The Chaser Report - He Who Shall Not Be PM

Episode Date: May 30, 2022

Dom and Andrew are back with the regular Chaser Report! Charles has lost his voice, so Andrew and Dom enjoy peace and quiet in his absence. Meanwhile Dom tries to compare and contrast the new leader of the Liberals, Peter Dutton, and fictional evil wizard Voldemort. Plus Andrew quizzes Dom on the Queen's upcoming jubilee! 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 for Monday the 30th of May. Domite here with Andrew Hansen. Hello, Andrew. Yeah, hey Donnie. How's things on this Monday? Oh, things are great for me, but dear friend Charles Firth has lost his voice. Oh my gosh.

And all it took was 45 years of drunken bellowing non-stop. You know, I live quite near Charles. And I, every time Charles, it was a terrible mistake, every time Charles walks past the house, it's incredibly audible. He's incapable, I'm surprised we can't hear him still from here, even though he's lost his voice. But you should have known, Domney, because I feel like, like, that's a real nimbie thing, you know? You've, you've moved into a place where you knew, you knew, and everyone knew that the famous Charles Firth lived in that location, right? It's kind of like, oh, it's the same as a pub, as though he were a band. He's louder than most bands.

He's much louder than a pub, don't get me wrong. And he's much louder than, you know, those people who live next to theme parks always complain about the roller coasters. Yeah, Charles is worse, but he's a known quantity. You just shouldn't have moved there. That's true. It was a terrible thing.

Imagine Charles complaining about a roller coaster. They would deafen the roller coaster. Oh, no, the theme park operators, they'd be moving. I reckon they would sooner move the whole of Lunar Park somewhere else, just to get out of the way, so that they wouldn't have to hear Charles through the fence. So I was hoping to get Charles on the podcast today, Andrew, because you and I, I mean, we've known him for a very, very long time since his teens, certainly in both our cases. We must have so many things we wanted to say to him without him being able to reply.

I know. Now that he's lost his voice. Missing a golden opportunity. Yeah, without him going on some 20-minute, you know, long excursion about the union movement. Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe we should just lay it all down now, and he can listen back to this episode of the podcast at his leisure. Yeah, yeah.

Well, absolutely. That's one side of the conversation. Sounds very enjoyable. What would you like to say to Charles, dummy, if you wanted to say something? Well, I mean, for me, my main, there are many gripes with Charles. The one where there was a joke broadcast across the whole school on our internal television system about me being the ugliest man ever created, I think was. I still rankles somewhat, particularly coming from the pimply, scorny, teenage Charles.

You bear a grudge for a long time, scarred for life. Yes. There was also the time I was cast in a play he was directing. I think I talked about this before, with a one-line joke. And I had to turn up to the theatre for three nights in a row as a favour to my friend for a one-line joke. You should blame the play right for that one, Doc. But it wasn't even in the play. Charles added a preamble.

Oh, he added a... I was going to say, which this playwright doesn't understand budgets. Like, you know, you don't pay for an actor to come and have one line in the entire show,

do you? By the way, we are going to get to politics and so on in my mind. We've got to talk about Peter Dutton shortly, but while we're at it, so the joke was, it was a play called Love for Love.

I can't remember anything about it. It wasn't a very good play, and it certainly wasn't very well directed. But the joke was that I would come out in Shakespeare in gear at the start of... That's funny already. The start of the show. You in Shakespeare in.

Yes, that's right. It would be quite a sign. And I would do the wonderful 12th night beginning. You know, if music be the food of love, play on, give me access to it, and all that sort of stuff. Someone would yell for in the wings, probably Charles, wrong night. And I would say, oh, no, 12th night. I'm not sure I'm even getting Charles's joke.

I see what you mean. Charles added this joke. Yeah. Which play did he add this joke too? Was it was the death of the salesman? No, it was Love for Love by, I think, Kong. Oh, sorry, it was love for love. Okay.

So that was the first bit. No, 12th night. And then the person in the wing said, no, no, you've got the wrong night. This is love for love. And I would say, no, no, Dominic Knight. And that was my role. Then I walked off.

