The Chaser Report - Herald Sun Loses Victorian Election | Dave Milner

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Dave Milner is the only journalist who successfully predicted the obvious outcome of the Victorian Election, so Charles Firth interviews him to find out his secret. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. I'm Charles Ferth, and this is a very special edition because we're very honored to have today the only commentator in, well, the world to get the Victorian election completely spot-on correct. Please welcome David Milner. Hey, Charles. Good to be here.

Yeah, thank you. It's a very strange position to be in, being the only journalist in the entire world to have got this extremely obvious thing, right? So let's just go back. You obviously wrote an article for the shot about a week ago. I remember reading it. I can't remember any details in the article. What did you actually say that you're now claiming was the only thing that anyone sort of got right about this election?

I said that what everyone else was saying was nonsense, which is true. Yeah. But the chances of Daniel Andrews not being Premier today the day after the election was just zero. This was as sure a thing as politics ever allows. And you should all be saying this because it's obvious and it's your job. And no one did. I'm in this strange position of being this like mouthy pothead that like showed up in industry. You think what it shows is that,

the shot should replace the rest of the media, because it's the only... I think it shows that the shot has replaced the rest of the media. Yes. Yes, you're right. Now, just full disclosure here, the shot is, in fact, the sister publication of The Chaser. So there's a little bit of self-dealing here when we self-congratulate ourselves. But they do it. Let's make this work for us.

Given that the result was incredibly obvious to you, and I must say, having read your article, I didn't even bother paying attention on Saturday night because it was like, Oh, well, you know, it's definitely going to get in because Dave Milner's already called it a week ago. Like, is there anything interesting to say or should we just stop the podcast now because there's nothing interesting to say? I mean, the soccer roos were good.

Did you see that? We could talk about the football. No, like, did interesting things happen? The Greens won a few more seats in the inner city, Melbourne. That was always going to happen, and it looks like it has happened. The Liberal Party is facing the strangest self-inflicted identity crisis. It's very similar to the very similar to the very very. level, except they've kind of, they ran advertisements this campaign directly aligning

themselves with the cooker, anti-vaxer, Daniel Andrews, guillotine protests in the streets. They use the language, they use, we marched in the streets, you know, to protest against this. And so they've really aligned themselves with the nuttiest people in probably Australia's most progressive state. And it's not a good numbers play. Yes. No, it didn't work, did it?

What a shock? What was their strategy there? Was their strategy that they thought that there was a sort of an underbelly of people who weren't telling the truth in the polls and things like that? Or was it that they were so ideologically aligned with nutty cookers? Like, it didn't matter to them that that was a losing strategy. It was sort of like the Victorian socialists, just sort of running on... They're deeply committed to the nut cases, you're saying.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They were ideologically wedded to them. Yeah. It's either that. or it's, at the same time, just at the same time, they preference the Greens. In some sense. They actually gave a, you know, a bit of a boost to the Green. Like they pushed the Victorian Parliament further left.

Is this part of one of those? They're still playing, they haven't caught up with the new demographics of the state and they're still playing politics from like six, seven, eight years ago, thinking that will work because their main enemies of the ALPA, but the Greens are actually viable here and they haven't realized that. Yeah, right. I think the other thing is it could be that, you know, This is almost like what you said about Elon Musk on a shot podcast a while ago

about that sort of confirmation bias of your own experience being more universal. And I think the people in the Liberal Party and in the Herald Sun, and they should be flattered, we're allowing a distinction there. They were more genuinely pissed off about lockdowns than everybody else because they used to be able to play golf whenever the fuck they want to. Yes. And so they've extrapolated that experience into the wider community, whereas actually there's like nice decent people out there

that were actually happy to do this for a little bit. So did Melbourne have a lockdown? I wasn't aware of that. We're not doing this. We're not talking about that. It's just, you know, when you bummed into Melbourne people, they barely mention it. Yeah, no.

They start shaking in the corner and they run away. So the other result that I wanted to touch on is that the Victorian socialists got 5.7% of the vote in in western Melbourne and there was some uh polling booths where they were like in Footscray and stuff like that with where they were polling like 17% 18% of the primary vote what is going on is this like is it the communist like what's going on is is Melbourne at risk of being overtaken by Bolsheviks um on women's day next year 15% of the vote in Footscray. That is, like, impressive. I imagine it's like some really, really enthusiastic students living in a really large sharehouse, just like really committed

to the cause. Because that's not, you know, statewide trend. But yeah, possibly. Perhaps perhaps people have read all the Herald Sun coverage about this communist dictator and decided, you know what, that doesn't sound bad. Let's have me some of that. Now, I've noticed that you have been posting to Twitter this morning, David. Yes. Yes, I've been closing. I'm unbelievably obnoxiously. As the only turno in the state that got the election result right, I'm going to give away my trade secret. I live here and it was obvious.

