The Chaser Report - Mid Life Fly-sis | Sami Shah

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Sami Shah is back and has another spicy take. Sami tells Dom how Melbourne Airport has become the victim of enshittification, and how podcasts are the fault of everything. As Dom said: "We're basically sitting on a podcast and whinging about airports." 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. It's a reunion episode. It's Dom here with from the Newsweekly podcast along with many, many other fine things. It's Mr. Sammy Shah. Hello. How you doing, Don?

Hello. Yeah, I'm really, really well. So nice to see you over Zoom once again in front of some kind of cupboard. But last week, I have. actually got to see you in the flesh. We'll talk about that and everything else that's been happening in the news, as much as we can possibly cover right after this. So yes, I was actually in Melbourne and I got to experience the four seasons in. It was about one hour last week, I think, with flash flooding, intense sunshine clouds. I don't know. It's a full on place,

Melbourne. It's funny because normally, yes, it is, you know, we have that thing of four seasons in one day. But I've noticed that it only takes. tends to get more extreme whenever there's visitors from other parts of the country. And I feel like Melbourne does put on a bit of a show. Melbourne does show off and kind of say, look at what I can do. I can destroy your day in many different ways if I choose to. Yeah. It's a power move. Absolutely. I also, I full credit to Melbourne for inventing tram stops that are so narrow in terms of the shelter that the rain just gets on you anyway. I thought that was in full credit to Melbourne. That is a boss move. It is funny. Like so Melbourne

keeps, look, I love Melbourne. Before I go into this rant that I'm about to go into, I do love a great deal. I do too. Yeah. I had a great time. I'm grateful to live here. When I tell my friends who are thinking of maybe migrating to Australia sometime, I always tell them, Melbourne is one of the best cities you could live in. It's not as beautiful as Sydney. I will grant that any day of the week. Sydney is stunning. Melbourne is not. But it's, you know, very livable in many different ways. Some of the best food in the world, I think, is in Melbourne, one of the unrecognized food hubs of the world. However, really? Isn't it recognized? Not, you've got a global perspective.

When you look at the global perspective, people talk about places like Singapore or Hong Kong, or they'll say, you know, India has got, you know, obviously New Delhi and Mumbai have great food if you want diarrhea constantly, or, you know, if you go to your different parts of Europe, French cuisine and this and that, you know, Vietnam, all these. But Melbourne, Even though we have such a variety of multicultural cuisine that you can genuinely get Ethiopian next to Vietnamese, next to some, like, you know, village in Thailand, not just Thai food, but like a very specific kind of Thai food from a very specific part of Thailand next to some, you know, like you get all that here. But no one really gives us enough credit for it outside Australia, I think. I had that. I had food from the Thai region of Isan, which I very much enjoyed.

And get on some Isan food. That's my big, that's my big tip for Christopher. and it was really annoying to me actually because I've always said oh you know sure Melbourne's food's amazing but the Thai food's not as good as in Sydney well damn it now it is no no it definitely is there's I have yet to eat any cuisine in Sydney that I haven't gone oh no Melbourne does it better and I've eaten a lot like I'm very you know I love eating but that aside I think Melbourne has some of the most clearly obviously designed by psychologists to test human reactions to particularly bizarre and extreme situations kind of infrastructure.

I really feel like it is just been whatever our state government is, what they actually are is a group of academic psychologists and psychiatrists who are running this massive test here. Because like you said, a pressure test. You go to the tram shelters and it's just narrow enough the overhead shelter that, you know, the rain will get you, the wind will get you, the hail will get you. You know, the one that I've noticed recently that is really driving. having me bug shit is if you come to Melbourne and you want to park,

like we don't have that thing you guys in Sydney have where you can just catch a train to the airport, right? For some reason Melbourne was like, no, why have convenience? Given how far away a talemarine is from the city, right? Like it's, you're basically in the middle of fields at the point that you get to tellemarine. It's ridiculous. Which is why a train makes all the more sense as opposed to paying, you know, $40-50 for taxis, minimum,

