The Chaser Report - Government Enforced Midlife Crisis

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

The Chaser pride themselves on bringing you all the latest cheeriest war news, existential crises, and reminders of your universal insignificance. Dom talks about growing old, as well as the latest on Ukraine. Meanwhile Charles brings the dark truths of the SA election according to Sky News. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. It is Tuesday the 22nd of March. 2022, we have Gabby Bolt, Dom Knight and Charles Firth at Adelaide Airport. Charles, thank you for joining us for such an exotic locale. Yeah, what's it like on the ground? I've got to leave here because there's now a Labor government elected. Oh.

Got to get out of here, all my tax wroughts. and love of freedom has been trampled on. What does this mean for the car parks of South Australia? Well, the good thing about car parks is they promised, the Libs promised them, but they never actually build them. So it means absolutely Jack Sheet. Great. All right.

Well, we'll get on to your take on South Australian elections shortly. I love Jack. He should have been voted in. Yeah, good DJ. I'm going to take a look at the very brave Russian army and why they're such a respected military around the world. But first, did you know, Charles, this must. have happened to you, when you turn 45, you get a letter from the, this is a way off for

Gabby, this is, you get a letter from the Australian government. You're not, there's not going any pieces of paper by the time you're 45. No, there won't be trees. I'll be dead. But what it says, it's got your free 45 year life check, finance, work, health and staying socially connected. So they want you to basically go online. It's a free service. And they want you to sort of review where you're at in these four categories. And I was just looking at the list, finance, work, health and social life. I'm none from four.

Yeah. I'm not. This is horrible. It's lifechecks.gov.org. It's easy to do. I've just realized this has given me an existential crisis. Why are they only asking for 45-year-olds input on this, though? That's a very good idea that should be a 25-year-old.

Well, like, surely they're looking for like comparative data, right? So like as you move through the life process, why haven't I? I turned 25 last year. Why haven't they sent me if he's a male going, or you check in with your life? Well, because you're not meant to have achieved anything by the time. But by the time you're 45, you're basically meant to be all sorted. You're supposed to have your super all ready to go. Yeah, kids' wife.

Taking care of your health. I mean, I'm a disaster. Even social life. I mean, that's not entirely my fault. That's the pandemic. But couldn't they have putting something in there that made me feel better? Yeah, maybe. It does feel like they just sort of, they've sent this letter to rub it in.

Yeah, like if they'd put number of video games finished, number of TV shows binged, just something that I've actually achieved. It's from Josh Frydenberg and Greg Hunt. Oh, no wonder they're not asking young people. And I'm just wondering, is the idea of them signing this, it looks like it's personally signed, although it's clearly not,

is the idea that then I'll vote for them because they've taken the time to write me, write to me and make me feel terrible about my life. I think the idea is they're rigging the data. I think they're asking only 45-year-olds because despite you two, most 45-year-olds at this point in time, probably do have it, like, relatively sorted out. And so it's so they can turn around and go, see, Australia's fine.

Charles's flight's getting forward in the background. I can hear it, yeah. But I'm just thinking, Charles, am I right? This is actually just so I'm not a burden on the state, isn't it? The reason why they're doing this is to try and make me think about not needing a pension and not being a massive drought on Medicare. Yeah, yeah. Look, I did that survey.

Have you actually done the survey? No, I just opened the letter this morning. Oh, okay, yeah. Because I have a vague recollection of doing it. See, I'm 47 now, so my memory's giving out. So I can't really remember much about... Have you planned your care home or... Yeah, but it does make you feel...

Like, Gabby, I know that you've got this conspiracy theory that it's a sort of... A data-collecting exercise. I think it's more, I'm pretty sure it's just the government rubbing it in that you're still as fucked up as when you were 25. Yeah, I mean, I'm just reading the text here, keen to learn new skills or switch careers. Of course. We can put you in touch the rights, what career could I possibly do other than this? I have no options. That's why I'm here.