Are you trying to be as obnoxious as the Herald Sun commentators? Do you set me up to like, you know, take them on from the other side and punches hard? So like, let's go. Let's lean into it. It's just, I do, okay, why I'm pointing this out, isn't to stroke my own ego. It is to point out that actually. they really all should have been more right than this. This is the point we are trying to make.

It was a bit obvious. And it's just if you don't have a political agenda driving the way you're crafting your words, it's actually really quite easy to be more informative than these people have been for six weeks. If I'm wrong, but wasn't the ABC as well sort of a little bit on this bandwagon? Like, I remember seeing comments in the days leading up to the election with people going, well there is a bit of an anti-dan sentiment you know there's a bit of or was that just like even the ABC got caught up in this yeah I mean this is this is the problem in one side of the conversation is so on one end of the scale it just drags the entire conversation that way a little bit

and like the realm of what is possible is shifted and yeah the ABC did absolutely buy into this narrative where they're just feeding each other the same lines I saw Greg Sheridan on insiders say exactly what Bevin Shields from the Sydney Morning Herald said that it was the exact same line. It was verbatim. It was almost creepy that, you know, Dan Andrews doesn't deserve, or was it, Dan Andrews, I can't even remember what it was. It was some meek, like, pseudo-intellectual nonsense that, you know, Matt Guy didn't deserve to win, but Dan Andrews didn't either. And it was like, word for word, whatever it was. They're just huffing their own farts, feeding into their own narrative, believing their own ship as they're getting

slowly and slowly more and more diverse divorce from what's actually happening. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. But do you think it's also because the ALP was very cleverly also doing a sort of expectations management in the last week? Because I saw several ALP aligned, not commentators, but basically party people, you know, the sort of wider circle, who were sort of going on. you know we don't quite know there's been on the pre-polling there's been a little bit of anti-dance sediment it's going to be softer than we hope you know it's really important than

every one get out there and vote for the Labor Party like it's almost like you know the the right was sort of talking themselves into a frenzy about how great the Libs were and the Labor Party was almost sort of letting them and going okay great like we basically can't lose like if we whole you know essentially Labor just stood still and that's looked like it was a dance slide. Yeah, that's exactly what happened. It was a strange election. And it really was a, considering what's happened the last three years,

it was an endorsement of what's happened here, basically, and a rejection of the counter-narrative. Yeah, and look, this is the second election that Murdoch has lost in a row in Australia. Do you think this has wider implications for, you know, what, you know, Anthony Albanese will be able to achieve? And his government will be able to achieve, given that there's clearly not as much influence from the media as the Twitterverse would make out.

Yeah, no, I think we need to see, what we actually need to see is this happen in New South Wales and then I'll find that argument more convincing. I do still wonder if Victoria is a slightly unique scenario because of what happened over the last three years and just how obvious it became that the Merlot Press was just this bludgeon to the brain of any free-thinking individual. I would like to say, I mean, Wednesday, New South Wales election.

March. But you don't really have a viable opposition set up there. Yes, we do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you do? Is that that turning around? Chris Mines, I reckon, will definitely win because he's running on one single issue, and it's the perfect issue.

I mean, even I agree with this issue, right? Which is, it's just to eliminate tolls on roads, right? That's so Sydney. It's so Sydney. But it is ridiculous. Like, if you want to go... We want to drive and we want it to be cheaper. The whole thing about tolls in Sydney is that it's entirely class-based.

So if you live in the western suburbs, you have to pay about 25 bucks to get into the inner city. If you're on the north shore or, like, there's hardly any tolls at all. There's like one, two-dollar toll to cross the bridge. And that's it. That's ridiculous. Yeah, right? So it's completely, it's utterly unfair. And the Libs, of course, go, oh, that's fine.

you know, like, I only ever drive from Cremorne. And so, like, I think, and he's just picked it, right? Like, Chris Min's picked it the day that he got elected opposition leader. And the problem is that the Libs, and I've talked to people inside New South Wales Treasury who go, who are complete conservatives, who just go, oh, yeah, actually the toll roads make no economic sense. They just hamper commerce. It means tradies kind of get, you know, like, spending half their money. money on tolls each week.

Like, it's just a completely ridiculous sclerotic system that should be abolished. So even the, like, it's not only a really fucking populist issue that's easy to win. It also makes total economic sense to unleash the productive capacity of this fine city. I mean, that does make sense, but can I just, you had the nerve to say that Victorian politics was boring, and we've got, like, Nazis and mass propaganda machines, And you've got, like, fucking cheaper tolls? That's your issue, right? That's all you need in Sydney.

