The Chaser Report - Goodbye for 2025!

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

Fare thee well for 2025! Charles and Dom sign off for the year, but not before they make bold plans for how they will return in 2026! Looks like The Chaser Report is coming to the Opera House!* Happy holidays dear listener!*'s cafe.---Order the 2025 CHASER ANNUAL: https://chasershop.com/products/the-chaser-and-the-shovel-annual-2025-preorderListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] 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 Chase Report with Dom and Charles. Which we have just decided in a spontaneous meeting is the final Chaser Report for 2025. Yes. As the year winds down, as the world remains in a state of considerable turmoil. Yes. We think, normally we do this during the school holidays anyway, so a bit a week early.

We didn't do the weekend edition this weekend, Charles. We're just exhausted. I think it's fair to say. Yes. Some of us, just because we've been working a little bit longer than usual and have little kids, another of us because we've been conquering the world. You can work out who's who, but it doesn't even matter who's who, Charles. The point is we're pretty cooked.

I've been, no, look, I think it's one of those, like, Christmas and New Year's, it's a time for reflection, it's a time for not working. It's a time for not podcasting. It's all those things. It's a time to say, you know what? There's 1,200 episodes of this thing. If people want to hear from us during the break, what we'll do, should we do the thing

where we just repost old episodes? No, I hate that. I hate that. I know. It is very dodgy, but it does keep the... Drives engagement, does it? Just trickling in. Like, it's barely probably worth the money to put it up.

Anyway, we can ponder that. What I do have is I've got a whole of of improvised interviews from about 10 years ago now. Really? Of all the chaser guys. Oh, those? The sort of fake history of the chaser. Oh, yeah.

I filmed them as well. They were good. I remember those. Yeah, I think they were very good. You put a lot of work into them. They were sort of structured improvised sessions. Yeah. And it was all so serious.

It was like, it was like a mockumentary about the chaser. But I've never edited it up. And I was thinking I should like get Dylan a little. Loughlin to sort of... One of our crack editors. Yeah. Have a trawl through it over the summer. I don't know whether they would want to.

And either you could. I mean, the other thing you could do is you could pitch it to the ABC as a special chasing a year piece, which they'll reject. It'd be the sort of, you know, like, there can be historical archive material now. Well, next year it is, I was just realizing next year, next year is 20 years since the start of the war and everything. Oh, well, that's a perfect time. Yeah.

Which, I mean, generally, you commemorate the end of the war rather than a start. Yeah, yeah, given the state of affairs. Yeah, I think you want to milk it for all that we can. So, look, we can just announce now that we'll be doing seven reunion tours in 2026 and then more in 2027 and 28. Right. One for each member of the Chaser, because it's not clear if we'll want to work together. Are there even seven members, who knows?

It's a good of a contested thing these days. So, well, yeah, we'll do a huge reunion. into it. Maybe we'll book the Opera House, Charles, for a big event. Book it and they will come. Do you reckon we could sort of the Opera House and say, look, we'll put it out, we'll book it for December. Put it on sale for December. Yeah.

And if we get, just make it sure it's refundable. Can you book a theatre with a refundable deal? That's called a pencil, Dom. Oh, yeah, okay. Because do you think anyone would come if we had an anniversary? No, I don't think they would. Well, I think if you did, it's all about the marketing, Dom. It's not about the quality of the content.

Of course. We should do what the goodies did and just play clips and talk about it. We should do a Chaser Report live from the Opera House. Like the rest is history did. Yes. Yes. We should absolutely do that. And it'll just be Dom and Charles on stage. Yep.

In front of what, 2,000 and a half thousand people? No, this is the genius of the idea. If we book it this, okay, this is exciting. This is 26. Yeah. The Chaser Report live at the Sydney Opera House. Yes. Fantastic.

Which has a range of venues of varying size. Oh, I see. It goes all the way from, obviously, the concert hall. Yeah. But can you book the Benalong Cafe or something? I think the Utson room takes about 50 to 100. Oh, perfect. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah.