That's not true. That's not true. You have plenty of options. You can become a very good barista and still be paid the same as a beginning barris. You can become a very good waitress and still be paid the same as an entry-level waitress. I don't think I can. I don't think I have the ability to pay a wait- You can work in a shop and never become CEO,

but you'll be really good at working in a shop. Happy birthday to you. Oh, God. Let's just before we continue with the misery that is everything, checking with Rebecca Dana-Muno in the Chaser Newsroom. A local shopper is unable to decide whether they should purchase an avocado, a liter of petrol, or a house. After growing up with no frugality and spending all their savings away on unnecessary

things like smashed avow lunches, the millennial is now kicking themselves for not saving up their life's earnings so that they could afford to drive to work. Scott Morrison has been commended as a military strategist after he utilised the fear of coal to get Russia to flee from Ukraine. Upon hearing that Australia has promised to send 70,000 tonnes of coal to the war-torn nation, Russian troops immediately evacuated, haunted by taunts from Morrison saying to not be afraid it's just coal. A spy trying to pretend their reading a newspaper has been forced to cut eye holes in his smartphone in order to look unsuspicious. Whilst on a top secret mission, where it was important to remain unseen by the public,

the spy also disguised themselves as a street busker playing James Blunt covers. That's the latest headlines for The Chaser Report. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno, and today's word or word is booty. So now guys, South Australia, an election happened on the weekend. It did. And what I did, I decided to just watch Sky News. to get all my coverage of how the election has unfolded.

And it's now Tuesday, and as far as I can work out from the Sky News coverage, the election is still too close to call. Now, I know that a lot of people are saying, you know, in the mainstream media are saying that Labor will get 26 seats, which is a thumping majority and that the Libs will only get 12. But actually, if you look at the analysis from Sky News, you know, there are postal votes still to be counted. There is, you know, it could all,

like if every single vote counted henceforth all completely ran the lib's way, then, you know, they might scrape through it. Wow, because I'd heard that the outgoing Premier Stephen Marshall had actually just quit and just said, you know, I'm not going to be leader anymore, I'm done, people of South Australia have spoken. So even he is being brainwashed by the mainstream media

when he should be listening to Sky. That's true that Stephen Marshall is not looking good. He may not be allowed to quit because he'll be actually sacked by the voters. It looks like he might lose his seat. But that is actually not his fault, according to Sky News. What has actually been happening, it's actually the Labour Party's fault for campaigning against him, right? Because it was this sort of typical Labour Party technique with this deceptive technique of campaigning against him during the election. Yeah.

Oh, that's a new idea for Labor, isn't it? It's actually competently building a campaign against the incumbent rather than just coming up with a bunch of plans that no one wants to vote for. It wasn't just against Stephen Marshall. It was against like every lib in every seat. They campaigned against them, which I think is just totally unfair.

It shows the dirty tricks that the Labor Party, you know, is willing to get up to in order to just, you know, have that grab for power. And look, I'll just tell you a few more things about, You know, just the sort of wash-up from this election because I think, you know, people are reading far too much into it going, oh, you know, just because Labor had this massive victory that sort of means something federally,

you know, like the fact that Scott Morrison didn't once turn up to the South Australian election campaign doesn't mean that they were, you know, keeping him away because nobody likes him. Even if people don't like him, it doesn't mean anything because you actually, you don't have to like someone to be able to vote for them. Oh, that's true.

Well, because I heard Anthony Albanese was there quite a lot during the campaign, and I presumed that that helped S.A. Labor because everyone hates Albo so much and won't vote for him federally, but they were so happy to vote for the South Australian guy because he wasn't Albo. That's the line Scott Morrison was running with. That's exactly what happened, I think. They went, oh, good, I know exactly the difference between state and federal politics. I'll vote only on state grounds and ignore my own.

ignore my feelings federally. But the other, and this might interest you, Gabby, because you're a woman. Oh, okay. Right. Yep. Well noticed. Great. The other thing that is a bit of a talking point on Sky News.

It's a bit of an outrage, right, that everyone's saying that just because pretty much every single new MP who was elected was a woman, right? Oh, it's a conspiracy. That doesn't show that the Liberal Party has a problem with women, right? What that actually shows is that the Labor Party has a woman problem because they just treat women and this is true this is a true this is a true talking point from sky news they treat women as just numbers to be elected rather than real people so the labour party sees a woman they just go oh we should get her elected as an MP right and they just do all these dirty background deals

to to sort of get that woman elected whereas with the liberal party they're far more discerning about which women or if indeed if any women get elected yeah and piped yeah it's a hard gig to become a woman on the Liberal Party. Well, what I'm hearing is I can get a new job. I just got to move to Adelaide, and I'll just be elected right in. I think that's actually true. It's in the same way that you're massive in Bathurst.

If you just downscale that a little bit, you could be in Adelaide. I think we oversell how massive I might be in Bathurst. I doubt I'd even get on council. But Adelaide. Gabby Bolt for Mayor of Bathurst, you heard of your first. Well, Charles, I have got to say, look, you're at the airport.

