The Chaser Report - Pass the Buck Bingo

Episode Date: March 13, 2022

Aleksa recaps the stunt that almost got him into a fight with the Deputy Prime Minister. Meanwhile John takes a look at an old trends from 2020 trying to make a comeback. Plus Dom tries to figure out where we should put our nuclear submarines in 30 years time. 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 to The Chaser Report. It is Monday the 14th of March 2020. We have Gabby Bolt. We have Alex Ovlovich. We have John Delmenico. Hi. And I'm Dom Knight.

And who at this room won an award in Adelaide in the past week? I don't know. Who's Gabby Bolt? No. I see a show. Yeah, I got Best Comedy Weekly Award. And that's funny because I was in the same week as Will Anderson, so I don't know what to tell you.

Yeah, it wasn't even like a newcomer award. It was like, you're the best thing in the whole. Just for the week. For the funniest person out of the way. Me, I share the award too hot, and actually I should probably just check this. Don't we don't want to know about that. Let's talk about Alexa instead. I'm just running to the Publishments of the week.

That's fair. I don't want to know who you shared the award with. They're not part of this podcast. I didn't want to claim it all for myself, you know. It's all yours. You want it. Now, Alexa, you've been hobnobbing with Deputy Prime Ministers this week. Yeah.

We should bring back hobnobbing more. I just did. I just put it back to it. Finally, Joyce constantly brings back knobbing. Yeah, nice. And hobbing. Yeah, I was hobnobbing with the man himself.

I was just standing in front of Parliament trying to play bingo. As you do. Because politicians are always making up excuses for why they're not acting on climate change. And I thought there are enough excuses that I could probably play a little bingo game with them. Yeah. So as they walked out or walked in, I'd ask them, you know, are you committed to action against climate change? and then see what they say back and tick that off a list. Everyone was giving different responses.

You know, some people were saying climate change doesn't exist or they were saying climate bills are treason. But Barnaby was the weirdest and also scariest. Yeah, he was walking out and asked me if he was committed to climate change. And he just kind of ignores me, stumbles around, and says something along the lines of, I'm committed to a big Mac. Good for him.

See, I thought that was weird at the time, but it just got so much scarier because he was kind of stumbling away, and I was like, I don't, well, I want to tick off something from my bingo sheet, right? And I didn't know what to tick off, so I asked him like, oh, is that stumbling drunkenly away? Because I've got that here. And he got so angry. I mean, because he's always red, but he was like more red. Yeah.

He turns around, I was like, what did you say? I was going to fight you. Yeah, well, I was just like, is there, like, diplomatic community? And he just, is he allowed to just punch me in the face? Like, I don't really know what the rules are. And I was trying to work out what to do. But he's, like, storming towards. me and he's like who are you who are you from and i think he he had in mind that you know

i was probably like part of the press gallery and he could get me fired and i said i was from the chaser and he just pauses and he goes like oh fuck and then just turns around goes back to his comp car and you you had a camera crew right like you weren't just standing there there was someone filming yeah yeah yeah yeah so um it's all filmed if you want to catch this um i don't even know what to call it this sick prank yeah this sick prank um you can check Check it out. It's currently up on the Chase of Twitter. You know how we are not getting nuclear submarines basically forever? Yeah.

Yeah, well, there's now a plan for where their base is not going to be forever. Great. Oh, sweet. Great. And remember the thing we used to talk about every day on this podcast? What was it again, John? COVID. Oh. Yeah, there's actually some new news. I don't even know what's going on.

Let's check it with our favorite coronavirus. We're going to catch back up with what used to be the hottest trend in the world. But first, Rebecca Day to be in the Chase Newsroom. Scott Morrison has been stripped of his I Stopped These boat trophy by his colleagues after the latest figures showed the number of boats in the country quadrupled in the last month. Instead, the Prime Minister has been offered a range of replacement trophies to sit on his mantle from an I Stopped These certificate in the shape of a rat test to an I stopped this medallion depicting a price on carbon

to an I destroyed this trophy in the shape of a toilet at Engadine Mackers. The government has announced that they will be providing a generous flood relief to those affected by the natural disaster, so long as they live in marginal electorates. The team in charge of deciding how the handouts are spent have already promised to install a $100 million kayak park in the middle of Eden Manero. Children across the country are excitedly putting together their wish lists and penning letters to Santa, down how close Christmas is. By their estimates made in school today, the children have realised

that it's only three more disasters left until it's Christmas morning. That's the latest headlines from The Chaser Report. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno, and if you want to leave a review of our podcast, call Ben Fordham's 2GB show at 131-873. So, John, you were saying there's a coronavirus virus that's been doing the rounds and I've forgotten all about that little thing. Yeah, I've forgotten all about COVID too. I've just been going around licking stuff. I've missed that freedom, you know? Yeah, I sort of forgot about it as well.

