The Chaser Report - Planes, Trains, And Private Ministerial Automobiles

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Dom investigates the story of a NSW Transport Minister who resigned after a 446km chauffeur trip for cheeky winery tour. Meanwhile Charles' brain has reached quantum levels when it comes to his newest theory. Watch OPTICS on ABC iview here:https://iview.abc.net.au/show/opticsCheck out more Chaser headlines here:https://www.instagram.com/chaserwar/?hl=enFind hot singles in your area:https://chaser.com.au/support/ 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 with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles, yes, it's good to be back. Thank you very much for a mere one day into our return for 2025, putting up that wonderful episode from South by South West, the event that I had food poisoning for and had to miss the last moment. So check that out on the feed from this week with your optics partners,

Dick and Jena and also a good friend of the show and Telvop, yeah, that's a good one to check out. Yes, and while you're at it, if you're wondering what to watch on TV tonight, you could watch optics tonight on television because it's on at 8.30. No one truly watches television, you know, at the time when it is.

Does anyone actually watch Free to Air Television anymore? Is that a thing? Well, we do. You came around to my house. I know. It was the only time in years. I've watched a TV program live off the air. Have I told you about trying to explain to my 14-year-old what being on at 830 meant?

I've had the same experience with my 6-shod. She has no clue. Which is, so I said to him, you know, like it was already on Eye View that day. And I said, but it's going to be on air at 830. And so he said, so wait, like, you can only watch it on Eye View at 830. And I was like, no, no, no, no. It's on the antenna. And he goes, what's the antenna?

And I had to explain to him, no, no, like, sometimes programs are just on at certain times, and that's the only time you can watch them. For any millennial, let's get into explaining what the antenna is after these ads. But then, he finally sort of, I think, got it, and then he pulled the antenna out of our TV. Did he? He doesn't want. Yeah, he sort of, in protest, I think. It was like, that's a disturbing and stupid way to watch television. Well, you know what the funniest thing was, is we were all sitting here.

So a group of people came around. Congratulations late, Charles, and watch optics live off the air. Are you going to come again tonight? We're going to hold another, you know, watching. I came once. Wasn't that enough? No, I may well. I may well.

But Charles, the thing was, we all gathered here. We made time to come and support you. It was lovely. And then, but this is the problem. At 8.30, it was still hard quiz. They ran really late. So that said Optics, new series, day booze at 830. Yes.

And we're all sitting there going, where's optics? And they're still another five minutes of... They can't even run to their own schedule. Hear that Gleason, out of the way. Out of the way. Out of the way. But then at the end of hard queers, right? They run an ad for optics.

And we're sitting there wanting optics. We know it's coming on. And there's an ad for it. And then an ad for three other ABC things. Yeah, I just... I like that because it shows that the ABC are getting with the times and becoming more commercial. It's like a pre-roll.

Yeah. But you don't... There's as annoying as Channel 7 and Channel 9. Yeah. So when you're trying to watch a show on YouTube, you don't watch a pre-roll ad for the show before the show starts. Like, when I watch MKBHT's tech videos, I don't see that going, if you want to watch great tech videos, check out MKBHT. That would be stupid. So, yeah, it doesn't quite make sense. Anyway, optics is great. So what you're saying is the optics are all wrong. Yeah, the optics were all wrong. So the big news of the day in New South Wales is that to transport minister, Joe Halen, has resigned.

Ironically, for an incident involving transport charges. But the thing is, if you're not from New South Wales, you can keep listening because I promise, like we are half asleep just mentioning this. New South Wales politics. But it is pretty funny because Joe Halen's job, right? Joe Halen's job for years has been to fix public transport in New South Wales. So that you can say go on holidays using public transport.

Yeah, you can catch the train to where you want to go. But instead, what's been happening in Sydney has been many, many strikes. There's been rolling strikes not long ago. I think a half-hour train trip in Sydney took three hours on one particular day. Mind you, that's before the strike. That's just a normal day. But her job was to fix this. And we now learn that as a minister, you get to use your ministerial car and driver for personal use.

They're allowed to use it whenever they want. They are allowed. They are. They're allowed to use it for personal use. And Chris Minns, the Premier, said she hasn't done anything wrong technically. She's allowed to have the car for personal use. But by taking the driver on a 13-hour trip to a vineyard with another minister, that doesn't pass the pub test.

