The Chaser Report - Let's Have More Referendums!

Episode Date: October 15, 2023

Charles and Dom reflect on The Voice referendum and come up with better* ways for the Labor party to use referendums in the future.*cannot guarantee that their suggestions are in fact, better. 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 podcast with Dom and Charles. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Australia has spoken, Charles. Australia said no. No.

60% of Australia said no. Yes, which actually leads me to think that the polls all along were wrong. Because the polls said, oh, you know, no, will. win by like 4565 or 47-53 or something like that. No, had it was much wider margin. The polls totally got it wrong. They were skewed in favour of the yes the whole way. They were just biased in favour of yes.

Outrageous. They should have talked to real Australians, shouldn't they? No. More after this. So that didn't achieve very much. I mean, we spent millions upon millions of dollars. The Prime Minister's basically spent a year of his time in office focusing on this thing. people marched in the streets

signs were put up core flutes A lot of core flutes were covered with the word yes And in the end it achieved nothing So Dom, I was the supporter of the yes campaign So you I've always said that when you're on the wrong side Of something and you fail What you should not do is any self-reflection

So I think we should just move on And talk about something else Well let's take the lead from Anthony Albanese Last night Who gave I thought a very dignified speech Where he didn't apologise he didn't say, wow, that was a big fuck-up. He basically said, I'd said, I'd do it.

This is what they wanted. Yes. The original community, through the illory statement from the heart. This is what they asked for. I said, I'd do it. Yes. I did it. And now, we're just going to keep going forward.

We're just going to take the know. We'll be humble and we'll learn from it. At the same time, we're going to just keep going forward anyway. Yes. And I think it actually exposes the floor, the fundamental tiny, tiny, tiny floor with the Labor Party's approach to everything. Which is, they got into power and they went, look, we're not going to promise you much. You don't have to hope for anything. Our promise is basically, we're just

going to be just slightly less annoying than Scott Morrison. Yeah, we'll be incrementally modestly better. Yeah, we'll just under promise and then deliver on that under promise. So, you'll constantly be just sort of slightly disappointed in how little we're doing, but we won't be Scott Morrison. And so that's what they've done right. And last night was a perfect example where it was like, well, we promised to do this, we did it. It doesn't matter that it didn't work. It's just move on. Same what they're doing with housing. Like, we promised to not do much about housing.

We've now done it. We'll build a couple of social homes. So we'll build a couple. What are you all disappointed about? We told you we would be disappointing. We promised to not do much. We're not doing much. So why are you disappointed?

Well, this was the whole narrative. Albo was like, I'm a man of my word. I do what I say I'm going to do. I promise to do these particular things. And it's true. Remember how we were talking about his small target campaign, the very limited list of promises. He has ticked off those promises.

Just about all of. I will underperform on housing. Tick. I will underperform on the economy. Tick. Oh, the environment's a big one. Oh, I will massively underperform on the environment. Tick.

But I won't be Scott Morrison. And that certainly. Unless it turns out that somehow this has been some weird mastermind thing whereby Scott Morrison's still pulling the streets. Well, this is the thing. I have a theory that Scott Morrison actually swore himself in to be Anthony Albanese.

It's entirely possible. Because constitutionally, he got that clear. by Christian Porter. Charles, we can be a little bit honest about the voice now. There's been a little bit of a don't... Yeah, don't undermine the cause type discussion. Don't talk down your own side. Don't ask the hard questions.

Don't go. Pat Cummins is his lovely guy, but maybe he's a fucking shithouse captain. Don't go. Can we at some point explain what this is going to be and how it's going to work? Because I, at one point, I remember we were talking with James Schleff, well, you and I said, I wonder if it's going to backfire and not having provided any details. Maybe it would have been sensible. We at least say here's the bill that the government

would want to pass if the voice gets up. Presumably they'd thought at some point about what they would do next. Now we will never know. We will never know what the voice would have looked like. They'll never have to put flesh on the bones at all. There must be some sort of cabinet document that will come out in 30 years.

Oh, maybe, yeah. It will be... It will be... It'll be a napkin from Golden Century or something. Because there's two options and neither of them's good, right? Option one is that they had a whole plan. They're going to have a voice that's going to be 50 people, We're going to vote it according to this means.

This is the whole plan. And yes, there would have been negotiations and discussions. It would have been like the knack, right? You know, they came in, they had a plan for the anti-corruption body. They negotiated with the crossbenches and the teals and whatever. And then it basically took a form similar to what they wanted it to do. So either there is a draft around there and they thought about it and they knew what it was going to be. And crucially, the problems people had with it would have been resolved by that, right?