you know, or driving all the way there and stuff. So one of the things Melbourne has done to help, you know, the average Melbourneian is the airport parking. And if you go to, this is a very particular Melbourne rant I'm about to go down. And I apologize for all the non-Melbourne listeners who are going to go, this is fucking nothing. We'll get your thoughts on Queensland shortly because they're always enjoyable. But if you go to Melbourne Airport parking on the website, they've got a Melbourne airport parking website. And if you put in, they ask you which terminal you want to go to, terminal one, terminal two, terminal three, depending on your airlines. If you put in anything other than Terminal 4, it will only give you parking options for parking at the Melbourne airport, which are very expensive.

Very, like I'm talking like 60 bucks, 70 bucks for a few hours. However, if you put Terminal 4, which is the one for Jet Star and Rex, you know, rest in peace, that will then give you this much larger airport parking space, which is a huge parking lot, a little far from the airport. You have to catch a bus to the airport from the parking lot. Way cheaper. Like 15 bucks. is all it costs. This is so bizarre. So you're saying

that they've actually come up with like budget class parking as well. That's how big the class divide is in the element. It's only visible if you then say that you go to Terminal 4, which it should make a difference because it's not like Terminal 1, 2 and 3 are miles away from Terminal 4. They're all the same fucking building. So, but you have to figure out these life hacks.

And now decide a new thing where when you go to that website, if you go to that website within 24 hours of your flight, they will say there's no parking spots available. Only valet parking is available, which is more expensive than regular parking. However, when you go there, there's lots of empty spots because guess what, the valet parking will just be using the fucking parking lot. So there are spots available. So there's basically a whole scam running in cahoots with Melbourne Airport, which is also

very clearly running other scams as well. Because if you want a taxi, you can't get a taxi, you have to get an Uber, which always has surged pricing. The only way to get a taxi is to go to Terminal 1 all the way across the other end of the airport, walk all way to the corner of Terminal 1, pass those last doomed cigarette smokers left on planet Earth, and then you get a taxi,

but if you want an Uber, it'll drive right up to your plane most probably, and the guy will carry you down from your passenger seat. So it is this bizarre system that they've developed where they're clearly taking advantage of people. They've done everything they can to sabotage the rail link. And no one gives a shit. No one worries.

When I rant like this, I sound like a crazy, the end is nigh person waving a sign, cardboard sign on the street. But what I'm saying is a fact. They're fucking us and we're okay with it. I absolutely love how hyper-specific this rant is. Like all the lessons from everywhere other than Melbourne and indeed Melbourneians who regularly go to the airport, such as a claim comedian and a man about town Sammy Shah, who's in much demand all over the country and the world, always at Melbourne Airport. That's very specific. But isn't it in the

nature of an airport, Sammy, that for some reason, you know, every airport that I've ever been into and certainly Sydney takes the view that well look at you mr fancy pants able to afford to go in a plane we're going to absolutely screw you on every other thing like yes you say you say okay sydney has a train link to the cpd it does it's a very good train line it works very well we haven't bothered to customize any of the trains on the airport train line so that it's actually useful for people who are flying on trains anywhere else in the world you go on the airport line and there's, you know, things like baggage racks, lots of handy seating and so on. No, we have our usual double-decker trains that are impossible.

With your suitcase. Yeah, your suitcase just basically bounces around. But also, we charge you, the airport access fee. There's some shit deal that a previous government did with people who built it as a public-private partnership. So even though it's only about a 10-minute train ride from the city because it's quite close, they charge you, I can't remember how much it is, but it's 10 or 15 bucks or some vast amount of money just for the privilege of accessing the airport line, right?

So what that means is that for a very long time, and I'm sure this is still true, it has been cheaper to catch a cab from the city, from the Sydney CBD to the airport for two or more people than to catch the train. And how that makes sense, I don't know. So even there they screw you. Then there's the fact that it's Sydney Airport, the international terminal, it's essentially a massive duty-free barn with the odd little gate hidden away. It's genuinely hard to find the gates for all the duty-free.

