The Chaser Report - Human Rights Don't Make Stadiums

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

John Delmenico has discovered that Peter Dutton is copying his material for speechwriting, as the Opposition Leader is at odds with the CSIRO over nuclear power costs. Meanwhile Dom Knight has been following the Saudi government's bids for the next FIFA World Cup, and is in a twist over something lame called "human rights". 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 December configuration at the Chaser report. It is me, Dom, with producer Lachlan and John Delmenico, editor of The Chaser and heavy contributor to the Chaucer Annual 2024, which is the Christmas book you should buy if you've already bought my dictionary of terrible ideas. Awkward plug! Now I got an email today actually, gentlemen, saying that Charles has been spotted at the pub.

Charles was spotted at the pub. Yep, he's been out of action on the podcast lately, but I'm reliably informed. He was seen at a pub, and I mean, that's reassuring. If he's anywhere, he hasn't changed, he's to something who likes pubs. That does mean that hopefully his health's on the rise. I assume that whatever he was having there was prescribed by many doctors. I'm trying to think of a booze brand, which has doctor in it, but I can't. I only come up with Dr. Pepper, which doesn't work at all.

Thank you, Terry, for that. Apparently, a fist bump was given at the pub before the... He was at the pub before the show for dinner, not afterwards. Well, if you have any more live Firth in the wild sightings, please send them through and send photos of them to a podcast atchaser.com. And feel free to review The War on 2025. If you're in Hobart, Geelong, Melbourne or Sydney this week, there is a good chance you'll see him out and about.

But also you can go see his show if you want to. You can. But that's the only time we'll plug it on this podcast ever. But feel free to just take photos of room and be awkward and say that the podcast sent you. Okay. He'll appreciate the paparazzi treatment, I suspect. So gentlemen, the news buffet, I've got a charming story about the FIFA World Cup going to Saudi Arabia. No concerns from me.

How are you feeling about that one, gentlemen? I'm feeling excited about Australia's chances. That's great. Last time it was in Qatar. We've played against Argentina. So if that's anything to base Australia's performance off, this is a good thing. I just can't wait to go there because, look, the great thing about Saudi Arabia, if there's not football one, there might be a public beheading.

It's a great place to visit. You can combine them both. You could. Use their head as the soccer ball. Fantastic. And John, what's the story you've brought to the table? Pete Dutton has started a massive feud with the completely biased CSIRO. Okay.

Interesting. We'll get to the bottom of both of those stories after. of this. Let's begin with Peter Dutton. Now, I'm going to guess this has something to do with his nuclear ambitions. We know that Peter Dutton, if he is elected Prime Minister at the next election, we'll be rolling out a freshly minted network of nuclear power stations on the site of current coal-powered power stations.

They'll be all decommissioned. We'll use the poles and wires to connect some lovely nuclear reactors to the grid. What could possibly go wrong, John? Well, that's what the CSIRO has been looking into because they did a report ages ago and the Liberal Party said that it was missing key details so they've gone back and done a second report and obviously because they got challenged with the second report

the Liberal Party was ready to go and this report could be, it could be worse hypothetically. All it says is that the plan to roll it out is going to be way slower than the Liberal Party has been hinting at and overall nuclear energy will cost twice as much as renewable energy. Twice as much. Only twice.

Only twice. But be twice as good? Well, they're saying twice as much if you want to get to the same level of reliability as like renewable energy, which could mean we could just really cheap out in the nuclear and save some money. That's great.

That's a great chance to just get, I think we just get a second hand nuclear reactor. I think it's that we can really, this is the whole thing, all these arguments about prices. There are some genuine ways we could make it cheaper, right? The coalition hasn't released their costings yet. they will apparently sometime this year but I'm already thinking surely you know it's on eBay or something

like that or maybe Facebook Marketplace that's always reputable Facebook Marketplace does have everything I'm thinking if not obviously Coles and Woolworths are you're not going to get anything good there a coal's fired nuclear reactor that sounds amazing but what about Aldi could we get an Aldi nuclear that now you're thinking I'm amazed that's not already coalition policy because saving savings savings and they've got everything in the middle of aisle these days. So maybe we should just check a little harder. So I mean, often, you know, nuclear reactors are built by companies like Westinghouse or GE. What about Worstinghouse? Or PE? I like the idea of the nuclear logo, just looking a little bit cooked. Yeah,

instead of having the sort of three little three things, maybe four or five, maybe it's sort of replicated a bit more around the circle. I think it could be very, very cool. Is that what the CSIRO said to save money, John? Or was there something else? that they suggested. So they didn't have a strong suggestion. They just sort of implied to go with renewables because it'll be cheaper and quicker to set up. But that has had a heavy condemnation from Peter Dutton, who is not taking this lying down. He's brought up some, he's brought up one excellent point, which, to chase a readers, I do want to clarify,

I didn't know he had said this when I wrote the article yesterday. Oh, so biased. So biased. This is a joke. He has made the excellent point of, quote, they haven't seen our. plan yet and they're out bagging it. Did you write that? How can you criticise a plan that doesn't exist?