Live from the City Opera House. And then if it sells well, we can keep bumping up the venues to the point where we're performing on the steps. We should book the Utson room to just do our podcast every day, if it's only 50 people. Yeah. We could just be live from the Opera House. Every single day. I love it. No, that's, um, that is, that is a brilliant idea.

So, okay, so there's, that's a big plan for next year. Yep. What else is happening in 2026? I feel like too many of the sort of year of the end, you know, go with your rapt. You know, they look back. I really want to look forward. I want to look at sort of the global trends. I mean, you've got the midterm elections in the US.

The midterm election. That'll be a time when it will be proven that the Democrats can swing lots of votes and still, yet somehow, lose every important fight with Trump. Yes, well, it'll be, they can then potentially regain the power to impeach Trump, which does absolutely nothing, as we know. Right, yes, yes, yes. And then what else will happen? Albo, do you think he's going to go down for the entitlements scandal?

Oh. Or is he going to, like, because you know how everyone's going, oh, he's a genius? He's just like how he's going to get a wriggle out of it. You're just going, it gets. It's worse and worse and worse. Howard had a lot of narrow escapes. But hasn't all of the official response been, there's absolutely nothing wrong with this, it's all within the rules?

Yes, yes. No, no, but I think he sort of changed, over the weekend, he kind of started going, actually, you know what, let's start repaying some of this stuff. Like Michelle Rowland announced that she was going to repay, she's the Attorney General, she was going to repay a whole of stuff. And I think actually Albo's moved to the footing of, well, you know, it's not for me to say,

whether it was wrong or not, why don't we set up some sort of independent body on my behalf, who can say that it wasn't wrong? Well, this is the thing. I mean, Annabel Crabb wrote a really brilliant piece on this about how there's now the pub, basically there's the pub test. Yes. It's the test that matters most of all.

And so, and she said you put it to a jury of your beers. Oh, that was quite good. But it's true. Because I think the thing is, I mean, the public reaction is that it's not, that a lot of these things are not okay. Like, hey, like this whole idea of having a com car waiting outside a football stadium for 10 hours or whatever. Has she not heard of Uber? Well, this is the thing that's so strange about it,

but particularly after all the Joe Halen stuff in New South Wales. So this all happened in New South Wales. Now, this was, there were trips to and from sport. There were trips to and from a vineyard. I can't remember the precise details, but that did lead to Joe Halen resigning as transport minister in New South Wales. Yes. And you would have thought that after that, anyone with access to a com car would be going,

yeah, look, I'd perhaps be a careful. But in fairness, I think Anika Wells' expenses were like beginning of last year. Oh, so before that. Remember, in their commitment to unwavering transparency, all the expenses details, which are very transparent, come out enormously late. Like, they come out months and months after those expenses are actually incurred. That's right. So that's why we're hearing now about, you know, the Tennis Australia, Australian Open, you know,

the Com car waiting outside expense from the beginning of, you know, 2025. By the way, I do have a cab waiting outside the front charge of the chaser. Well, this is the thing. I mean, you know, if you've made it, you just have a car waiting the whole time. Yeah, you just have a driver. He gets very tired after a while. You get to bed and say, look, I might use you in the morning, you know. This is only a very short podcast, but I did get the driver to come nine hours earlier

Yeah, because that's what you, that's got to be a 10-hour call. Look, I mean, I don't know. It's going to be very interesting to see if Anthony Albanese is able to deal with all of that. But, yeah, I mean, look, the bottom line is we're done for the year. That's it. We are pretty much pulling up stumps. We're pulling up stumps. We're going to go and watch the cricket.

We're going to have a lovely summer. I hope everyone does have a lovely summer. Yes, indeed. And we will return refreshed to some degree. The day after. to your birthday. To ask my birthday. Should we go to the cricket?

Do you want to go to the cricket? I'd love to go to the cricket. Yes, okay. That'd be good. Yep, okay. If we go to the cricket, we might record a podcast just to see what cricket Australia's licensing rules are. Oh, yes. Great idea, yeah.

This is, so there you go. Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy New Year. And we will see you on January the 27th next year. See you then. Okay, bye. This is part of the Iconiclass Network. See you soon.