The Chaser Report - Momentous Gradual Change

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

The Greens have saved Australia from climate disaster, but how? Meanwhile, which American president is going to send his agents to kill Chas this week? Plus Dom shares a tip for how to get a free holiday in the city of your choice. 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 is Charles Firth and Dom Knight coming to you with a whole batch of fresh news, Charles. Oh, yes. Nothing like just the New South Wales election. We've done that. We're not doing that.

I can promise we will not mention the New South Wales election for four years. But you've told me just beforehand that we're going to talk about some climate deal. There's a deal. So that means the environment's saved? There is a climate deal. And I'm going to ask you a very serious question, Charles. Okay. Why the fuck aren't you a green?

We'll get to that. Also, Barack Obama's coming into town. And I've got to say, if you're a long-term fan of the former US president, what he's doing in town is not hugely impressive. And finally, I am popular in Queensland. Charles, people in Queensland love me. Oh. And I'll explain why.

Let's just get on with the show. I was listening to the show. the other day, and I hate all this preamble. Yeah, it sucks. Can they avoid the preamble? No, they can't. Just get on with it. All right, there's a climate deal, Charles.

Yes. It's been saved. Basically, Labor and the Greens have done a deal to, which essentially is bringing Labor somewhat reluctantly to the table. Oh, yeah. On the environment. And in particular, new coal and gas schemes will be truncated under this deal. And the Greens are saying it's a big victory.

for them. What? And Labor are having to... Hang on, hang on, hang on. We're doing a bit of Australian Labour Party here. I'm not saying that they did it voluntarily. They did it because they had to deal with somebody. Oh.

Unless this is part of a big deal. Look, you're an expert in the behind-the-scenes negotiations. I certainly am. Is this... People call me when they... They do. Get Firth on the line. But you tell me, is this actually a deal where Labor's been forced to be better than it

wanted to be on the environment? or is this a little bit of a little bit of kabuki where Labor's being centrist and the Greens get to have a win? No. Because they're in a secret coalition. You tell me. Well, I think actually the way Labor would look at it is they have been forced to be worse than they wanted to be because they're fixing the environment. Okay. So the Greens have said as a price for their support, the government, that Labor has to commit to no new coal or gas project at all.

Yes. So they just can't exploit any more fossil fuels. A position which makes it totally impossible for the Greens. greens to have any sway at all because the Labor Party won't do that. Except that. They've cut a deal to pass the whole platform, to pass basically the Labor's client policy. The Safeguard Mechanism Bill, right? You're the one they've been talking about, which is putting emissions limits on the 215 largest

polluting facilities. Then the Safeguard mechanism bill was all about safeguarding coal and gas mines from the interference by greenies and environmentalists. Well, the deal they've done to pass it, it apparently includes a hard cap on emissions. This will impact new or expanding high-polluting projects. And as a result, Adam Bant reckons that this hard emissions cap's going to make it untenable

for 116 new coal and gas projects in the pipeline to get up. So they're going to stop about half the ones in progress. Labor will still open the rest. So they get half. They get half their ban on new things. So when we're burning, to death, we go, oh, thank

God, it's only half as hot as it would have been. Yeah, it'll take half as long for us to all slowly burn. Yeah, it'll actually take long. It'll be more excruciating, thanks to the fucking Greens. So what's going on? Is this trying to get both bases, something? Is this the Greens going,

look, we've actually managed to improve things? Aren't they kind of in coalition a little bit, Charles? The Greens have said yes to almost everything so far. They're certainly doing better than they did in the old days with Rudd. My immediate reaction is it must be that there's some trick in the legislation, which means that they can secretly...

You know how a couple of years ago in New South Wales, the National Party wanted to kill all the koalas, right? And so the Liberal Party cut a deal with the national party saying, OK, OK, OK, you can go and kill all the koalas, right? And then they did another deal which actually secretly saved the koalas, even though the nationals thought that they're going out and killing all the koalas, right? and that's true I'm not characterising it

that is actually what happened I think that that's what's happened here I think what's going to happen is the Greens are going to be able to declare victory but the Labour Party I don't know what they'll do like I'm not an expert Hang on you aren't you the one they call

for the negotiations but no no but I'm not an expert I'm not a scientific expert You're not a where to find the loopholes destroy you know gas destroying deposit So do you think as much as they've Now, they're going to pass this safeguard negotiation bill.

