The Chaser Report - Labor's Plan To Have A Plan To Have A Plan To Have A Plan To Fix Things (Maybe)

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

JobSeeker has been increased, so Charles and Dom are here to give some advice to those savvy spenders in Australia's luckiest tax bracket. 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 Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. I'm Dom Charles. You're in an unspecified location. I'm looking at you on Zoom at the moment in some sort of rural, idyllic location. Oh yeah. I'm down in Kararong, which is on the New South Wales South Coast. and I'm looking out there's a whole lot of annoying

lorikeets and wildlife I can hear birds actually in the background that's very annoying have you got a shoddy a what a shotgun yeah of course yeah

there's one in the garage yeah so have you been forced to move there was lots to talk about today have you been forced to move there by crippling economic conditions it's rising interest rates yeah that's right

I've had to move up again today I've had to move to my fourth investment property you poor fucker we're going to cut down And they only have four investment properties from now on. How will you cope?

We'll find out in just a moment. Okay, so, yeah, interest rates moving up today in defiance of the predictions. All the news reports seem to just be a bit indignant as though the Reserve Bank should not form its own view on these things. But the Greens immediately said Jim Chalmers should overrule what the Independent Reserve Bank Board wants to do. Because the economic pain course, Charles, since when does the Reserve Bank have to? to think about the economic pain that decisions cause individuals. What a stupid idea that is. Well, I can tell you, one person who doesn't have to think about the pain that the

Reserve Bank causes, which is Philip Lowe, who is on $900,000 a year and gets discount mortgage rates as part of his salary package at the Reserve Bank. Yeah, that's right. Using, oh, what was it? Oh, yes, taxpayers' money, I would have thought, is what's used. So when he borrows a house, we're buying it for, and he gets to pay it back for less. just because he's been so kind as to be a public service banker rather than going into the private sector.

And so you know when you've got some sort of mega discount at the pub or something like that, it's happy hour, right? And you go, oh, it'll be my round, it's happy hour. That's what Philip Lowe's doing with interest rates. He's going, you know, look, put another 0.25% doesn't really matter. It doesn't really affect me. I'll just, you know, extra beer, you know. whatever what what is yep absolutely absolutely good on you philip that's that's absolutely fine um

that power it may well be stripped from him in in due course what will the point of him be when there's uh you know how there's going to be a board that that kind of governs the bank and then a separate group sitting interest rates we can he be made redundant at that point no no no no no and the report uh we haven't talked about the report on the podcast yet uh this is a report that was released a couple of weeks ago about the RBA and essentially they pointed out that the RBA board has got it pretty wrong a lot of the times especially in the last few years right they especially Philip Lowe keeps on sort of saying oh interest rates will be low forever and then they're not and stuff like that yeah but no no there is an important role for the board in the new structure

that has been proposed right so what they say is why don't we actually get people who who have some sort of expertise in the economy to do the interest rates part of the RBA, right? Right. It's outsourcing it to experts. Yes, but there are a whole of other things. And experts being, you know, broad definition, like people from the community, people who, you know, actually have, you know, for whom interest rates rising has an impact on their personal circumstances, you know. Shit, that's a bit controversial. Yeah.

workers, you know, people who actually want to have good, reliable, safe jobs. Anyway, such a labour idea. Yes, but so that's, so that, that part of the RBA, the sort of interest rates part, will be given to experts. And then the board, you know, which Philip Lowe's the governor of, will have lots of responsibilities. He will have, you know, there's like the office to manage, like the photocopying setup, the toner. Like, you know, it's always very hard. Oh, that's a big job, making sure the tone. Yeah, there's a lot of, Tona, you use on those reports.

There's a Christmas party to plan, Charles. Oh, absolutely, yes. And they always have their board meetings, aren't they? Yes. On Melbourne Cup Day, they all go down to Melbourne. Just coincidentally, on Melbourne Cup Day, that's so ethical, isn't it? That would take a bit of planning. Yeah, no, exactly.