So to me, I'm a big proponent that the news should be more like T channels on TikTok and YouTube. Oh, yeah. If the news was like drama, then everyone would know what's going on. So then I tried to research what COVID was and got really bored. Yeah. So I've looked around, apparently it's still a thing. Oh.

And it's like there's more COVID now. than there was before restrictions ended. Yeah, shit. Like around the country? What do you know? Suddenly regretting all the licking of stuff I've been doing lately. Which just confirms my theory that

whoever their PR is, are just absolutely terrible at it. Yeah, true. Like, COVID has really fallen off. No one talks about anymore. Not relevant. It's completely irrelevant. No one cares.

Yeah, wow. Code needs a Women's Day article. Are we looking at marketing strategies or a way to get it back in the limelight? I just think it's just past its time. Yeah. You know, like some channels come and go. you just got to move with the times and find the new variant.

I reckon COVID needs a co-lab. I reckon there's a new, there's a new disease on the market at the moment. Have you guys heard about it? It's Japanese encephalitis. Yeah. It's all the, you get it from mosquitoes and it's all the buzz. Good one, John. And also I hear Japanese encephalitis has been working with Lil Nasaks.

Yeah, yeah. That guy is fire. Yeah, Japanese encephalitis is the doja cat of diseases, like just feature on everything. So I reckon COVID and Japanese encephalitis. Well, the thing about Japanese encephalitis is, unlike COVID, which is like low-key lazy, whenever I was talking about, oh, COVID's going to show up at like the floods, all of a sudden this Japanese encephalitis from a mosquito from Japan shows up and starts biting people near the floods. And it's like, it knew what needed to become. It knew where the biggest story was and it forced itself

there. Yeah, it's sore an opportunity. I admire the grind set. Like I could never, if I was a mosquito, I could never fly to Australia. That is such a hard job. If you made it here, you deserve to spread the virus. Exactly. But also, at the same time, there's been a new Omicron variant called Subvariant B-A-2, which is already a cringe name. Like, who cares?

It's not a good name. It just needs a better name. COVID's never been a good name. Like, COVID was invented by the World Health Organization to stop people calling a racist things. Yeah. Corona's good. Yeah.

What happened to Corona? Why do we stop saying Corona? I think the beer company wanted to sue because it was... Oh, my God. Yeah. We've been put down by big beer. Yeah. My favorite thing, though, about the whole, the whole hot new virus, Japanese encephalitis, though,

is the advice given to people is just so funny to me. Like, the advice, the first line you see on the New South Wales Health website is just, advice, avoid mosquito bites. I've been doing that my whole life. I have never done that. There are, like, some people I know that never get bitten, and I'm always getting bitten. So, God forbid, I get it. So, John, what's the big plan here?

What are we trying to do? We're getting COVID back in front of mind? Are we accepting COVID's dead? I don't know because I saw that the I know that Brat Hazard said that the research shows that B.A.2 could be twice as viral as B.A. But at the same time, like,

who cares? It's an old virus. Move on. It's like, it's like when you see some sort of Vine star show up at TikTok and you're like, you're old now, move on. Like, and it's like just move on, I think. Oh, my God. Did you just reference Vine, man? Oh, God.

I don't know. I barely remember what that if it is. It's the first thing I've said that Tom has understood this thing. Yeah, sure. It's a reference. from when I was slightly less old, that's right. I love Vine RIP. Yeah, I think maybe it's just time for COVID to accept its lack of relevancy. And then, you know what I reckon's going to happen next, though?

