The Chaser Report - Morrison's Tempest Tantrum | Ronni Salt

Episode Date: August 17, 2022

Charles and Dom interview Shot writer and political gossip guru Ronni Salt about Scott Morrison's latest press conference. Ronni and Charles unpack Morrison's perhaps divine motivations toward gobbling up these extra ministries, and whose responsibility it is for their failures if Scott was apparently co-minister. Plus, Dom shares his fondness for Morrison's new poetic side. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome the Chaser Report. It is 1st of the 18th of August 22. This podcast comes to you from Gatigall Land. Dom Knight and Charles Firth, here with you. And big news on the Scott Morrison Front, so much to catch up on. And we're very lucky. For the first time ever on the Chaser Report, we have a very special guest.

Ronnie Salt, who's probably one of the biggest people on Twitter in a source. Australia. She has her ear to the ground 24-7 in hashtag OzPol and happens to also be a columnist for our sister publication in The Shot. We're going to talk to her all about Scott Morrison straight after this. Now hang on Charles. Can I just clarify because I haven't met Ronnie before. Is this Ronnie Salt or is this Scott Morrison in the role of Ronnie Salt? Can you just check that out? Because it could be a bit awkward. That's right. None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser report should legally be considered medical advice, The Chaser Report.

If you don't want ads like that, go to chaser.com.com.com slash podcast and pay us $9 a month for the ad-free version, which now works, by the way, an amazing new idea in the world of podcasting. Ronnie Salt, welcome to the Chaser report. Oh, look, thank you for having me. How lucky are you feeling to have had Scott Morrison as Prime Minister making big decisions, brave decisions in the national interest with the legal advice of Christian Porter to back him up?

Well, look, I didn't know how lucky we were, did you? I mean, no, it was kept secret from me for my protection. Can't our lucky stars? I think he's given a new meaning to the word paternalism. It's all done for our good. Oh, so we're all Jenny and the girls. Australia is the girls in this scenario. Just leave it to Dadda.

Data, Scott. Exactly, Dom. And I think he's always, look, Scott has always enjoyed positioning himself as Australia's father. So it probably goes in line with that sort of attitude, I think. It's much more likely that Barnaby Joyce is our father, isn't it? On average. Depends what sort of an upbringing you've had. But it's such a weird, we were discussing it earlier in the week.

It's such a weird thing to do because some people have sort of said, oh, it's a Tim Pot dictatorship type thing. It's a, you know, despotic grasp for power, right? And, you know, you can sort of see, like it is something that is done in those sort of Tim Pock dictatorships, but to me it does feel like it's more like he wasn't actually doing it to exercise any powers because he never did that anyway even as Prime Minister. It's more like he was collecting the set. Like he was a little kid in the lolly shop.

Christian Porter said to him, oh yeah, you can get the health ministry. And then he, without telling Christian Porter, then went away. Hang on, did Christian Porter not even know? that he deported himself. Not even Christian Porter knew. Wow. Yes. And then Christian Porter had a portfolio that he stole from him secretly.

How? Because there were four different sort of industry in science ministers. No, but he never stole attorney general, did he? No, but industry in science, Christian Porter was. Oh, industry science, yeah, yeah. How bizarre. So, look, I've always found that with things like this, once you've popped, you can never stop, right? Yeah.

Once you've done the first secret shadow ministry, I mean, the rest is just, you can't begin, you finish the bottom of the chip packet. Yeah, it's like a gateway crime, isn't it? He probably, look, I agree with Charles, so I don't think he went and got one of those, you know, those lovely Russian dictators, massive hats, military hats. Oh, yes.

I don't think he measured himself up for one of those or got a little sort of, you know, allowed some room for the military procession or what happened. Well, it was the only silly hat he didn't wear during the campaign, actually, the Russian Guard hat. God knows what he's got in his wardrobe, but I don't know whether he actually went and did that. But, yeah, look, a lot of it sort of so much about Scott Morrison that has sort of been left untouched.