To book all those tickets on Melbourne Cup Day. It gets very busy on Quinas on Cup Day. I think also, I mean, phone calls to answer, emails to reply to. Like, there's lots of stuff that Philip Loken and the board can be getting on with it while the experts deal with it. I mean, it is true that there's very little other function that the RBA does other than interest rates. Like, you know, there is an argument to say, perhaps, you know, you could just hire an office manager on, say, I don't know, 70 or 80 grand a year rather than 900 grand a year. But, you know, I'm sure they'll figure that out. You know.

You can't tell me chat GPT. Couldn't do it. Couldn't chat GPT, just go. What are the macroeconomic conditions? Okay, he is what the interest rate should be. They'd probably get it wrong a lot of the time. But would that be any different from the current settings? Well, the chat GPT is always very confident even when it's completely wrong, right?

So it would be exactly like Philip Lauer. Yes, I think that's a very good idea. Very good. Now, there's a lot of other news to get into today, Charles. Where do we start? It's been a huge, it's been a bumper. Bumper sort of pre-budget week here is the government softening. us up when it's coming.

Well, I mean, should we do the job seeker thing? Or is that just too painful to our young... No, no, no. So this is the issue where people on job seeker... Yes. Okay, it's a doll, but they've renamed it to try and make it even more kind of draconian. You're supposed to be seeking a job. That's why it's not a doll, it's a job seeker.

Yes. $40 a day to live off. Yes, that's right. That's a lot of money. Well, exactly. I mean, I think the problem that main, you know, and why people are, you know, and why people on Jobseeker are complaining so much is dealing with, you know,

where to invest that money. Like, it's sort of like the problem of too much money to count. Yeah, it really is very tricky, isn't that? I mean, do you put it in shares or property? Yeah, that's right. It's always the age old question, do you start a small business, a very small business?

Well, I think it's one of those things. A micro business. What you do is you divide it up, like the sensible, if you go on to LinkedIn or something like that, and you follow those wealth management gurus, it's always like, you know, 50% of your income should go into savings, 25% goes into shares, you know, 10% goes into expenses, and, you know, the other 5% goes into luxuries. You need a splurge amount. I mean, the Barefoot investor will tell you this, Charles.

You need a specific credit card like Visa debit card. Haven't you seen everyone with these cards? Oh, yeah. It's the splurge card. And what you do is, you get a special I&G card for it. That's what he recommends. And you're 20 cents a week. You'd be able to blow on whatever you want just to feel good.

Just a little bit of cream. A little bit of cream just to make it all worthwhile, eh? And I think, you know, like if you say 50% of your income, there's like 20 bucks a day. Yeah. Then you, you know, and you limit yourself to only spending, say, 10% on expenses, which I think the sort of working, that's what you're supposed to do. So that's a whole $4 a day to spend on things like food and accommodation. I think that works.

Or almost a coffee. Almost a coffee. Yeah, I mean, look, if you want to be avocado toast about it, sure, Dom. But I don't think, you know, people who are on job seeker should be, you know, drinking coffee or eating food. I mean, I think it's a bit ridiculous. There's nothing wrong.

There's nothing wrong with plain rice. and tomato sauce, that's what we used to have. Exactly, yes. At uni, when we were, you know, a bit skint. Yes. It's got all the nutrients you need. Just rice and tomato sauce. Absolutely.

Well, I remember. But Charles, some have suggested. Well, I was just going to recall that we once tried. Did you ever try the Guinness and Bananas diet? No. We had this friend. How did you afford a Guinness, you're poshos? We had a friend who was a chemist,

uh, studying science at university, who claimed that Guinness and a diet exclusively of guinness and bananas would be sufficient to contains all the nutrients required to continue your life and a few of us went I think Craig did it um several of us tried it and I can tell you it is isn't that inspiring even then he hated waste yes he hated waste even then bless him and what a hero it was a when's he getting his ace Let's just say it is not good for your gut health. You know how they were doing it turns gut health?