That was all I had to do. So it was a knowledge of your surname as well, which I suppose, I mean, this was a school. At school, yeah. So fair enough. Fair enough. I don't think it was right for me to have said yes to that offer in hindsight. I think if I was advising the 16-year-old me,

I mean, there were girls in the play, So that was something. Was that why you said yes, Tommy? It may have been. That was just weakness. Some attention. So that's what I had to get off much. That's how about you?

I'd just like to say, Charles, shut up. And that's it. That's it. Take that. Take that as your message from me. It's blissfully quiet without him, isn't it? Oh, it's wonderful. Oh, listen to that.

Let's listen to this. We might have to put some ads on just to liven things up. I mean, maybe this should be the whole episode, just the sound. of silence, the sounds of no Charles Firth. Why don't we, why do we just release that? There's a special hour-long podcast. It's just silence. And you just listen to Charles not speaking for an hour.

Because it was such a novelty for people. It'd be so relaxing. If you began the podcast by saying, and now to explain his integrated theory of everything, Charles Firth, we should do that. I'm having a good time. I'm having a great time without him. The Chaser Report.

you know you can't trust. Now, Andrew, here on The Chase Report, as you know, we do touch on matters political from time. I know I know you're passionate about politics, and there's a concerning suggestions been made, Andrew. Yeah, right. About the new opposition leader elected today unopposed. Who is he? I'm not across any of this, Donnie.

Peter Dutton. Are you familiar with Peter Dutton? Yes, yes, yes. He's now the opposition leader. He's now the person in whom the Liberal Party have placed their hopes to win back. government. He was elected unopposed. Nobody thought to themselves they could do a better job than Peter Dutton. Well, I mean, they don't have anyone else at the moment. I mean, didn't they all get sort of destroyed and basically kind of cleansed? There was a kind of liberal

cleansing done at the election, wasn't there? It was a colonic. It was a liberal party colonic. That's right. Got rid of all the worms. And he's left, though. I mean, potato stick in the guts, don't they? Well, I mean, would you want the job, though? Because someone I know, political scientist, went back and looked at all the election records in the past, and whenever government's changed, the first opposition leader out of the gate has always lost every single time forever. Every single one. Every single one, pretty much.

Well, that's encouraging for those who don't like Dutton for PM, isn't it? Well, among them, Tanya Plybysk, right? Because she made a most unfortunate comparison last week, Andrew. She compared Peter Dutton to Lord Voldemort, the Dark Lord of the Harry Potter. series. Yeah, well, that's stepping it up a bit from the potato, isn't it? It is. I mean, you know, potatoes fairly insulting.

Potato's somewhat insulting. I mean, it's insulting, but it's not malign. I quite like potatoes. Well, a colleague of ours recently went to court with a defamation case over being referred to as Lord Baltimore. Did you know, Julian Morrow was, you know, in court over this very insult. That's what I found in the media. The media covered that trial extensively.

Yeah. Didn't it? So, I mean, is Peter Dutton suing Tanya Pliber sec? I don't know. He said, I think he said water off a duck's back. Oh, that's, you know, she's not a, she's not a person on Twitter. She's not a person on Twitter with no funds to defend themselves. Yes.

Is she, you know. Of course he's not going to sue her. Actually, that's true. This is the perfect time to defame Peter Dutton after he lost that lawsuit, isn't it? Well, maybe that's why. Do you think he's a bit gun-shy about suing people? I mean, it'd be hard. If you were Peter Dutton, right.

And you wanted to sue somebody for insulting you? There'd be a lot of people you'd need to sue. It would be very, very... I mean, I think most of Twitter's made the potato analogy now. Oh, there'd be millions of people he must be on his list ready to sue. I suppose Tanya Plibersek is just, she's just far down the list. She's just the latest. She's just the latest.

She's just the latest million on the list of people he's planning to sue. So, look, I thought we should look at this, though, because it is a national security concern. If the leader of the opposition were a dark wizard, it would be... It would not be good for Australia. And so I thought, as the Harry Potter nerd in the team, it would be less than ideal, if that were the case. So I thought I'd just look at what we know about Lord Voldemort to see if the analogy actually fits or if he's being unfair.