They've also got an unsafeguard bill somewhere that undoes the impact of all this. You know what it is? I reckon they've bought offsets. So what will happen is it won't happen in Australia, but somewhere else in the world, like, I don't know, they'll burn down half the Amazon forest. They're paid half the Amazon forest to be burnt down so that we still have the climate impact. You're going to like this. You know one aspect of it?

That may well be the case. This is a little bit of fine, nice fine print here in the article. The government's going to offer us extra money to support Australia's, I quote, sovereign capability in the steel aluminium and cement sectors. So they're going to give money to the producers. Right. For our sovereign capability. They're just going to give money.

I see, I swear we should have set up as a polluter about 10 years ago. We should have. The greatest grift is being someone who's already destroying the environment. Getting paid not to. That is literally, because. Because the thing is, what do you most want to do in life is not work, right? And what are these people being paid to do? They're being paid to not work.

There's a better scam out there than this, Charles. It's an even better one. Oh, really? It's called being a carbon farmer. Do you know what that means? Oh, yeah, no. I can tell you all about that, but my mum is a carbon farmer. That's right.

I interviewed one last year, and I was like, this actually, it's genius, because you're getting money from the government for basically not cutting down the trees, which means it's much cheaper. You just do nothing. You literally let the land just sit there And you get paid to do that Well, my mum was a bit different in that She had

She got planted 40,000 trees Right But the cost of planting them Which was quite considerable Like it was on terrible land Was paid for by this offset company That said that they were going to sell the carbon credits to somebody And they paid for the planting of the trees

And now she can just sit there and farm that And get an annual return for not cutting the trees down. Well, I think actually it's the carbon credit company that gets in it. Well, be that as it, mate. Certainly, but the funny thing is, yeah. The funny thing is, last weekend, all the trees burnt down. Seriously?

Yes. And the thing is that they've already cashed in, like, the 99 years worth of carbon that they calculated, it would create. That's a little awkward. Isn't it? But you know what? Someone should pay her to plant them again. Oh, genie.

Get the double credits. Double dip. Yes. Oh, and every, and the thing is. is with climate change, they're going to burn down every seven years anyway. And just, just, Charles, I'm no scientist, but just weigh up the benefits over 99 years of the trees sitting there

versus the massive carbon emissions by them burning down. But you get both. You get both to don't. Because you know that all that giant, the giant bushfires of 2019-20, which were, like, the amount of CO2 that came from that was just massively more than us, even our coal and gas industry in that.

They were looking on in awe at those fires I've got to say that's a level of pollution We simply can't Do you think that's why the ALP A little bit more relaxed about this Because they're going well We're going to have lots of bushfires anyway Because there's another El Nino on the way

Did you see that? Yes yes next summer We're going straight from La Nino to El Nino So that means We'll probably have more bushfires We can still destroy the environment Even if it's only half as much as we'd hoped Can we start a carbon farm?

Yeah, in here In here Yeah in the podcast studio You'll just plant some trees. So there you go. So that's what's happened. A deal has been done. The Greens aren't going to look like idiots like they did with the...

I know that whenever you say this to a green, they get very upset. But when they torpedoed Kevin Rudd's government and elected Tony Abbott, that wasn't necessarily the best result for the environment that they were seeking. And Labor get to pass another middling deal that freezes the coalition now. Because rather than having a deal with the coalition, this is good for Labor. What was... Dutton's position on this? Because I would have thought that Dutton would want to do a deal with labour.

No, he wouldn't do that. He gets knifed by the right. Yeah, right. You can't be a coalition leader and actually do anything about climate change. But what if he'd sort of... You'll get stabbed. Thrown in some sort of, you know, kill the koalas or something for the nats. That wouldn't have got him any friends on Sky After Dark.

Poor Murray would have been absolutely ropeable. Can you imagine what Chris Kenny would have said... I mean, they've said, I know we said we wouldn't mention the election. But their line that even the slight, like when you look at Dominic Perritae, you're not really looking at the world's most woke politician. And yet he was far too woke for them, far too lefty because he actually acknowledged that climate change. He was real. So Dunn can't do that. Yes.

He's toast if he does. Okay. All right. So that's all been done. Speaking of it, that's great. That's momentous gradual change. It's a historic day for very incremental slight change. So, I mean, they met halfway, basically.