You know, we're not allowed to, we're not allowed to talk about this and we're not allowed to talk about that. But it very, very much plays into, I don't know whether I would talk about, use the word sinister, but it certainly plays into something that I've often spoken about, which is Scotty the Saviour Complex. He very much sees himself as somebody who has been spoken to by God. And haven't we all at some stage, you know, being spoken to by God through eagle paintings or, you know, garden gnomes or what have you? Can we explain the eagle painting? Because for those who haven't seen that, it's a fascinating little moment in the psychology of them.

What's the eagle painting? I think it was in Sean Kelly's book, The Game, that this was revealed. Ronnie, can you run us through the eagle painting? Yeah, it actually turned out to be a photo, so I have to correct myself. So we'll call it an eagle picture, and I can't recall who it was, but he went into a south coast of New South Wales tourist shop, and he saw an eagle picture on the wall, a large framed eagle picture, which you can buy online for $1,495 with his own wine.

I'll do it right now. And he looked at this eagle picture in amongst, you know, the assorted snow globes and various sort of tourist. ephemera. And at that moment, God spoke to him. And he said, you know, I need a sign, God. I need a sign. Now, I'm not quite sure how it happened in his head. The shopkeeper themselves were a little bit alarmed that the eagle picture started talking. I don't know. Where the stigma started leaking out of the eagle's eyes. Nobody knows. But according to Scott Morrison, because he was the only person present, apart from God and the eagle.

God spoke to him and told him to run as Prime Minister and to keep going. And Scott thanked God for telling him that. It wouldn't have occurred to him before, would it mean. Scott Morrison's not the kind of man who would have put himself forward for the position of Prime Minister otherwise. That's his justification. So what you're saying is that it was God who, by saying, and keep running, what he meant was and appoint yourself health minister.

and appoint yourself Minister for science. You keep appointing yourself. Well, to be fair, look, this is all makes sense because I don't know how well you know your Christian theology, Charles, but God is at the same time, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. He's like Scott Morrison of God's.

That's right. He's got all the positions. He's three in one. Well, Scott Morrison has more types than he's got five. The contradictory Holy Trinity. I think he's omniscience. I think he's been underrated. But there is in that rather, I don't, I can't think of the word for it, bizarre sort of tale of the Prime Minister believing that he was sort of spoken to through an eagle painting.

There is a little thread that you can pull out of that and pull into the Scott of a Thousand Ministries, his ministry me shuffle, that where he sort of, you know, appointed himself that is because he genuinely believed that he was saving us all. Scott the Saviour I don't want to be too cynical about his motives here because clearly he's a man of great public service we all know that but if you were the kind of if you were someone who wanted to sign from God

wouldn't you just walk around until you saw like you could walk past one of those shops that sells like Fitsbo posters like they're if you're looking for a sign you can find a bumper sticker anywhere when admittedly it's pretty unlikely to walk into a junk shop on the South Coast and not find a picture of you know

dogs playing poker or something But if you're the kind of person who wants a sign, it can be anything. It can be someone in a McDonald's drive-thru, giving you a chip packet in the shape of the virgin area. I don't know. But, Dom, this happened. You're sort of assuming that Morrison's lying. I'm not assuming that it was lying. I'm just saying if you're looking, if you're the kind of person who wants to find a sign, you go through your day.

And like, I'm looking at the desk in front of me. Oh, I can see a eucalyptus spray aniseptic that we used to clean the studio. Oh, that means that God wants me to clean up Australia. And that totally explains it, because when he saw the letter from Christian Porter saying, you can appoint yourself to be any minister that you want, he took as a sign that God wanting him to appoint himself as any minister that he wanted. I get it. Well, what is God's position on this?

We've heard from the Gigi. We've heard from Morris. We haven't heard from God yet, Ronnie. I'm just surprised he didn't get Jesus on his toast. The people who do that and then sell it on eBay is a little bit of the sideline. or something. We should send an intern down to the South Coast of New South Wales, find the eagle, and get the eagle to talk to the intern about what happens next.

I mean, it's a good question as to whether or not the eagle, it's the eagle's fault, and the eagle should take some part of the responsibility. Yes, that's right. The disaster that happened. It's not Scott Morrison's fault anyway. It's the eagle. Well, that's good on to that, though, because the press conference yesterday, this is the news that we're kind of the breaking news.