Okay, okay, okay. So if you recall, you a Harry Potter buff, do you know much about Lord Voldemort? Look, I have watched all the films because my wife is a huge... Oh, there you go. And she sent me down out here. And so I kind of know what Lord Voldemort. Voldemort looks like, and, you know, he does have a sort of potatoy appearance as well. So I can see some sort of link there.

Well, the first mistake Tanya Plibertsch made was that she compared into Lord Voldemort rather than he who must not be named. Oh, yes. Do you think that that was a mistake, wasn't it? That breaks all the rules. It already means that Voldemort has power over her in the Harry Potter. But look, if you remember the plot of Harry Potter, Lord Voldemort could only be defeated by destroying all the seven hawkrucks fragments of his soul.

It required hard to obtain magical weapons. It was a journey that so epic, it took two excessively long movies to finish. Do you remember that? I did, look, I do recall suffering through both of those films. I mean, this is worrying for Dutton. I mean, not for the opponents of Dutton, I mean, sorry. It's actually quite good for Dutton because he's very hard to defeat. But, Andrew, the last time Peter Dutton ran for the leader of the Liberal Party,

He was defeated by maths. He didn't count his numbers. It was rather easy to defeat it. So he's not very Voldemort-ish. He defeated himself by being unable to count. Yeah. So I think that's one point to Dutton not being. That would have made for a quicker Harry Potter movie.

It would have, wouldn't it? I think. I would have preferred that version, I think. Harry Potter and the, you know, unavoidable laws of mathematics. It's about 10 minutes long. Voldemort can't count. Yep. Now, the snake-like appearance of Voldemort.

There's this whole looking without the nose and all that, that he looked terrifying. That came from years of dabbling in the dark arts, and he beat death and travelled through the woods as a kind of a wraith. Do you remember? And also he was a parcel tongue who could speak to reptiles. That was the whole thing. Whereas Peter Dutton revealed last week,

and I didn't know this, his baldness is due to alopecia. I don't know that it's got anything to do with dabbling in the dark arts. He just has alopecia. Again, Dommy, I think you've spotted a crucial difference here, between Dutton and Voldemort. And again, an improvement, I think, on the plot of Harry Potter. I mean, I feel, because I also suffered through that day-long play.

Oh, yes. The vision of Harry Potter as well. I feel like if Voldemort had just, you know, had some alopecia, then the whole thing, you know, could have been compressed at least time-wise. Yes, he could have just had a wig if he'd wanted one. It would have made him more sympathetic. Well, mind you, Donnie, you know, you mustn't mock people with alopecia. I think Will Smith could teach you a few lessons about that.

Well, you definitely, well, I think Will Smith's going to be visiting Tany Plybosek very, very soon. Yes, maybe anyone with Alopecia who gets mocked, Will Smith just appears. He gives them a slap. You've got to be pretty careful. Flies in on a broomstick, okay. So Lord Voldemort, as you recall, was very prejudiced. He wanted to rule over muggles, humans, and normal humans, and oppress them because he thought they were inferior. Oh, that is a bit, that is a bit racist of Voldemort.

Yeah, whereas Peter. Dutton's warned against African gangs and walked out of the national apology to the stolen generation back in the day. That's a little bit more Voldemorty, isn't it? There you've got a bit of, look, perhaps you may have identified a bit of overlap there, Domi. Are you saying Peter Dutton is prejudiced? Is that what you're trying to say?

Yes, there's certainly some questions about, and why would you walk out of the stolen generation? Someone from the Herald suggested on the weekend that it might have been because he thought it was token, and he cared so deeply about Aboriginal people that he did. He didn't want to be there for a token apology. Or it could have been because he was busting. Maybe he just needed to use the gents. Well, maybe he needed to moisturise his head. Well, he does have alopecia.

Yeah, he doesn't. And something to be respected and not mocked. Now, the final analogy here, see if it holds up or not. So Voldemort, as you recall, ruled over a hoarded, terrifying band of death eaters. Whereas Dutton now has the federal parliamentary liberal party. So actually, he may well be the Dark Lord. Exactly the same. Wait a minute.