Like the last time I went there, I got lost. Who shops at duty-free? I've never, here's the thing, genuinely, I don't think I've ever shopped at a duty-free. Like, who are these people who, whenever they land in a foreign country, run straight to the duty-free, always seem to be buying Johnny Walker whiskey bottles. I've never seen anyone buy anything other than Johnny Walker. All of Duty-Free is just a front for Johnny Walker whiskey for some reason. That's all they buy.

The blue label. Who buys Blue-label, Johnny Walker, the expensive one? What are you celebrating? That's right. And have you not heard of single malt? I guess not. Anyway, I've always thought that, and this is very much, you know, last vestiges of the patriarchy type thing. I've always thought that a lot of Judy Free was marketed at guilty businessman who didn't think of all about their wife and families during their trip.

And I'll be able to, oh, just get us some perfume. What's the one perfume she likes? And every perfume is in your face between there and the, uh, the plane. And when you can't remember the perfume that she likes, you go, oh, this is new. Right. Yeah. Some young, young woman who's, um, you know, handing you a little bit of perfume. pretending she's romantically interested in you for five seconds on the way through the duty-free. I think that's what it is because, yeah, absolutely. There's no way any woman has ever bought female-oriented product at Judy-free. Because they all know that it's much cheaper online or anywhere else, literally in the world.

So basically all it is, it sells two products, duty-free. It sells Johnny Walker Whiskey Blue Label for the businessman who wants to blackout drink himself once again. He's home so he doesn't have to pay attention to his children. and a bottle of Jean-Paul Gautier's whatever perfume for his wife so that she will think that he loves her when, in fact, he's just been having sex with prostitutes in Southeast Asia. Or whatever, exactly. So the more, the naughtier you were, presumably the biggest thing you buy.

And the beauty of airport duty-free is, yes, okay, it doesn't have the 10% GST. Fantastic. That's a wonderful saving. But you can't tell me the prices hunt checked up by more than 10%. Yeah, exactly. Basically, look, okay, here's what I'll do. I'll connect our very specific rants about very specific use cases into a larger theme to connect with more Australians who are listening and more people who are listening.

In the unlikely event that anyone who doesn't give a shit about the Sydney Hill, Melbourne Airport, is still with us. Sammy, he's just got to, you're going to do a wave. You're going to do Donald Trump wave, aren't you, Sammy? You're going to bring it all together beautifully. It's all about, I can't do Trump. I've never been able to do it Trump. It's all about insidification. That's what people say.

That's right. We've been, we love that word on this podcast. I've got a decent Trump, but it actually destroys my voice after about 10 seconds. It's not decent. It's good enough for a chase of radio sketch. All right, at least right. It's all about insidification. I'm already losing that voice.

City Airport, it's too big. It's big. It's huge. That's not bad. That is pretty good. Although the veins popping out on your forehead were quite amusing. Yeah, no, it's not healthy at all. I don't know how he does it.

Anyway. But yes, it is. I speak with that voice for multiple hours. Yeah. So, entunification, if you don't know, is a phrase, a word coined by Cory Dr. Rau, the writer and technologists and futures and stuff. And the idea is that, you know, things get shitty as profit margins get more and more addictive to shareholders, et cetera.