He gave a press conference. When I saw the note, pop up saying, you know, Prime Ministerial Press Conference, 12, 15 Commonwealth Parliamentary Officers. Yeah. I thought he was going to quit. I thought he was, because he's just registered a new company. I thought he was going to say, look, I realise people aren't happy with this.

I'm just going to go and, because isn't he going to quit anyway? I mean, this is just, why is he hanging on to a job that, oh, he doesn't have to do anything and he gets paid a parliamentary salary, right? He could be there, you know, for the goodness of his heart, helping the people of cook. perhaps he's working out the local pedestrian crossing, you know, for a downtown primary school. But he said he's not involved day to day anymore. In politics. Yeah, that's right.

Which is not the definition of the job of a member of the House of Representatives. Perhaps he just likes the coffee in the parliamentary officers or the sweets or something. Yeah, I mean, people are so cynical about him. Who would know with Scott? I was told by one of my sources and actually told independently, from two of my sources within the Liberal Party that Scott Morrison was assertively seeking board positions, one corporate and one charity.

There's a story about the NRL board, wasn't there, which got... Yes, yes, which he admitted to sort of having a discussion about it but said it was pub talk. So, you know, I don't know what that is, but anyway, it was pub talk, whether he spoke in the pub or not. But he's sort of wandering around having a little bit of a flick at the car doors, You know, a flick at the car doors

to see which car door will open for him. You don't jump without a gig to go to, do that. It'd be foolish. That'd be... Parallaro wouldn't do that. And it's not as easy when you're prominent as to, when you just appoint yourself to whatever book you want.

Why didn't he appoint himself to a retirement job but he saw what the polls were saying? I'm just wondering in terms of stunts, Charles. You were talking about going and visiting the eagle. Should the eagle go to Scott Morrison to suddenly suggest that it's time to... Stop running. to quit.

That might be time for a second appearance. What do you listen? Do you think, Ronnie, if the eagle popped up, maybe a different photo of the eagle like roosting and just sort of having a bit of a chill, taking a pension. Interesting. We could try it.

I'm very interested in the fact that whether he took the eagle painting with him, because those who watch Scott Morrison closely throughout his prime ministership, and I'm not sure actually there were that many, really, it turns out. Including Scott Morrison? Some would say, including Scott Morrison.

But after the story of the eagle painting came out, he had a personal photographer. And I won't mention the personal photographer's name because it was just a man doing his job. But the personal photographer had an Instagram page, which I used to go to regularly and have a look. And I noticed that after the story of the eagle came out and, you know, this sort of justification of him being Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, whenever he was in his office in Parliament, his Prime Minister office in Parliament, would always make sure that the eagle picture was in the background. Really, he purchased that, brought it with him.

And I think there's about probably four or five or six of the particular photos where he's positioned. And in some cases, I don't know how the photographer got the shot. He must have been, you know, sitting in a drawer or something so that we could get the photo of the eagle in. It's very pointed, very pointed. So I don't know where it is now. Perhaps Jen's got it.

I would like to think that the eagle as a sort of permit, because we don't have a good way of commemorating prime ministers in Australia. In America, they've got the presidential libraries. It's a really nice thing. I think maybe we should arrange for that eagle poster to be framed in perpetuity at the site that I guess most of us associate with Scott Morrison, which is Engadine Mackies.

Can you imagine if you went there for a junior burger and you look at the eagle and you think yourself, that's the eagle that told Scott Morrison to run. Run. Not to the toilet. To run for the lot of them. It's possible. Maybe there was a message that he got that day to run very quickly.

Yeah. You must get the run. Run, Scott. Run. The Chaser Report. Less news more often. The thing that I don't understand at this point about the story is why, as we mentioned, all the other portfolios. Because, I mean, I'm of the view that the health minister thing actually did make sense.

right, there were all these powers that were delegated only to the health minister that could basically order anybody to do anything to stop COVID, not reviewed by Parliament. And if he had been in intensive care with COVID, like, then we need to someone else to issue the orders. Yeah, then head to the Governor General and get yourself appointed health minister at that point and tell the public. As normally happens all the time when ministers get sick, you don't go, oh dear, we need to have a backup minister because there's a whole.

lot of laws where the whole thing of saying only the health minister gets to do that is so that there's a single point of responsibility. The fact that you have two health ministers means suddenly this question around, well, whose responsibility was it really? For years you've been criticising Scott Morrison for not taking responsibility for years. And the one time he tries to take on extra responsibilities, you're going to criticize him. But no, look, I can see, like in the interest of a quick decision making, I can actually, because they did shut down the borders immediately.