COVID's going to come out with a statement claiming that they've been cancelled wrongly. And then we're all going to have to fucking talk about them about three months. COVID's going to wipe most of its Instagram account and just put up a big weird artwork saying death. Oh, new error. And divorce and writing poetry. COVID's going to have a reputation to her. It's going to be amazing. It's going to have a Netflix special about how it's been silenced.

Yeah, the new COVID is exclusive to Kanye's stem player, guys. Yeah, nice, nice. This is really going to be ironic when in a couple of weeks time we all get COVID-related, yeah, because it's going to be so much more infectious than anything we've seen before. Yeah. Let's go to play this clip back at our funerals. Fuck.

The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. You know how when you haven't done anything for like an assignment or something or maybe? You've got to script you at this company or something. Always. You need a good excuse. Yeah. The government's got an amazing way to deal with this situation, which is you basically go very, very, very big and far off.

Right. So let's say if you had a, I don't know, a comedy sketched due for Charles or something like today. Oh, relevant. Charles, I haven't got this. But what I do have is a trilogy of feature films they're going to be making in 2050. Right. And this is absolutely huge. It's going to be a massive operation.

And I promise it's happening. Yeah. It's definitely happening. No locking contract, but it's definitely happening. Exactly. I've got some collabs in, just like with COVID. I'm working with the UK. I'm working with the UK and the US.

I'm going to call it Orcus. We just made that name up in the bathroom before the meeting. Great. So this is what they're doing with the submarines, right? We know that Australia currently has just a bunch of really shitty Collins class submarines that are useless. Classic. We know that we're heading into a period where India and China and becoming more of a threat and it's getting scary and we need stuff to deal with it.

So the plan is that at some point in the future we will have either British or American nuclear submarines. We don't know which ones. We don't know where they're going to be built. We don't know how they're going to work. No one has a clue even what they're going to be. But there's a plan for this, right? It's 2040 or something like that and untold billions of dollars. The good news is that the government has just come up

with another detail of this plan. There's another $10 billion to build the bases for these submarines. And given that there's an election coming up, How do you think the government, where do you think the government might have wanted to put these bases? If I had to guess, it's probably definitely not a marginal seat, right? No, it's not a marginal seat, John. It's three marginal seats. This is what they've done.

So they had a special big sit down and they sat down. And what they come up with was it's either going to be in Port Kempler or in Newcastle or in Brisbane. All three of them places where the coalition was like to. That's what the Olympics are going to be, so they can't. All the more reason to put that to keep the Olympics safe. No, the Olympics is in 2032 as well. We're not going to have these submarines by 20302. Sorry, sorry.

I don't have a design. Sorry, I've got to get into my 44-year-old mindset. The Olympics are actually happening, you see? We can't put it in Brisbane because who knows if we'll have a Brisbane by 2050. Exactly right, yeah. So what they're doing is they're talking to three communities and saying, these are the places where maybe the submarines, you better vote for us because otherwise maybe you won't get.

the maybe submarines. It's basically like the government's just said, we're looking for the location of Australia's Ministry of Magic. Nice. Like just everywhere, just pitch yourself. Yeah, fuck. I was under the impression that, like, Australia's very anti-nuclear.

Like, it's quite an unpopular thing. I thought all these cities were trying to convince government not to put it there. Yeah, this is one of many issues with this plan. So Newcastle, for instance, has declared itself a nuclear-free zone, and they're very passionate about that. So actually, they don't want it. it at all. I think Brisbane, like, came out recently and they said, um,

Australia's nuclear submarines would inevitably fuck up from too many jellyfish. Well, this is another great part of the play. Yeah. So haven't they just said that, um, yeah, so Brisbane apparently is hopeless because there's like jellyfish that were getting tangled. Sorry. What? In the propeller, like in the, they would get sucked into the reactor.

Oh, that's what it is. And explode. So our new nuclear submarines are going to be amazing for taking on other countries, but they can't defeat jellyfish, is what I'm learning. They're submarines. They have weapons. They know they can shoot the jellyfish, right? No, you can't shoot jellyfish.

You can't kill a jellyfish. Jellyfish, actually, you know what's really funny. Our producer Locklam was just telling me before this segment. He feels really strongly about jellyfish because apparently scientists just don't know what's going on in there. Like jellyfish have 360 vision and no one knows why. That's amazing. Like no one actually understands the inner workings of jellyfish. So jellyfish would be better at predicting what to do with submarines than the government.