How can you criticise a plan that doesn't exist? He's made a great point. He hasn't done any work. So they can't say that the Liberal Party's plan is bad because a plan doesn't, like, what are you going to do, criticise the thoughts of nuclear? I'm just concerned. John, have you just confirmed that Peter Dutton is a chaser reader or even a Chaser report listener?

I think you're speech writing. Yeah, it, like, it is almost word for word, would I put in an article? He also has accused Chris Bowen of rigging the CSIRO's investigation. Now, I must say this did seem a little bit challenging because, and if Peter Dutton thought back on the record of the Albanese government, that would require the government to, you know, seriously hatch a plan that came off with no flaws. Like the level of competence required to manipulate the CSIRO is something that I think if Peter Dutton thought about other, aspect to the government's performance.

For instance, their complete inability to get the voice over the line despite controlling all aspects of the process, the notion that Chris Bowen has it in him to somehow manipulate the CSIRO, I mean, that is a level of competence that, frankly, would really reverse a lot of perceptions about the Albanese government. If they pull it off, that actually could be the thing that wins them the next election. And also, like, if Chris Bowen was the one to be doing this, the CSIRO would randomly say that the solution is to add in more gas pipelines before we get to the next step.

Like, they complete, CSIRO has not at any point suggested just using Labor's donors. So clearly Chris Bowen's own involved. Did the CSIRO actually provide a suggestion, though? No, they, no, the actual report is quite impartial. No, because they're still waiting on the focus groups to come in, John.

Ah. There you go. Now, hang on, there's an obvious way, though. If we're worried about this, we want to make it cheaper. All we need to do. So the current plan is that we take the sites at the coal-fired power stations, right? Eventually we decommission those power stations and we use the poles and wires to transmit the nuclear reactor electricity of the grid.

And the worry is this to still be more expensive. But if we build more of it, you get economies of scale and it gets cheaper. So what we need to do to achieve the net zero is to build more coal-fired power stations, many more of them, so that when they're decommissioned, You've got a bulk deal on the poles and wires, and nuclear's a lot cheaper. Dom, I would laugh, but now that we've confirmed Dutton is a Chaser Report listener, you've just written his next speech. All right, there you go.

I think we should find a way to attach Orca submarines to the grid. Just do like a reverse electric vehicle where the Orca Submarines, they're nuclear-powered, they generate energy, and then we plug those into the grid. Plus, by that point, there'll be a lot of floodwaters around Australia, so you could just drive them straight up to the grid. Yeah, particularly in the Gold Coast. There's a whole, you know, all that area of the Gold Coast where there's all those canals going through.

That would be great. They could just sort of go from house to house charging up the batteries. I love it. But which will come first? The hypothetical nuclear power stations or the hypothetical nuclear submarines? It's honestly a race, I think.

I think the winner would be the climate apocalypse. I think that one's going to edge the other two out in that race. Have you been reading the CSIRO, John? Is that way I think? is going to be a climate apocalypse. Yeah, I have a really bad pro-science bias. That won't get you, you know, a neutral position. Chris Bowen's been manipulating you.

Your Bowen's puppet, John Delmenico. I knew it from the look of you. In a few moments, speaking of fossil fuels, the Saudi Arabia World Cup is firming in the minds of FIFA. Let's take a break. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often.

Okay, we've talked about this a bit before. But it's now becoming more and more likely. FIFA, the governing body of world football, who for some reason can't be stripped of that position, no matter how badly they perform, how many crimes they allegedly commit, is going to give the next world, the men's world cup in 2034, to Saudi Arabia.

This despite the fact that, as we know, Qatar just had the World Cup. And Australia bid, and we did a pretty good job with the Tilly's World Cup, didn't we, the Women's World Cup? That doesn't matter because we aren't a rich Petro State. So human rights organizations say, and I quote, that Saudi Arabia hosting this cup will lead to severe and widespread rights violations.