They did do all this stuff immediately. I kind of get that. I mean, you're questioning it. Fair enough. But what about the others? Why did he need to take on all those other jobs? I mean, the immigration minister has, as gets to rule personally over whether people come in and out of the country, he was an immigration minister at one point, wasn't he?

Home affairs, yeah. So I don't understand what was going on with the others. Do we have any sense of why I thought this was necessary, given that his only defense is crazy times in the pandemic? These things happen. I'm just, there's no explanation of it at all for anything post the health minister, is there? Nothing, he says, really adds up. I'm with Charles.

I'm with Charles. Yes, the health minister position is understandable, but I'm going along with Charles and a lot of, you know, legal scholars have said the same thing. Even when that particular issue happened, then we would have had, there would have been a plan B in place. They would have spoken about any cabinet. Look, if, you know, God forbid, anything happens to poor little Greg. where he gets, you know, backed over by a truck or something like that, you know,

we've got to have somebody there to back him up with these extraordinary powers. The Minister for Finance, which happened around the same time, I don't understand. I do not understand. I have my, if you like, my suspicions about why it happened. Would Matthias Corman and Scott Morrison factually aligned? or did they not trust each other? They did not trust each other. Right.

So he just went, like surely the simplest explanation is he just went, well, I'm just going to take this role secretly, not tell the finance minister, because I don't trust Matthias. Wasn't Mattias this swing vote who dumped Turnbull and put Morrison? That was more to do with, I think, political horse trading than anything than Matthias actually having an undying devotion to Scott. Yeah.

And certainly, you know, the idea that Matthias Korman was placed in at the OECD was something that Scott Morrison was very happy to do to get material out of parliament but I think there was a lot happening at that time in March of 2020. There was a lot happening in the Department of Finance. A lot of money was flushing around, yeah. A lot of, but there was the investigation into Brittany Higgins. There were a number of, in the Britney Higgins issue, there were a number of other issues that were flowing through the Ministry of Finance,

which Scott Morrison might have liked to have backstrapped himself to. Oh, so retrospectively, we can blame him for not solving the Brittany Higgins situation for another reason, other than being Prime Minister. I am surprised, given that he was the Minister for everything, now that we know how many portfolios he sort of accumulated like a sort of some sort of hoarder, somebody's pathological hoarding. I am surprised that he didn't know any, still didn't know anything. know anything, about anything.

I didn't know a lot of things. Are you implying that because he was minister, there would have been information available to him that he would have otherwise not known? Like, is that the idea? I don't know. I did speak to somebody yesterday who has spent 30 years, almost 30 years

in the Canberra Public Service as a senior public servant, worked both within four ministers and within the public service. And they told me that it would be possible to know what information Scott Morrison had had access to and what he hadn't. Well, how is that possible? I thought the whole point about freedom of information is that sort of ministerial decisions and all those things are fairly transparent. Well, they're meant to be, but you don't know. You don't know who's ced into what.

I mean, you know, you're sort of, we're in uncharted territory here, aren't we? Very, very lovely waters. You're talking about a man that decided to sort of anoint him, I think we need, we need an inquiry, and you know who I think should run the inquiry? The Justice Minister, Scott Morrison, yeah. No, I think we should get an eagle in. Well, what about Gatchens? He's got some time on his head. We need an investigation.

Yes, yes, we need an investigations. You know, who would know why I did it? It's really important, too, to, I think, delineate. you know, to chunk up his explanation. I don't know if anybody read that sort of rambling Facebook post he gave yesterday. Oh, no, I didn't. 1,200 words. It's the most we've heard for a bit in a long time.

