right one uh come see my show oh god kitty