I guess the first question is, from FIFA's perspective, is that a bug or a feature of hosting the World Cup in Saudi? Like, did Qatar not do a bad enough job, or if we've got to finish it off? That's like telling FIFA that we can't go somewhere because there will be bribes. That's just like how you get a FIFA deal. Absolutely. I'm really confused because, you know, I'm still, you know, wrapping my head around most of the rules of football.

And as far as I'm concerned, it's, yeah, you don't touch it with your hands. There's 90 minutes in a game. And if you don't kill at least 5,000 workers building a stadium, then the match isn't real. I thought those were just general basic football rules. There is an inconsistency. There isn't.

I mean, if you severely injure a fellow player on the field, you should be getting a red card sent off. But apparently, if you kill migrant workers during the courses of building, no one's blowing a whistle or, in fact, I think whistleblowing is very much discouraged in the FIFA building process. The umpires are screwed. Yes, genuinely concerning. It's absolutely harrowing stuff.

According to Human Rights Watch, 887 Bangladeshi citizens died in Saudi Arabia between January and July of this year. And the good news, though, and don't worry about them, the Saudis say that 80% of those deaths are attributed to natural causes. So that's fine. Well, that's a natural cause. When you lose enough blood, you die naturally. And when you're working out in 50 degree heat all day, yes, I'm sure that's right.

I mean, if we just look at the Neome stats, because there's been new Neome stats that's coming out. Because obviously the Chase report every six months needs to check back in with Neo. Yes, yes. This is the line, the bizarre construction project that they've got. So the lion has gone way of a budget, so they're building a new building to try to raise funds for the line. Yeah, that's sort of a little pilot. It's only about a kilometre long, right? Yeah. But, so some statistics have come out. According to ITV, 21,000 migrant workers have died so far, and 100,000 others have born missing.

In Neon, just from Neom. Yeah. So, 100,000 going missing is also weird and suspicious. So there's perhaps 121,000 people dead for a building that hasn't really made any progress. Gosh, man, I mean, that's only for like, what is it, 1.7 kilometers of it. They're going to build 160Ks. Are there enough migrants? workers in the developing world for this to happen? I mean, especially if we're splitting in between Neome and this World Cup. I just wonder, can we somehow combine the processes? Can we turn the Neon building into like a series of consecutive football stadiums all in a line?

So at least we're not building any more things. I mean, I think that's a great idea. Plus, it make travel between the games much easier. Now, while we're heaping shit on ridiculous Saudi mega projects, there's another aspect of Neon that you might not be across. Let's just keep going. Which, I mean, again, this switch is in the dictionary. you're terrible ideas just putting it out there you know that they're hosting the the um the asian

games in a few years time they've got it i think it's it is it is uh it is all going to happen very very exciting stuff when i say the asian games do you know what that involves not at all no and neither does the wikipedia entry that i just tried to find so it's going to be in trahina a new resort at their building this is the thing you might have thought to yourself well what are they what are they going to do i mean it's going to be hot right but you could still have you know, summer games. It's the winter games that they're hosting. The 2029, supposedly, winter games will be held at Neum.

And so they're building supposedly, and if you're going to build it's giant skyscraper, why not build an entire refrigerated mountain and have you winter sports there? I just think this is so disappointing because all it does is it makes me think, wow, you've got these amazing petrol states that with a little can-do spirit and a few dead, thousand dead workers, they've been able to build all these incredible stadiums to have the sporting events that they dream of having. Whereas measly old Melbourne and Australia and Victoria can't even have one Commonwealth Games. How on earth are we supposed to build enough stuff for the Brisbane Olympics in 2032? Exactly. Well, you know, they're actually going to

build new stuff now, they're giving up on that. It's quite an extraordinary thing. It's apparently all going ahead. And the IOC were asked their views on this hat's going ahead and they say it clearly goes against our policy to hold these sorts of events where there are existing venues yeah you think five hundred billion dollars is being spent on this particular project so 500 billion there you go skiing in the desert who would have thought this would be possible that's enough to buy a much bigger bribe for the fee for 2025 walker yeah i mean you know you've really got a bad idea when it's too out there for the iosc to sign off on so there you go in both those stories. Fossil fuels are very much here to stay by the sounds things. Thank you very much,

gentlemen. We'll catch you tomorrow on the feed. And in the meantime, let's go and fill out our car. Let's go and fill up our petrol-powered cars, shall we? I'm going to fill up my nuclear-powered car. I'm going to go find Charles in a pub. We are part of the iconic class network, and we'll catch you next time. Bye.