He had to do a day of work. And it just goes to show what happens when you have a prime ministerial office of about 30 or 40, half of whom are media advisors and comms advisors, and suddenly you're a backbencher, only one or two, because he was left to go rogue with that little keyboard, and away he went. was going to tell us everything. But anyway, I did, despite losing the will to live about halfway through,

I did read it from beginning to finish. And nowhere in it does he outline the fact that three of the five portfolios that he took on board didn't happen during the alleged emergency that he did. In 2021. They were in April, around about April 2021, when things were sort of reasonably well in hand. So that doesn't wash either. you know, the idea that, oh, there was an emergency and nobody knew what was going on and people were running and sticking their heads out of windows and screaming and God

knows what else and Scott was coming in to save the day. That might have washed in the very beginning with the Minister for Health and even with the Minister for Finance, which I don't buy, but still. But what explanation does he have for the other portfolios he took on board? Well, it does put a bit of sharp relief into the problem with the vaccine roll out, right? because if you're so busy signing yourself into other roles, organising things like getting enough Pfizer and astrodesic doses, it's going to slip your mind. Although as health minister, he was also actually responsible.

Do you remember the Pfizer communications to Greg Hunt, that Greg Hunt ignored, basically offering all the doses of Pfizer? Well, that should have gone to the other health minister as well, to be ignored by a second person. But I think my favourite aspect of all this is the poetry of the man. And the thing we've got to remember is, and this is the side of him, we haven't really seen before.

The image that he used at the press conference yesterday was quite beautiful. You're standing on the shore after the fact. I was steering the ship in the middle of the tempest. Wow, he was the Messiah. So it all comes back to boats. I stopped the most. And that just reminds me, if you know that famous Christian poster with the footsteps.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lord, why was there only one set of footsteps? It was because Scott Morrison was steering the ship at the road. But if there was, if it had all the footsteps, wouldn't there be like 10 footsteps from all the ministries that he had? I'm confused with all the metaphors. I'm sorry, I've lost it. I've confused with the metaphors.

There was a storm, there was a tempest, there was a ship, and there were people carrying each other on the stand. Who's standing on the shore? I think the eagle. Who's standing on the shore? Seagulls. I mean, are we the seagulls? I don't know.

I think Scott Morrison's walking around the shore. trying to shake everyone's hands. And building a monument to cook on it. Yeah, that's right. And he's laying on of hands, which he was very famous. Yes. Amazing that he didn't deploy himself to the COVID wards, actually, to do that during the midst of the crisis.

That would have been holding the hose, wouldn't it? Before we have the vaccine. Get the faith healer in there. Faith healer. He didn't want to do that. So where does this leave us? It leaves us with Scott Morrison still in Parliament. Yeah, what's your prediction,

How long, Ronnie, until we see the back of Scott Morrison? Or is you just going to stick in for a while now? Yes, yes. Part of his DNA is digging his heels in. He's very well known for doing something to be a little bit ornery. And the very fact that people are now demanding his resignation is actually, ironically, going to mean that we're going to have to have him there for quite some time. Because he won't go willingly.

I mean, unless an eagle sweeps into Parliament and scoops him up in their tailings and drags, and he's all going to go. Why don't we fake up a letter from the board of, I don't know, Nilex Australia, the manufacturer of hoses, saying Scott Morrison, we've got an offer for you. You can be the chairman of the board. You can hold a hose at last. Is that a few letters in? He'd quit.

Yeah, I think that's so. He wouldn't check whether they were real. Surely, surely, yeah, if he got a really good position. Is there some sort of cold? company that would take him in? Don't be afraid. Yeah. Don't be afraid.

That's right. It's coal. It's cold. Don't be afraid. Look, I don't know about a fossil fuel company. Perhaps he's had the office and knock them back. Who knows with his image? But I would imagine he would be looking for something that was a little bit more in the sort of the religious sector.

Oh. Maybe we could mock up a charity like the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence or something and make some sort of, you know, mock global charity and send him, offering him a position of the board. Imagine the personnel ad, Messiah wanted, must be able to steer the sheep in the middle of the tempest, apply via eagle. Speak in tongues and lay on hands. You can't apply in standard English. You've got to apply in tongues. That's right.

Must be able to speak tongues fluently. 65 words per minute. Thank you very much, Ronnie. Make sure you follow Ronnie Salt on Twitter for all the latest Goss. Yes, and her column about Scott Morrison is coming out on the shot, trot.net.com, on Friday. Lovely. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much. Harguiris from Road with part of the ACASC creator network. We'll catch you tomorrow. See ya.