So apparently, Charles, ministers are supposed to work out whether the use of their ministerial cars is reasonable at a pub. I would have thought going to a boozy winery piss up does pass the pub. It's the one. It's a pub. You're going to a pub. She was probably going there to ask voters whether it was a reasonable use of her ministerial car. But then there were other things where her kids were taken to school sport,

for a very long distance and so on. And I think just spare it. I mean, okay, she's resigned now. She's acknowledged that it's wrong. But spare a thought for those, you know, for her, for the kids, for anyone who might have had to use New South Wales public transport. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, I think her mistake was, if she's really into wineries and going around wineries, her mistake, day one, when you get appointed transport minister is you go you look at the map and you go where where do we want to put the next train line she should have put train lines into a metro around the wineries Hunter Valley Metro yes I imagine all the little vineyard tour minibuses that would put out of business have you ever been on a winery tour it's really nice yeah it's nice except for like it'd be much easy on a metro but you always have to drive

from winery to one's got to drive yeah and then well and it's always ends up being me like my wife like oh you you're the and so i become the designated driver which means you can't i've never done a way but the idea of having a metro yeah metro'd be good yes and you just get out at lindermans and then you get out of lindman's to broken wood to whatever it might be yeah yeah that's and then extend it all the way down to the barossa when that gets sick yeah well a very fast train it's a very fast train to the barossa so that's that's that would be great idea you'd skip camber I think, the Canberra line, and it may be even a ferry across to Tasman, because Tasmania has some nice...

Oh, in New Zealand. It's been great vineyards in New Zealand. Build the metro under the Tasman. What are you doing, Joe Haley? This was the path you could have taken. Huge era. So she's resigned as a result of all of this, which means that she's ironically now got to take public transport

because she's lost her ministerial car. I just love the one detail that it never ever incurred to me. I wasn't following the story that close to it. But it didn't occur to me that it was actually technically completely fine To just corruptly use a car But it's not even corruption It's not corrupt, they're allowed to do it And this is why I think she's had to resign

Because what if the result of this whole scandal Is that the members of the public go Hang on, why do ministers get to use government cars For personal reasons That would be the end of civilization We wouldn't want to have the end of that Imagine though making your premier catch an Uber suddenly there'd be laws about the smelliness of Uber drivers.

It'd be fantastic. Imagine the Premier had to catch the train every day. Oh my God. They might actually fix the trains. Do you remember actually? Actually, can I tell you about the strike? So the strikes in New South Wales have been going on now for months. Yeah, yeah, for months.

And literally, I think it's the case that if you become a train driver, the one thing that you're likely to not do in your day is drive a train. Yeah, no, because you're on strike. Or if you are, you're going to be driving not many trains. And you'll be going slow on purpose. You'll be limiting it to 60 some days. And it's made me go. Maybe I want to become a train driver.

Well, apparently the pay isn't too bad. Yeah, pay's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I presume the pay reflects the boringness of the job. Oh, I think you'd have to pay them well. Yeah, you'd have to pay because I presume, I don't know, like, are there any train drivers listening who can. You're on a rail. You're on a rail.

You're not really steering. are you? Yeah, like what's the... I mean, I'm not saying there isn't a skill set. I mean, you're just saying that this is a job that on the metro is now performed by a computer instead of by a human. Yes, but I think we should be wary of that because I am absolutely certain that if we got chat GPT to, if we download, like uploaded all of the Chaser podcast over the years

to chat GPT, it would come up with a very, very convincing. Hang on, didn't you disprove this theory? No, but that's like six months ago. We've now got deep quick or whatever it's called. Oh, yeah, we should get the Chinese one to do it. Yeah, we get the Chinese one to do it. I can't see any problem we're giving them out of data. No.

Well, they've probably already got it. They've got it. Anyway, yeah, it saves time. You don't have to upload anything. And then, because what I'm thinking is, what would be interesting is, remember that brief. We had two weeks where Chris and Craig took over on the Chaser Report podcast. About six years ago, when it was like about 2018, 2018,

2019, I'm thinking. There was a two-week period where we were... Really? Did they take over? I thought they were going to and then they didn't because they were too famous. But I reckon what would happen is... Oh, no, I know where you're going. The computer would go, okay, well that's...

We'd get it out of our own podcast. Oh, God, that sticks up here, what happened. All right, in a moment, Charles, you can reveal a better model for transport. Yes, I've got... Actually, there's a technological solution that will solve the world's probably. With the exception of Joe Halen Whose problems Unfortunately it won't be able to solve

And bit of a spoiler alert It involves quantum computing Charles you meant to say things to them to keep them listening After the ad break Here it is The Chaser Report Less news Less often

Okay so quantum computing With transport I mean quantum computing As I understand it requires Incredibly cold temperatures And technology that only barely exists. I'm not quite sure how you put it in public transport.