Half the project can go ahead. I suspect if you're going to choose... The technocrats have come to the barricades and they've filled out all the forms. What I want to see is which are the half that don't go ahead? They're the half that were kind of bullshit and not going to happen anyway. Well, is it... Because it's strangely coincidental.

The tenure just approved 116 guest mines. And that's apparently the number that are now, quote, unquote, not going to go ahead. It sounds to me like it might be just like a bit of creative... account. Well, it has now passed away. I was going to earn a million dollars last year. Yeah. But then I didn't, and now I've lost a million dollars. So you, you, you meet yourself halfway. Yeah. Yeah. I mean. The Chaser report. Less news. Less often. Now, look, speaking of, speaking of leaders who mightn't be quite so impressive once you come up

close. Barack Obama arrived yesterday in Sydney. Anthony Albanyzi was there he wasn't in the parliament sorting all this stuff out he was there to welcome two presidents ago President Obama and they took photos at Kiribili House in front of an absolute deluge they're very funny actually

they're completely soaked but it looked very pleased to see each other and do you know what he's here to do I mean Barack Obama you know such an inspirational leader dreams from my father the audacity of hope Charles yeah I do know because I saw an ad for it a couple of months ago,

which is it's some weird speaking gig for some corporate business summit. I mean, you would have thought he'd be coming in to provide leadership and clarity on the issue with the voice as one of the world's most prominent kind of race relations experts. Yeah, he was a Nobel Prize winner. Incredibly inspiring, I guess, you know, the race speech during the campaign in 2008 or whatever it was. I mean, this is a leader in the field. He's come out for an event, provided by a company called

Growth Faculty and it's an evening with President Barack Obama and I think he's going to sit down for an interview with guess who his interviewer is of all the eminent people who could interview him

just to really inspire Chris Ullman No no it's a fellow politician a peer if you will Who will it be It'll be Andrew Charlton or something

Will it? Wrong side of politics Yep Alexander Downer. Close. Joe Hockey. Further away. Same job as Alexander Downer.

A bit more centrist. I thought Andrew Peacock's dead. Oh, Julie Bishop. Oh, of course. Julie Bishop. Those are the two who are sitting down together. Oh, how awful. Yeah.

So, I mean, I'm sure she'll do a very centrist middling job. Is that the one that costs like $400 to get on the Zoom? Like if you wanted to watch it by fire Zoom? No. No, Charles, the platinum ticket package is, admittedly, is $895. Yeah. Which is very attractive, very attractive. Very attractive.

The gold package is $6.95. And then there's a virtual live stream, and that is $295, Charles. Yeah, right. Which makes our absurdly overpriced tier of our podcast for only $20 a month look like very good value. Oh, very nice. Yeah. But so, hang on, because all of the... All of the ex-presidents, they get Secret Service protection, don't they?

They do, yeah. Which means the Secret Service is currently in Sydney. Presumably. Yeah. I wonder if they're going to go and try and shoot Chaz this time. We should give him a few hints about where Chaz is. This is because apparently during APEC, the Secret Service snipers on the roof of the Intercontinental Hotel had Chaz in their sights. Oh, such a missed opportunity.

I know. He could have been immortal. I mean, not literally, he could have been dead, but his reputation would have been immortal. Yeah. So, yeah, so that's Barack Obama. inspirational leader, thought leader, a morally unimpeachable man that he is. Yes, we can play by credit card,

debit card or BPA. Probably afterpay, you need to space it out. And my question is, what's his fee? Because it's got to be six figures plus. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, 10 years ago, Bill Clinton's speaking fee was 250 grand. Plus hookers. I think it would have to be half a meal.

But presumably, Barack Obama will provide, you know, We'll donate his fee to underprivileged indigenous kids or some where they go. You don't think he'll do that. You're looking skeptical, Charles. You think he'll keep the money? I must say, I've never heard of the growth faculty either. Yeah, I know. Do you think, do you think he was just waiting for an invitation?

Like, you just wanted to. We should have asked him on this podcast. We should. We'll reach out. Just tweet him. Yeah, okay. He'll definitely see that. Yeah.

And if we can must at the $250,000, he probably sit down with us. So that's Barack Obama. I mean, he's in town. And the final bit of news, Charles, that I want to cover is, just as a bit of cross-promotion, I'm learning from you here. Oh, yeah, yeah. I wrote an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the age earlier this week. One of those sort of fluffy things I like to do, just to get and a bit of extra gig economy income. Yep.