I can just imagine. Because if I can just imagine the Guinness and the bananas. It goes straight through you. After a while, after a few days. Nah. Probably a good way of losing weight. Anyway, so, but some have suggested, Charles. I mean, you hear people whining on about how it's not enough.

Yes. Job seeker. And they want the government to put it up. The government, and there was this graphic doing the rounds. People were sharing it. ABC News produced it, it came out on Friday, which showed the massive, massive size of the stage three tax cuts. Yes.

And that increasing job seeker profoundly much would be only a small proportion, maybe a third or a quarter or something like that, of the massive amount of the stage three tax cuts. And seem to imply in a very editorially, almost commentary way, Charles, that the government should drop the stage three tax cuts and put up job seeker. The problem with that, though, that will emboldened the unemployed. It's not that they don't need jobs.

Yes. If they got $80 a day, why would you want, where would the incident be to do anything? If you're not scranging around for food, then you have time to start organizing. And next thing you know, it's the revolution. Like, we don't want that. No one wants that. Like, what would that do to property prices? Oh, exactly.

So, but Dom, the government has listened to the people wanting jobs. I don't know whether you saw it a day, but they've actually listened. Bloody labour. They're bleeding hearts, child. So the report said, you know, let's raise job seeker from $40 a day to $70 a day. That was the proposal. And the government said yes. They said yes.

They said yes. And but like good improvisers, they didn't say, they didn't say no, right? Right. But they didn't, they said yes and. Yes and. They said yes and it will only be. for old people. Oh.

So you know how most people on JobSeek are really young? This is very clever, Charles, because if you think of who's got the assets in our society, just broadly speaking. Yes. It's definitely, old people are destitute. I mean, just compare, if you look at your grandma's phone or your mum's phone or your dad's phone, you just go, they obviously don't have any money because they don't have the latest. They don't have a little.

They're probably an android. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Whereas all the young people, they're walking. around with the latest technology. They clearly can afford everything. $70 a day. I mean, it's just a question of what brand of caviar you order, isn't it, at that point?

Oh, yeah, I know, exactly. Like, it's sort of silly money, isn't it? But you know the good news, though, Charles, that when the old people get, is it 55 plus? 55 plus, you've got to be 50s. When they spend their special extra old person money, a tiny little droplet of it will trickle down. It will trickle down. It will, because.

they'll be buying adult diapers because I think you go incontinent around the age of 55 or something like that. And it's what I've got to schedule for. All the adult diaper sales will boost the economy such that young people can get, there'll be a surge in demand for checkout operators selling adult diapers to all the new rich over 55 doll recipients. What I like about that analogy, Charles, is that it actually involves we. It actually involves trickle. For too long, trickle down has been something that was sort of an illustration rather than involving actual fluids. Yes.

And when you say checkout operator, it's what you actually mean is not checkout upright. No. You mean the one person now who supervises the self-checkout machines and make sure people don't shoplift. Because we've replaced ten jobs with one with that. Yeah, the person whose job it is to be yelled at by everyone who gets frustrated. The person whose job is clearly to just make sure that other people don't have jobs. None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report.

Why have they done this? Did anyone do any economists and experts say, look, you better make sure that you only limit it to wild people? Okay, so just to get unfortunately a little bit serious and maybe a little bit factful for a second. There was one of the, Jim Chalmers pointed out this morning on ABC Radio that the actual report of experts that, you know, looked at the job seeker and said, you know, in fairness, everyone should get an extra boost in their job seeker. But they did actually identify that the most vulnerable people are women over the age of 55 who are getting job seeker. Right, okay. They actually are the sort of most economically distressed out of every new one. And so they're put into a framework where they're going, actually, if you look at the evidence,

if we can't do everything, this is actually probably not a bad. Well, if you're going to apply data, but this also means, Charles, the thing I like about this policy, it's not just about economic sense and survival, but think of the social benefits. You'll force young people to visit grandma with this one. To borrow money. Yes. To get some of those spare dollars. Yep.