Wow, sounds exciting. Enjoy. Well, I must say, because the thing is, I occasionally host people from Melbourne. And what they don't understand is that Sydney is the best thing about Sydney. You think, you know, it used to be like the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House and things like that. The thing that actually defines Sydney now is our tunnels. We have some of the best, nicest tunnels in the world. You can literally, you can drive around Sydney without seeing any of Sydney by just using the tunnel.

We've got so many fucking great tunnels to drive through. That sounds really good. Yeah. If you lived in Sydney, you'd understand. You'd go, well, you know, the people suck. Everyone's obnoxious. The whole of the Eastern suburbs should just be killed. Our coffee sucks compared to basically every city in Australia.

We've got great tunnels. And you can just stay down there. You can just stay down there. You don't have to interact with Sydney. And all the fuckwits who are everywhere. Secondary mole city beneath Sydney. This is what... Your politics is fascinating.

I'm going to have to... So, look, I don't know. I have no idea. I haven't read a daily telegraph in years, so I don't know what they're... But they'll try a similar thing. But I have a feeling that nobody's going to pay any attention to them. Yeah, like, this is it. Like, have we...

the audience become too sophisticated for this shit to work? Like, what's happening? Why is this? It's interesting. No, it's just because everyone watches TikTok and doesn't read anymore. It's just become profoundly dumb. We've become too dumb. We've become too dumb for the Harold's son to me.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. That's grim. I'm not sure that's the case. So we should probably end with some sort of anecdote about Victorian elections. Like, I've spent half the time talking about Sydney's road system. Why don't we? That's true. Can we have one more profound insight from Australia's most accurate commentator?

It's ridiculous. Well, what does this mean for the next three years for Dan? Is he going to resign after two years? Surely that's the answer. No, I think that's just another media narrative. Like, why would he? He's actually quite young. Well, dictators tend not to resign.

Well, exactly. Well, that is the thing that I found was amazing the way he's, because he's a dictator. He stage managed the election to look like it was really democratic. fair. He did that really well. Yes. And he didn't take too much. You know how Saddam Hussein would hold these votes and it'd be like 95% and you'd go, come on, that's a bit stupid.

He made it realistic. Yeah, it was very realistic. He gave enough. He allowed a certain amount of dissent so that you would believe that you were free to dissent like in 1984 basically. And it was sort of a bit like actually Putin's style of democracy where he staged me. He obviously placed

Matthew Guy in there so you'd have this weak opponent who, you know, sincerely believed that he was in with a chance. Do you think Matt Guy thought he was a serious contender, or did he know that he was a puppet of Daniel Andrews, the Supreme Dictator? No, he, I reckon he thought that he was in the chance, and he didn't realize that actually in the background, it was just all Daniel Andrews controlling that. And he was a sleeper, triple agent. That's how Putin works.

Like, he sort of co-ops people who, you know, just not very effective and boosts them up as his opposition. And they do it, thinking that they're actually being really good. And they're actually just playing it to his hands. Yes. It is probably the most plausible scenario for what happened in Victoria. Yeah. Well, I think, I mean, I think Andrew Bolt's actually written that up as the narrative this morning.

Oh, this is good. I'm sorry, but, okay, I'll be a lot to read. Have you, yeah, because you're doing an article for the shot this afternoon. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I need to stop wasting my time talking to you about this nonsense. So you get back to work, but Andrew Bolt's article is fantastic because the headline is something like bruised Daniel Andrews now has to go. And so the whole idea is this election has taken stripes off him because he's only increased his number of seats. Yeah, yes, that's exactly what it is.

Far out. It's, yeah. And apparently, according to Andrew Bolt, he knows that he should resign now. but he's not going because he won so convincingly for the third time but no he's bruised they've taken stripes off him

he's wounded I can sort of see why you're Australia's one's back here at commentator because it's really fucking easy when you got it's really not about me it's about the competition it's fish in a barrel isn't it

I'm really not doing anything out of very special It is the fucking sea of absolute nuffties out there that are paid to just confuse everything and muddy the waters. Well, I think what we might do is we might bring you up to New South Wales to cover the New South Wales election so we can actually get some accurate commentary up here as well. Do you want to do that? Okay.

Do I have to learn about toll roads? Oh, yeah, definitely. I'll show you them all. I'll take you around. We can see the tunnels. The MA8 is beautiful. It's the west field of tunnels. Okay, well, Dave Milner, as always, wonderful to hear from you.

And we'll look forward to your article this afternoon. That's on theshot.net.com.com. We'll see you soon. See you. Bye. Our gears from road. We are part of the Acast Creator Network. Catch you tomorrow.

Yeah, cool. Is that all good?