They're identical. My goodness. I think Tanya Pliberzag has a point. The Chaser Report. Less news. Less often. All right. Dominic Knight, I am pretty excited

because one of my favorite people is about to have spent 70 years sitting on the throne. Yes, I'm talking about her match. Queen, Queen Elizabeth the second. What an achievement. 70 years coming up.

At least the holiday is, she's actually officially been sitting on the throne for 70 years already since February. But what they do is they sort of delay the celebrations in the hope of finding a warm day in England. They might have to delay it for years. Well, it might be decades before. They're having to exhumor in 50 years for the 70 years birthday. But no, no, it's coming up any day now. And, I mean, that is a long time. It's the longest time any British monarch has actually sat there on the throne.

Yeah. So, you know, they're going nuts. Do you think that it was a big call to delay? I know it's an awkward topic. But we're talking about a woman who's, what, 96 years old. Yeah, she's been there that long, Dommy. Should they have delayed four months or whatever it was? They would have been thinking the same thing 30 years ago, Tommy.

30 years ago, I guarantee they would have been thinking, oh, she's getting on a bit. You know Charles was thinking it. Yeah. Oh, of course he was. Yes. Luckily, he's away and won't be able to shout about it right now. No, I'm at Prince Charles. Oh, I thought he meant Charles Firth.

Oh, Prince Charles. Oh, the poor guy. He's about 90 years old and still waiting. I know. He's well over the retirement age, and the only job he's ever allowed to have, he hasn't been able to get yet. Poor fellow. Well, he won't be celebrating, but everybody else in the UK is going to go absolutely bananas. because there's this retail industry body there who are predicting that the Brits are going to spend 75% more on party stuff and merch even than they did on Harry and Megan's wedding in 2018.

Yeah, like these poor old merch makers in the UK so I've read. I don't know if you've read about it. They're desperately churning out commemorative plates and toilet seats and God knows what else. Can you imagine having it? Equalizabeth II Jubilee. toilet seat.

It doesn't see a throne, isn't it? It's a throne that you can sit on it. You try sitting on the throne for 70 years. See what it does for you. Oh, my goodness. Now, they're going to get quite pissed, I believe, Dommy. Oh, of course they are. There's a statistic here.

And I'm going to ask you, actually, see if you know, I'll test your knowledge about it. Sales of which drink recently rose 260% at weight rows in the gearing up for the Jubilee. There's a lot of options. I'll give you options. I'll give me some options. Here's some options.

Gin, Pims, pints of mild or paschiona. What do you think they're buying in big numbers? I mean, I think they should, by rights, be buying gin, because that's the secret to the Queen's longevity. She doesn't go through a day without several drinks. Doesn't she have champagne for breakfast or something? She has a cocktail every day. It's well documented that, you know, I think, you know, She is quite pickled, as we know, and that's probably why it's probably helped her.

It's the only way you can do the job. Well, how else would you sit there through all those bloody envelope? To be sozzled. Yeah, I think it's gin. Although knowing Britain and their propensity to have the worst possible drink or food at any occasion, it might well be the mild, because that just sounds awful. Mild is not mild. Funny thing about, have you ever tried a mild when you were in the UK?

Is that one of the warm? It's a sort of a warm beer, and it is not mild. Let me tell you. It is like really strongly flame. It tastes horrible. It tastes like a sort of like a roast dinner that's been put in a blender. Because is it the temperature that's mild? Is it like the temperature of a mild day?

Oh, yeah. Maybe that's that why. It's called mild. I definitely had a pint of warm beer when I was there. And it did make me feel that warm beer was an abhorrence that should be expunged from the earth. Oh, terrible. Yeah, no terrible. There was a bartender when he learned I was Australian.

and he offered to make the beer cold for me. I said, oh, yes, that'd be nice. And so he ran it under the tap for a few seconds. And then said, there we are. It's one degree colder. It was a bottle of beer run under the tap. What a country. Oh, yeah, extraordinary.