So, no, so you can't. But the thing is, so it's called quantum teleportation, right? And it's been long theorised, but assumed that you can't possibly do it, right? And it's not actually about being able to transfer people. Right. It's about being able to transfer information. Oh. Essentially instantaneously all around the world, right?

Pretty fucking cool if we can get it up and running. Don't we already have a system for transferring information instantly all around the world, i.e. the internet? Yeah, so, and in particular, fiber optic cables, right? But actually, fiber optics are ridiculously slow. Oh, that really? Yes. Don't they go to speed of light? Speed of light.

Oh, that's all yesterday. Yeah, so boring, yes. No, no, they go way slower than the speed of light, because actually the way, just to get very technical, here the way you transport information in packets using fiber optics is it goes forward in packets and then goes backwards in packets so it's actually double the speed of light you actually your error correction protocols mean that you actually um to have completely error free transmission it's at minimum half the speed of light right like or and probably way less than half the speed of light It's very slow.

It's too slow. That's sluggish. Yeah, incredibly sluggish. So, you know, if you're playing Call of Duty, you know, your ping, your ping is going to, you know, it's just, yeah. It'll be like the speed of sound or something. And it's why, actually, it's impossible for Australian gamers to, you know, be good when they're up against servers in New York or something like that. Is that what you've been telling your game of children? Yeah, yeah.

That and because all Australian gamers are shit. But what quantum teleportation does, as I understand it, which I don't, is it very carefully guides a photon at the speed of light and they've worked out a way to guide a photon along the fibre optic cable. So using the existing fibre optic network that basically is most of the internet except for Australia. And once it gets to the end, then instantaneously, you know, crystallise the entanglement, like get a glimpse of the entanglement, which then instantly sends back to the starting point that, you know, it's error-free or whatever. And so essentially it is at the speed of light. So it's not faster than the speed of light. It's not like spooky, you know, like that will be impossible.

That's impossible. But it's essentially. and they've done it over 30 kilometres, they've done it over a thousand kilometres via a satellite, but they're thinking there's no reason why basically we can't retrofit the entire fibre optic cabling

around the world, and eventually, like in 10 years' time, everyone will be having just unbelievably much faster communication. Well, except for people who are on fibre to the basement like us, who have incredibly slow,

copper-based wiring. And most of the rest of Australia, because fucking MBNs based on the copper network. Yeah. I mean, who could have seen a flaw in that plan? I mean, Kevin Rudd came out and wanted to put fibroptic everywhere. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And then...

But the problem was, of course, that would have been... Spoilt Murdoch's fun. Because essentially what it would have done is it would have undermined Foxtell 10 years earlier than... Than it was inevitable. Then was inevitable. And so he wanted sluggish internet in Australia. And then what happened was Malcolm Turnbull got in his communications minister and under Tony Abbott delivered sluggish internet for Australia

under the promise of faster, cheaper, better. Well, isn't the joke on them though? Because now, as I understand it, Fox Tell's main source of revenue is Americans watching Sky After Dark on YouTube. So in fact, they could have embraced fibre. And Paul Murray would have been able to. to transmit his thoughts on the day from the Foxtale through to America in much faster time. Mind you, the views on Sky News have to be gathered through copper wire because they're so ancient.

Is that right? Yeah, it's true. All right. So, it was very complicated. I mean, I thought when you said to me I want to talk about, you said to me, I want to talk about quantum transportation, A, I thought you'd understand what it was. But B, you know, I should have. I thought of you, but B, I didn't realize it was just about data packets. I mean, great, you know, higher ping times for Australian gamers.

That's very important in your world. But it's not transport. It's teleportation. That's what they're calling it, even though. Teleport. I know, but it's not. That's like the idiots who try and claim that things with wheels that go on the ground are hoverboards. I've seen back to the future too.

I know what a real hoverboard is. In fairness, though, when I was prepping this episode, I was on a bit of a boozy. Oh, you're in the trip around the Hunter Valley. Yeah, yeah. Oh, look, that's very forgivable. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I hope it was taxpayer funded.

Well, I don't ask these questions. And anyway, it's technically within the rules. We are part of the Iconicless network. Catch you tomorrow.