Like, definitely it had not much influence. It just would have been able to have an opinion. It would have been pretty innocuous, right? Yes. That's option one. They had a whole plan that they just didn't bother to share with anyone. option two is that they hadn't thought about it yet that they'd be like oh you know we'll fix it if it gets up

you know I'd probably won't get up it's be honest I'll just do this because I said I'd do it I don't want to be a liar yes I promise that is what happened I promised Dr. Itapingo I'd go ahead on his deathbed and I don't want to let that down he couldn't be bothered putting it together maybe he is Scott Morris that sounds like a very Scott Morris not my job not my job to give you the detail why would you bother it it's like an assignment that you know if you're going to

drop out of the course. You don't want to bother doing the assignment too early. So either of those options is very good, is it? Because now we have no clue what the voice is. And this is the other thing that I've been just holding off, I've been biting my tongue on for a long time. I might have, I might have said it at some point in the podcast. But people have to

remember that this voice was designed in part by Julian Lisa. Yes. Now, we've known Julian Lisa for a lot. I'm fond of Julian Lisa, but I've known him since I don't know, university days. He is a very conservative man. I think the word you're looking for is

twat. He is a man who asked for a copy of the Constitution as a young boy. Yes. And who is for some reason, fanatically devoted to keeping it the same. He used to keep a copy of the Constitution underneath his bed and look at it. He was the young Fogie who was the young monochist

right. He was the only person in the campaign who was a young monochist back in the Republic campaign. So the fact that he was comfortable with this whole content of the voice that he thought it was an acceptable path forward. Just goes to show that it was incredibly not radical. The idea that would be divisive and change anything dramatically,

it wouldn't have. Julie and Lisa would never have ticked off on anything that wasn't very, very, very modest. But maybe therein lies the problem. Maybe the fact is that people want radical change when it comes to dealing with big problems. And things like the way we treat Indigenous and First Nations people is actually a big problem

and shouldn't be solved by things that Julie and Lisa approves of. Well, look, then you're getting to the Lydia Thorpe point of view. Oh, shit. Which we'll get into more in a moment. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. Now I tweeted something at a crucial moment on referendum night that went incredibly viral. At the moment, it's about 114,000 views. Oh, my God.

And I was a bit frustrated, Charles, because I was sitting there watching Lydia Thorpe, talk about how the voice was ridiculous and what we needed was a treaty. And this was when I knew the ABC was on the verge of calling the whole. whole referendums having been defeated. The ABC coverage was waiting for her to stop her impassioned speech about wanting a treaty and how the voice was just going to do nothing and the treaty was the only thing that was going to work. And I just thought, is she really not reading the room to this degree?

Is she really thinking that when 60% of Australians have said, absolutely not, we're not even doing the voice, but suddenly we were going to turn around and go, oh, but a treaty, now that's something we can all get behind. It just seemed so frustrating that it's the whole kind of green thing, even though she's not one, of letting the good be the enemy of the perfect, right? Like, she so wanted the more radical form of recognition that she wasn't even interested in this one. And it just really frustrated me. At the moment when the whole thing was lost, and Australia said, actually, we don't want to even do this for you.

We don't even want to give you this small thing you've asked for. So how about a treaty? It just seemed not to read the room to each other. Well, I think it was like one of those. I assume Lydia thought that 60% of Australia is behind me in wanting no. Peter Dutton, Paul and Hansen, they're all going to get on board with the next step, which is obviously a treaty. That's what I was imagining she was thinking was, okay, we've got rid of that. Yeah.

It's like, you know, thank goodness we've defeated the Republic version where it's appointed by the parliament, now we'll do direct election. Yes. That was the mistake that a lot of people made in 1999. It hasn't happened all these years later. Oh, man. A lot of people woke up this morning thinking, well, at least Dutton is toast. And I just want to correct people on it because you can't really toast potato.

It's more sort of like, isn't he French fried? Charles, you can put a potato. mashed or roasted. You can put it in foil and just put it in a fire, can't you? Yeah, camping tricks. But what I would say is that I think that those people are being as naive as an Albanesee. Oh, wow. Really? I can coin that phrase. The point was made that every single teal seat along the east coast voted yes by quite a large margin. Basically, if you live near a CBD, the closer you are of the CBD, the more likely you are to vote yes. It was actually extraordinary the way that that worked.

Basically, the more rural and regional you are, until you get to the point where actually you're in a remote Indigenous community where they did vote yes. Up to that point, further you got from the main post office in your state, the more likely you were to vote no. It really was an inner city elite thing in the end of the voice. So I wouldn't be waking up Sunday morning and I was Peter Dutton. I wouldn't be going, oh, drat it.