And, you know, you can see it in bullies and colds. You can see it in Qantas. You can see it in basically everything in Australia. And my whole rant is that this stuff, like the airport, the Melbourne airport, and how their fucking customers over so they can keep making more and more money is the perfect example of insurification. And that's the

stuff that's going to destroy and ruin Australia. And I say this, of course, as a first world country privileged thing. I say this is a person from Pakistan where right now a few days ago they were shooting protesters in the streets, but we don't have that in Australia, so we've got a long way to drop still before we're

actually destroyed country. But my contention is that it isn't you know, wokeism or anti-wokism that the problem in Australia is all about. It's not about any of the things that we see on television people ranting about and media rants about as these are the problems that are ruining Australia. It's on mass migration. It's none of these things. It is end-shittification of basic goods and services

and how everything we have right now is a little bit shittier every single year in very slight, subtle ways so that when you rant about it, Everyone in your friends and family thinks you're the crazy person, but all you are is the prophet who has seen doom coming before anyone else. That sounds like, again, a very specific rant based on your life experience. I don't know what you're going about. But, I mean, we have on this podcast for a long time talked about in shitification. I'm just going to take a quick ad break before a blow out trumpet on this.

The Chaser Report. More news. Less often. Yeah, we were on to this one early, and Corey Dachoro was talking about social media platforms, and it's absolutely true that when they go from serving the users to trying to make money, that's the point at which they get crap. And we also, yes, have been noticing that everything else is shit and gets shittier all the time. But it does, it does bear the question.

I do want to point out that you just said, we'll talk about n-shittification right after this ad break, where we will now cater to advertisers, you know, for our podcast to make more money. Well, we inshittified our podcast. What can I say? Charles and I had a not dissimilar rant, Sammy. And is it that everything is getting shit? Or is it that we're middle-aged men? We don't have any battles to fight anymore.

We're basically sitting on a podcast and whinging about airports. Look, sitting on a podcast and whinging about airports is the new midlife crisis, right? That is literally all podcasts in the world right now are middle-aged men whinging and whining about inane bullshit. And for some reason, that's the dominant force of, like, political. cultural culture and social influence on this planet at this point. You know, you're more likely to impact change and create a different world. If you're a middle-aged man on a podcast ranting about nonsense, then you are if you're a politician or a cultural activist or, you know,

a social person who's involved in different, you know, programs and things like that. So we are doing what God wants us to do. Back in the day, it used to be buy a fast car and ruin your life with a younger person. Now it is get a microphone and rant into the ether about Melbourne Airport. That's probably a good thing. It's probably a great idea, yes, for us to just take, divert all middle-aged men's anger into podcasting. If Donald Trump had had a podcast. But that's what happened.

Donald Trump became president because that's happened already in America. We're just behind the curve. We're catching up now. That's all. Absolutely. There you go. Look, it's an exciting moment that we've finally found a way to shut up middle-aged men, except that if they're Joe Rogan, they actually decide elections.

All right, well, Sammy, you and I are both trying to transform ourselves into serious scholars of podcasting to some degree, which is as big a shock to probably listeners as it is to you and it is to me. We might talk about that some of the time. But for the time being, thank you for joining us. I'm so glad News Weekly is continuing and, you know, has a serious academic pursuit. You're investigating, aren't you? Yes, Newsweekly is my news satire podcast that I do every week.

It comes out every Saturday morning. It's free wherever you get your podcasts. W-E-A-K-L-Y is how weekly is spelt. But, yes, it's also part of my PhD research. You and I both bring PhDs into podcasting because... We are. It turns out you can do a PhD in anything. And again, middle-aged men, it's disgusting.

That's right. You can study anything at university these days. What absolute rubbish. So there you go. That's what's going on. And Sammy, you can promise the listeners, can't you, that there's satire and comment on there about things other than Melbourne Airport. You know what?

I don't know. Now that I think about it, maybe I should dedicate the entire rest of my feed to just Melbourne Airport rants. It might increase advertising. Who knows. But yes, it's a podcast about what is happening in the news. If you don't want to listen to the news anymore, you want to check out, and you just want 15 minutes of all the news headlines rounded up by me in my particularly ranty fashion, then listen to News Weekly.

Thanks for having a semi-lover to catch up. And talk airport parking with the world export on. Look, and if you listen to this point, congratulations, you now know how. to save money at Melbourne airport. And in this cost of the living crisis, that's genuine plus. We're part of the Icona class network. We'll catch you next time here on The Chaser Report.