We heard the boarding announcement in the intro to the podcast. Yeah. I'm relieved you're getting out of there, though, because if Sky News' worst fears are realised in about a month when they finish with the postals, if Labor are elected in South Australia, I've heard very dire things are going to... I've heard every human's going to be turned into some sort of living battery

for renewables, because you know how SA Labor love with their batteries and their Elon Musk. And they're going to sort of overstaff the hospitals and waste all this money on ambulances so that people don't. don't die. I mean, Jesus Christ. It's basically a dystopia. You might even have to have a mask mandate.

You know, if COVID arcs up again, they might actually tell you to do something very simple to combat the effect. To be fair, they still have a mask mandate here. They're not idiots like we are in Sydney. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. It's fair to say that the nation has been absolutely riveted to an astounding tragedy disaster, really just something that just tugs the heartstrings, which is married at first sight. But there's also a war going on in Ukraine.

And I got to say, I mean, people have been giving Russia a lot of flack, but their armed forces are just, they're going to places, you know, they're doing things that haven't been done before. I mean, bombing a maternity hospital. Most people wouldn't do that. Most people would be worried that it would constitute a war crime. Yeah. To just go, and the thing is they've been painting outside the doors of the hospitals.

They go on, they write in Russian maternity hospital, but they still bomb it anyway. An aged care home was bombed on the weekend. 56 people were killed. So, Dom, are you wanting us to do some jokes about this? Yeah, this is rough. I just think people are not really crediting how brave the Russian army is, because what they've started doing, they haven't actually managed to conquer Ukraine, but they figured the one thing that they can do is just stay in Russia

and send ultrasonic missiles that go 10 times faster than the speed of sound to destroy all their civilian targets, including, you know, a children's hospital was also on the list. So doing a great job, Russia, so brave. And we've just really seen how they're just an amazing military force. They're indomitable, really, except that Ukraine's completely stopped them from actually. actually taking over Kyiv.

But help is at hand. Help is at hand. I know it's a bit of a grim start to the conversation about Ukraine. Because Australia is sending the thing that they most need in this. I mean, they've been asking for a no-fly zone. They've been asking for Western involvement. Yeah. We're sending coal.

70,000 tons of coal is what we're sending for free. They're just going to see the coal and be like, great. I know you said that to Ukraine. That's ours now. We're going to power our shit with it. What's coal going to do? Well, I don't, they're coming into summer. So I don't know what the coal is for.

Okay, but tell me, it's like, okay, okay, hold on. Maybe I'll forgive him. Maybe it's clean coal. Is the coal just like, you know, like when you buy like a really nice foundation from Sephora and then they throw in like a sample perfume or something for freebie? Is the coal like that? Oh, is it a bonus? Yeah, like have we sent like at least some humanitarian aid?

and some food and some shelter and some, you know, supplies and refuge to people and then, you know, thought, oh, and, you know, put our name on it because we're Australia, send some coal in the back. We've talked about a humanitarian intake. But we haven't done it. I think we're in the talking about it phase still, and I think it'll be a couple of hours.

I think this is a bit like a heroin dealer. Yeah. I think that's how it's working. which is Scott Morrison I think very shrewdly has gone you know there's a bit of a business opportunity here

like sure they're at war sure they're all needing everything like that but if we can slit them some good quality high quality Australian coal we can get them addicted to the stuff and then they'll buy it for the rest of the thing you're like you know use their point of weakness

are the first taste is free first taste is free that's what's happening it's very shrew I'm Ukraine like notorious nuclear power though? They're sure they've got Chernobyl and all that now but now they can move

to a less sophisticated What are I going to do with the coal? Ruin their environment of course. Haven't you listen to Scott Morrison? Coal is the fuel of the future in that it's going to fuel fucking fuck. We have one job.

It's like so not hard to be like hey you know what those people might need some fucking help but Scott Morrison wouldn't know help if it came out and grabbed him by the hand and took him into Parliament and showed him off to everyone and said, hey, don't be afraid of this. Anyway, fuck, fuck, fuck. Yeah, I mean, I thought it would be, you know,

interesting to catch up on the war, but, yeah, it's just been kind of heartbreaking, hasn't it? We're really going to watch the whole country get eradicated, aren't we? Yeah, basically. Well, like we do every week. We just don't talk about all the others. Fuck! Yeah.

Okay. So just jump on Apple podcast and give us a five-star review for this uplifting podcast. Would you just, you know? We can talk about climate change if that will improve the mood. No, no. Let's let me look at this list again. Finance, work, health, social life. How's the world doing on those four fronts, huh?

Yeah, not so great. Yeah, not great. Now, Gies from Road Microphones, we're part of the ACAS, Crater Network, and everything sucks. Everything's shit. Sucks.