I now will never win Zali Stegel's seat or Monique Ryan's seat. I'd be going, right, there's a whole lot of outer suburban fringe seats that voted vastly against the voice, against the express wishes of Anthony Albanesey, how the hell can I run a whole lot of other culture war issues and take out those seats at the next election? And get elected without winning back any of the teal seats. And I think Labor strategists are going, well, the next election's in the bag because, you know, Dutton needs the teal seats. They've never been elected before without the teal seats. Well, I'm here to say, actually, there is a way forward, which is if you do a far,

right populist movement where you go, clearly Labor is just trying to impress all the harbourside elites and the beach-loving elites that live right next to your beach and your... The yes-on-sea, basically. And then run a whole lot of horrible campaigns where you just lurch further and further towards a sort of populist right agenda. Then you can pick off the thing. And the thing that Peter Dutton seems to be harping on about over and over again is that Albo is all talk, but doesn't deliver on.

anything right and i know labor strategists is sort of scratching the head going i don't think that that resonates because albo has consistently under promised and then delivered on those under promises right as we said at the start of the podcast but it has an emotional truth which is yeah sure you elected albo because he wasn't scott morrison but emotionally the idea was i'm electing this guy because he'll be in some ways better and i'll be doing better yeah this is the thing that's so rough about this charles and dutton did keep going on about this why are we having a referendum when everyone's worried about the cost of living. And it's certainly true that if Labor can't make any inroads on cost of living in a year's

time, they could be in serious trouble. We do dump governments in a recession. But I will disagree with you slightly, Charles, because of the polls. And this is the thing that's so fascinating. The news poll that came out on Friday night just before the referendum day, it pretty much accurately forecast the voice. It said, yes, 37, no, 57. And that was a big up, by the way, for yes on its poll before that.

Yes. So yes, even rallied to get to the point of getting 40% of the vote. But preferred PM, Albo 51, Dutton, 31, which is down to. Dutton approve minus 2 to 35, disapprove 53, plus 3. Albanesey approved 46, disapprove 46. So that's not so good for him. But the primary votes, Labor 36, which is up to, LNP 35 minus 1, Greens 12, and the others were, one nation was 6.

So on a two-party preferred basis, Labor is absolutely sitting pretty, and Dutton has done this whole campaign to try and undermine Albanese. I don't know that he's gotten anywhere with it. if you believe in his poll. Like, the way the polls are for him, you would imagine that he'd actually be in trouble had he not just won this referendum. This referendum may have saved his job as opposition leader.

Look, I find him almost unbearable to listen to. He was on the radio on Friday, and it was like, okay, this is the point that we turn off the radio. And look, I don't disagree that he's a sort of vile man, but cast your minds back to 2013. If you run a very clear line and you just keep saying, this guy doesn't deliver on anything, He's naive.

He just promises these big things and then doesn't deliver. He promised the voice. He didn't deliver. He promised you'd be better off. He didn't deliver. Even if Albo can technically go, well, actually, I've delivered on everything because I actually didn't promise much at all. The emotional truth is, actually, yeah, you're right.

He sort of, what's the fucking point of him? It's a dynamic thing. It's 18 months out from the election. I think Dutton's going to have a sniff of how he can, he'll look at the polling results and it'll go, well, what were the messages that worked really well? Right, okay, let's tell some lies about the UN taking over

Australia if the yes vote sort of things. How can we build on that style of politics? Because that's the style of politics that's working everywhere else in the world. Bearing of mind, New Zealand's just gone centre right to someone really quite radically right. I should point out, by the way, news polls

5446, so that's pretty far in Labour's favour at this stage. Yeah, yeah. That's getting into the, you know, to bump the leader territory historically, but yeah, I agree. Dutton has found a message that is resonating. So Labor's got to come up with a plan, right? And so I've got the plan for it, because have you heard what's going on in Poland? Have you heard about the Polish elections?

I have not heard about the Polish elections. I think they're in a week or two. I should probably look that up. While you look that up, there is one thing I want to say, which is that I think it does come down to the hip pocket. I think it does come down to the way everyone's feeling in terms of financial pressures. And if Labor can come up with a plan to really do something about that in the next 12 months, which they have to control of the parliament to be able to do,

then they'll get re-elected in a canter. And I'll give you one example that's relevant to me, which is massive, which is that the new childcare subsidies are vastly different. The amount of money you get in your pocket now versus when Alba got elected is dramatically more. It's much more generous than it was. And so that is a beautiful bribe to those with young children in childcare.