to be bought like a chocolate bicky or something so they can survive when they can't make rent you know in any given week they'll go to grandma get a few extra bucks out of her largesse this is it's really a policy for the whole family this one very impressive to see from mather and look I'm very interested because charmers actually hinted that there'd be a broad range of measures targeted at the cost of living crisis including ones for young people and so I'm very excited and I'm sure that'll be an election night special because it'll be some it'll be a little little icing

on the cake right and I think I'm not saying that metaphorically my prediction is it'll be free lollies for people under 55 icing sugar rebates yeah it'll be what a what a treat so budget night sweeteners yeah you get lollies free lollies to just report and just make it all

gosh well okay so that's that's that problem solved so no more whinging about job seeker. Anyone young is fucked as usual in the society, but old people, the people I have 55, the tiny wedge of people who've missed out on the property boom, poor things, imagine how silly they must feel at this point, being 55 plus. Also, Charles, I'm nine years shy of 55. This is encouraging.

We've got nine years until I can afford to live. Look, we might mock it, but I think that there are a range of loopholes in this scheme that young people uniquely have access to. I think the most obvious one is they've got good phones, they've got fancy phones. They can download Face App, use the aging filter, make themselves look over 55. Brilliant. Dot, dot, dot. Brilliant.

And also they can charge to set up the phones for the 55 pluses so that they can access these services online. Yes, that's right. That'd be worth a charge. Do you think we'll see people using, you know, that filter which makes you look younger? Do you think people are going to go, oh, shit, I don't want to look younger, especially over 55s. I don't want to look as though I'm 45 because I miss out on all the benefits. Yeah, that's fair. There'll be none of that. You know. So the budget comes out, what, a week from, I think it's Tuesday. By the time you hear this, it'll be a week away.

And what other, what other delights are they? We'll talk about the vaping policy some other time. That's just come through. Money for anti-smoking measures we know about what else are they planning? Are they planning anything big in nation building and visionary? Maybe affordable housing? I asked something about, are they building like 30 more affordable houses, 30 or 40 maybe? Well, I think it's a promise to have a plan to build 30 houses. Oh, that's good. You wouldn't want to jump in.

You'd need an inquiry first, wouldn't you? A full and fair inquiry. Maybe a summit. I know. A convention. In terms of infrastructure, they have said that they have said that they, so they've been in government a year and they're now going to

hold the inquiry about whether some of these infrastructure projects should go ahead there's 8,000 I think outstanding infrastructure projects a lot of them are quite small oh yes I saw this they've suddenly gone they're trying to save money by scrapping infrastructure projects so I don't know maybe I don't really have anything funny to say to that

just noting that I think no this seems mistaken jobs It seems a huge mistake. Because I think there was a lot of car parks. You're not there are easy here, Charles. They've fallen into a trap. You've hit on exactly the thing, Charles. That's exactly the issue.

They've fallen into a terrible mistake here, which was that these were things that were announced by the former Morrison government, I imagine. Yes. That were never going to be built. Yes. There was never any intention. This is just all stuff you said before an election and then don't do it.

Well, this is actually the point. The infrastructure minister was on the radio this morning saying None of these projects seem to have any funding attached to them. Like literally, he was going around announcing $50 million car parks, but not allocating any money to it. It was just like, well, I hope it happens. I mean, Noel Pearson. Noel Pearson made the point yesterday that when Brutting Tony Abbott's intervention

did the voice debate, the least surprising. Guess if he's for or against Charles. I don't know if you saw the news. Well, he's the former Indigenous Affairs Minister. He must be very supportive. He probably supports former Indigenous Affairs Ministers having a voice. Yes. Well, actually, that's what he's doing.