Like personally, that's what I'm convinced. actually intelligent life from other planets and they've just never been able to communicate that with us. Why don't we like harness these magical creatures that we have at home for our defense instead of buying all these weird machines? Why don't we just make some nuclear jelly? We've already got the box jellyfish which is the most deadly jellyfish in the world. And they're so small. You could just slip it in someone's a water bottle. Like if you chuck a bunch of those on on invading troops from helicopters, they're going to be very fucked up. Unless they've got vinegar. See, I personally want the base right here in Darling Harbour. Oh really? I'm very pro submarine base in my

backyard. Of course you are. I think it really helps. So I do a lot of diving and spearfishing and I think in Darling Harbour. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Everywhere where there's fish and I think a nucleus of marine base will only improve my chances. You can go spearfish you. All the kids toys that are full of. All right. I was going to say picking up a lot of rubbish, not a lot of fit. No, I remember back in 2016, 2016. Back in 2016, I was camping in Russia. As you can do. There's a normal, normal little trip. Next to Vladie Vostok. and they've got this big Russian nuclear submarine base across the bay. And we were diving there, and there are all these muscles, like, on the ocean floor. Yeah, that you can eat.

But they were fucking enormous. Could that be because of their proximity to, like, nuclear submarines, they might leak? Are you sure you did them? Well, I ate them, and I've never, they're like the size, each of them is a size of a steak, and they're so juicy. It's like the best muscles I've ever eaten. And I think, I think you've maybe just told us. your Marvel superhero origin story.

Like, I think it's gonna be like, he swam with Russian barnacles and he ate a nuclear muscle. And that's when he became broken penis man. Muscle, muscle, man. All I'm saying is that we could have much better seafood in Australia. I mean, that's true.

Enormous, juicy fish. With many eyes. Many eyes. Yeah, but you're forgetting how much we whack a price on everything. Like, even the big salmon fillets these days are like fucking $15 a kilo. You think I really want to fork out,

even if it is a massive muscle. But if we end up with like two-ton irradiated salmon, it'll drive the prices down because there's just so much meat. Not in this society, they'll be like, oh, the nuclear ones are more exclusive. You can only get it in Darling Harbour. So that means, it's going to price of price. Well, I've got some good news for you on that, Frank, Alexa.

Because, see, the problem is, as often happens when the government comes up with some big PR pitch, they get undone by the detail. For instance, the jellyfish. Port Kempbler apparently is far too small to be suitable for nuclear submarines. Fair. And, well, the other thing is that defence, actually, the Department of Defence did a report into where these bases should be, and that was far more comprehensive. They didn't look at marginal seats. They didn't care about that.

They looked at where it was going to work for submarines, and they looked at 19 sites, and the top three of them, the top three sites that they proposed, were all in Sydney. Yes. Which is not a marginal seat that the coalition wants to win for the next election. So if they do it on the basis of actually what makes sense, You're going to get your wish. Oh, amazing. Look, I think that both systems are silly and that, like, I mean, what did the military know about where nuclear submarines should go?

And what does Peter Dutton know about where nuclear submarines should go? I think they should be left up to the people because of democracy. And we hold a Eurovision-style contest with all the bays. Yes. And they all fight for this nuclear submarine. Yeah. You can have, like, a share-style, like, aircraft-carrier concert. Yeah, right.

Yeah, and then Australia. a vote on which Army base had the best song and could do the best performances with the submarines and then they get the base. Hey, tell you what, by 2050, that might be the only way the arts are ever lifted up. So sure, I'm all for it. That's a great idea.

But the other thing is, you know what happens when you put a big submarine base somewhere? It becomes a massive target. Like, it's the first thing you bomb. Oh, oh, no. So... Oh, no, don't take out, Sydney. No, Sydney shouldn't get...

So I think everywhere else in Australia is going to agree that it should be Sydney. Just to fuck us up. Look, I mean, bombing Sydney would be horrible, obviously. But I do kind of think anything to break the housing bubble at this point. I just reckon if I can get a couple of years of good delicious muscles in Sydney Harbour, I'm happy to get bombed. I think it's a small price to pay. Ague is from Road Microphones.

We're part of the Acast, Crater Network, and John is from Canberra.