Anyway, look, the answer is PIMS. Oh, it's PIMS. Oh, of course, it's skyrocketing. Skyrocketing. Oh, my God. So when the actual Jubilee happened, yes, the Brits are going to be they're swaying and vomiting up

liters of PIMS. Because it's the one warm day. So on the one warm day in Britain you have Pims and strawberries and punch, don't you? Hey, speaking of which a nationwide contest was run there to find a dessert that they could officially

dedicate to the Queen. Oh wow. For this very thing. Now I'll give you some options for which dessert won. Did you say strawberries and cream? Well, strawberry, look, I was thinking of Pims and strawberries, but strawberries and cream is certainly an option.

Oh, particularly if you can pour gin all over it. Can a strawberries and cream and gin? That does sound very queen-like, isn't it? Well, that can be one of the options, because that is a very British dessert. I think they call it a strawberry fool. I think a strawberry fool might be strawberries and cream and gin. Or was it an English plum pudding? Or was it an English bread and butter pudding?

Or was it a Swiss roll pudding? Oh, now, let me think. Because I lived in the UK for two years as a child, so I had all of these abominations regularly. I'm a surprised spot a dick and trifle aren't on the list as well. I think it's the most boring possible option, which is a Swiss roll. And given that Switzerland's the country that invented chocolate and all these other wonderful things, a Swiss roll is just a roll of, it's a sponge cake that's flat with jam rolled up.

It's the most boring possible food It's a boring, it's horrible food It's an awful food How did that come out of Europe? It didn't Or is it not Swiss? Is it English? I bet it's English

It's probably English I mean it won Let me tell you The answer is you are correct Dominic Knight Yes, the Swiss roll pudding Won the official dessert for the Queen Does the Queen like it?

Is that why? Is it a favourite of hers? Because it would be very good to soak in gin I mean it would be very absorbent of gin Of all the things you listed It's the best option for gin. The first concern they had when they worked out this dessert is like, can it be soaked. Yeah, all right.

If you're going to make a dessert, make sure it can be soaked in gin. We don't want ice cream. We don't want anything that can't be soaked in a bucket of gin. Exactly right. Yeah, that's what they're doing. When this jubilee thing happens, Donnie, the royals are going to gather on the balcony as they do. They like to do it. They always have a sort of a party on the balcony.

balcony up there. It's a good angle for looking down at everyone, isn't it? Yeah, it's both. The British, they love being looked on. Come on. They love the queen. That's why she's up there. And they're going to do a flyover. The Air Force, there's a sort of bunch of planes. They're called the Red arrows. And they're going to give a traditional fly past as the royals and the ancient queen, you know, is gathered on the balcony. Now, for safety's sake, their speed, the speed of the flyover, will be limited to how fast, 200 kilometres an hour, 300 kilometres an hour, or 400 kilometres an hour. They're flying directly over the Queen's head.

I thought it would be much slower. I thought it would kind of be the Queen's current speeds, about three kilometres an hour, just shuffling slowly forward. I hate to tell you, the Queen may be moving at that speed, but that was a trick question. The red arrows are going to fly past her majesty at 1,000 kilometers per hour. A little quote from the guy in charge, like the head pilot, who said, I am a tad nervous. I wonder why.

That's not a quality you want in a fighter pilot, is it? No. That's not how they won the Battle of Britain. It wasn't nerves. A thousand kilometres an hour over an old lady. Is it necessary to risk the Queen's nerves in this way? I mean, she's 95. She's not a rev head going to the drag races every weekend with a gym beam in hand, is she?

And she's not going to be able to see it, Andrew. Yeah. She probably won't be able to hear it either. She will be oblivious to the red arrows. They'll put all this work in and she won't even register them. Surely the thousand kilometre per hour gust of wind, you know, unwrapped and like blowing her crown off, that's probably going to grab her attention, isn't it? The wonderful thing to do with Prince Andrew, though, on the day, wouldn't it,

just to dump him out of a fighter jet somewhere? It's at a thousand kilometres an hour to finally get rid of him. That'll put me to the door, see. Oh, that would make the Queen's Jubilee a wonderful party indeed. Let's do that. Our gears from road microphones, we're part of the ACAST, Creator Network, and we'll catch you again tomorrow.