Yes. If the government does a lot more stuff like that, it will easily win re-election and Dutton won't have a chance. If it loses touch with that sort of stuff, yeah they might well be toasted the PBS is another brilliant example of that where that's true they've halved the price of medicine now I don't know about you but my family is incredibly sick all the time and that is I reckon there's at least 100,000 shaved off the medicine spill so that's the sort of hip pocket thing that you would think if you were the government you'd be paying attention to

because that does actually put money in people's pockets petrol's going to be another one for them to look at and obviously housing is the biggest of them all so you would imagine that labor strategists would be coming up with a big plans. I've said that before and been solely disappointed, but you have an idea, Judge. I'm going to make a prediction that they will definitely not do that. But let me tell you how they should run their election to win. What I reckon they should do is they should do

another referendum, right? Is you serious? Yes. During the election, on the same day as the election. Oh, I want to hear this. Yes. I want to hear this. And I also want to remember this for the next 12 months. Okay. They follow the Polish model, right? So the polls had their election on Sunday. Polls went to the polls. The polls went

to the polls on Sunday. At that election, And so that's that sort of far-right populist government that they've got going on in Poland. They've already had two terms really quite easily. People are sort of almost saying it's getting to the point where you're sort of looking at the de-democratization of Poland because, you know... A one-party state. Yeah, well, it's... But also, they don't really believe in big things like civil liberties and stuff like that.

Sure. But what the polls have done, because Poland is in the EU, but it's right next to Ukraine, right? Yeah. is the government decided, let's have a referendum. Now, there's no, it's not like the Australian constitution where, you know, there's a reason to have a referendum. They just went, yeah, let's just have a referendum. And they had four questions. And all four questions were the most ridiculously worded questions in the history of the universe.

Just translate it from the original Polish, Charles. Well, this is the problem is, I was reading this article, which was saying that in the original Polish, it's even more extreme than the translations give it to you. So the questions are, do you support the selling off of state assets? to foreigners, leading to the loss of Poles' control over strategic sectors of the economy. That was the first question, right? You know what that is? What? That is Polish Pushbowel.

It's Polish Pushwell. Second one. Do you support an increase in the retirement age, including the restoration of the increased retirement age to 67 for men and women? Isn't that ours? Aren't we already there? Oh, God. Probably. We're going to make this podcast forever.

Do you support the removal of all barriers on the border between Poland and Belarus? Oh, Belarus, which is the great ally of Russia, yeah. And then, do you support the admission of thousands of illegal immigrants from the Middle Eastern Africa in accordance with the force relocation mechanism imposed by a European bureaucracy? They are honestly the questions. So the whole point is, what Alvo should do is he should run his own referendum where he runs a huge vote no campaign.

And everyone's going, why are you doing this? And it's just literally to get everyone like excited about the thing. Not a single party supported any of those questions, right? There was no reason to have the reverend. It wasn't like it was going to change the constitution if it somehow got up. So it's a question like, do you like free money? But you know, I've got the issue. I've actually got the thing.

You know what they should do? They should put Medicare in the Constitution. Yes. That is the perfect wedge because we know that in the past, the coalition's nibbled around the edges and wanted to put in minimum fees and so on. Yes. If they put free visits to the GP and Medicare, protect Medicare and the Constitution, that would actually get up. The question should be, do you want to destroy Medicare?

Yeah, exactly right. We'll keep you up to date with that referendum results. Apparently, I'm looking at this here, the questions were all designed as a personal attack on the opposition leader. Like, they're basically all phrased so as to wedge the opposition leader. So the referendum question for Labor should be something like, do you want to have a leader who looks like a potato? What about do you want knights and dames back again? The thing that got rid of Tony Abbott.

The one floor in Tony Abbott's Provisorship. I think we need another referendum. I think that's the name of this episode is... We need enough of the referendum. Let's have more referendums. Maybe we should have a referendum about referendums. Because I think part of the problem is referendums are so fucking hard to get up.

We should have a referendum to make it easier for referendums to get up. That is the least lucked to referendums to get up in the history. Maybe just the question is, do you believe Australia is the greatest country? in the world. Oh, I love it. Well, Lydia thought would still be on no. You know what we should do?

Do you think Australia should automatically win the Rugby World Cup every single time? Because it's the only way we're going to win it. Our gear is from Road. We're part of the Iconiclass Network. Let's just, um, let's have an episode where we focus on just something light tomorrow. Like, I don't know, death. Isn't there an asteroid heading for Earth or something? We'll find out.