He was upset because the committee didn't ask him to speak, so he went and spoke anyway. Yeah, he was a no. Charles, he was a no on the plan. But Noel Pierce was making the point that the Morrison government set aside $160 million to do this and didn't do it in the last term of the parliament. So, you know, again, this is something the Morrison government was going to do and just didn't get around to.

So I imagine they'll find billions of savings by just not building the car parks that were never needed. Yes, that's great. And they can give it over 55s. That's perfect. As long as it's only, I think they need to restrict the people who've got more than one house. Yes, that's right.

I think that's it. Because the thing is Charles, I don't know if you know the situation, but a lot of people right now out there are hurting because they own so many houses. They've got big interest repayments to make. And they don't have any income because they've retired. They're the bad ones who need the job seeker.

They're the ones who need the job seeker. I hope it's going to them. Yes. Because by the time you've got four, I mean, imagine four or five investment properties, an interest rate increase of just 0.25%. Yes. That'll completely destroy you. That'll take out your overseas European trip money.

And look, I only did a few units of economics at university. But I seem to remember that economics is all about incentives, right? Yeah. And what do you want in an economy? Well, the incentive that you want to set for an economy is to not have fucking losers, right? And if you don't own four houses, you're a loser, right? So, you know, like...

You're not even trying in this economy. Exactly. So I think... Or you're young, all you're young and it's impossible. That seems like a reasonable excuse if you're below 55. So there you go.

So Labor has a plan, have a plan, have a plan, have a plan, and we'll hear what it is on budget night. Well, I think that's a pretty compelling analysis, Dom. I think we can probably go home. Yeah, yeah.

Our work's done. That works done. Aren't we supposed to be on sympathy strike with the writers in America at this point? I certainly didn't write anything in advance for this podcast. I think it's very clear. I was actually doing a negotiation today with a person who wanted me to write something. And I pointed out that our Writers Guild rates, so the Australian Writers Guild Guild has a whole lot of television rates.

Guess when they were negotiated those rates, Don? 1937. They were negotiated. They were last agreed to in 2012. Guess how much for a, let's say, you're going to write half an hour of narrative comedy in Australia, how much would you expect the broadcaster would pay for you for the streaming rights to that script? To half hour of fully produced TV, you'd probably cost, I don't know, a million dollars a half

hour to produce. That's easy. How much of that would go to the right? Nothing, because it wasn't streaming wasn't invented in 2012. Incorrect, Dom. To buy out the streaming rights in perpetuity is 900 bucks in Australia. That seems generous. I'm surprised you get.

900 bags. 900 bags. It's nice to see writers in perpetuity. It's nice to see Australian writers organizing and sticking up for their rights to like this person I was negotiating again and said, well, you should organise the strike. He said, you've got to go on strike. Yeah, because there's so many Australian television writers that if they all stop working, the world would sit up and take notice.

Oh, God. Let's just stop the podcast. I'm too depressed. Aguiz from Road. We're part of the O'Connor Class Network, and frankly, this is the only job we've got that we can rely on, and is it really a job at this point? Sure, let's say, let's pretend it is.

We can get the job seeker in a few years, it would be fine. Oh, but pairing in mind, Charles, we discovered someone hit us up on Twitter today and said that the podcast contains ads for natural gas. Oh, fuck, yes. Oh, we've got to do a rave against natural gas. Do we? I don't think we can afford to cancel the ads.

We'll just have to ignore them. Can we afford to cancel any ads at this point? No, okay, yeah. I'm assuming, don't we have ads for, for genocide? We're very supportive of natural gas and genocide and anything else who wants to have a dog. Blood diamonds. We need the money. We're blood diamonds.

Fantastic. Don't buy the ordinary kind. Don't buy conflict-free diamonds. Why do you want to do that? That's you next time if you want to listen to more of this misery. Say it.