And the hypothesis of this article, see what you think, is that, you know, for many years, Sydney and Melbourne have had this sort of rivalry to who's going to be number one. Yeah, Melbourne's going to win population terms soon. Well, I mean, Melbourne had the rivalry in its head. Sydney didn't care because we compared ourselves to near. York. Yeah, I know. But anyway, it's been a thing, certainly there, if not here. And my, my theory, Charles, and you'll know more about this than me, because you've been there more recently, my theory is that Brisbane is lapping both. It's got the Olympics, it had Hamilton, there's blue, those are the only things I could think of. It's got James Street

in Fortitude Valley. Well, that's the thing. This is one of the things I pointed to is about 10, 15 years ago when I first went to Fortitude Valley, I nearly got stabbed. Well, yes, you used to You used to just walking down the mall Yeah, because there was lots of sort of Seedy joints Yeah, but just the average Queensland It would just lurch across your path

With a broken glass Oh yeah, yeah, yeah I mean, they weren't trying to glass you Just they were trying to drink And they fucked that up Yeah, yeah, yeah, standard Queensland welcome And yeah, but now they've even got a secure cab rack Cubs wouldn't stop in the valley

You'd have to walk all the way back at the CBD back in the day Oh, really? And now they've actually got... Well, now you can catch an e-scooter They've got boutique hotels Yes, they've got nice We went to a nice bar next to the river.

Beautiful coffee, much better coffee than Adelaide. There you go. So do you remember, so Brisbane might be the best city in the country? The only thing is, if you read the, what's it called? It's not called the unmitigated disaster truth. No, what's it called? Oh, the uninhabitable earth. Oh, okay.

Yeah, the famous book by that scientist and activist who's against climate change for some reason. Bill McGibbon. I haven't heard of it. Bill McGinn. Okay. He points out that in the very near future, like by about 2035, there will be days in summer where Brisbane is basically uninhabitable because the wetball temperature of Brisbane will be higher than 34 degrees.

Wow. And that means that at that temperature, you've basically got extreme humidity and heat that's essentially the same temperature as the human body. and it means the human body is unable to sweat out its heat and you die in this agonising, painful sort of thing, unless you've got air conditioning. So a beautiful one day, perfect the next, fatal the day after that. But then also, Charles, if I remember correctly, the other shortcoming of Brisbane, which is fairly major one, it's not just the wet ball temperature.

Yes. But when the Brisbane River floods, because you know how it picturesquely winds through the city the way it does? It's lovely. I think they caught the brown snake, the Brisbane River. It basically gets everywhere. It's all a floodplain at the right height. So if the humidity doesn't get you, the actual water will probably get you.

So I think it's one of those that, yeah, you're right. Like nice place to visit. But doesn't that make it more exciting? It's like being in Tokyo and knowing an earthquake could strike at any time. Yes, or like being in Kabul and knowing that you might be murdered. Yeah, or Kyiv. Yeah. It's the key of Australia.

But you know the funniest thing about this, Charles. It's the Donbess region of Australia. That's right. No, sooner had the article gone live, an hour or two later, I got an email from someone who's apparently works in the Queensland government. They've got a Queensland.com email address, so I assume it's the real deal. How'd they get that domain? prestigious.

Inviting me to come to Queensland and offering me all these perks to go to various events, which is, A, really lovely and very, very sweet. I'm very touched by that. But B, doesn't that confirm it's not? Like, come on. With the best world in the world, if you write about New York being good, you don't get an email from New York tourism going, please have a free private car when you come to visit our city.

By the way, do you want to go do the podcast in Brisbane? We are definitely. I don't think we're moving there. Until 2035. Someone put together a package will come and do the podcast in Brisbane for sure. Make sure he includes free air conditioning. Yeah, that went by and something to dry the ball with. Our gears from road, we've had the iconoclass network.

Which also includes the shot podcast, by the way. If you haven't subscribed to that, Charles is being uncharacteriously modest because he is one of the hosts. But check that out. It has Charles Firth, Joe Dyer, the conscience of Melbourne, Dave Milner, and some other person. Yeah, Grace Tame. I haven't heard of her. Check that out in your feeds now. Thanks for listening.

See ya.