The Chaser Report - Prince William Wants To Solve Homelessness

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Prince Williams has vowed to end homelessness, kinda. Meanwhile Dom tells the story of how Australia defeated Russia! Plus Charles comes up with the perfect campaign for the Yes Vote. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal 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. Dom, what a great day. What a great day, yes. Look, Australia announced, I think, $111 million for Ukraine to help them fight Russia off. But we also defeated Russia ourselves in a very intense stouch in the High Court. Oh, really? Yeah, involving Australia's lamest squad.

We'll get to that. Yes, okay. And got a great news for anyone who's teetering on the brink of homelessness. Oh, brilliant, because it's really tough out there. Which is that it's solved. The whole problem is solved. No one's been able to solve that for millennia. Yes.

And it's finally been solved. Yeah, yeah. What an amazing bit of news. Plus, this will cheer everyone up. For the first time, news poll shows that the no case for the voice is outpolling the yes case. Well, at least that'll give everyone something more to fight for, I suppose. They'll have to, is what it's saying, yeah. All of that, after this.

Now, Charles, let's start with something exciting, though, because it has been a bit bleak in recent weeks on the pod. Homelessness, though, is solved at last. I mean, I hoped that with all the billions of dollars we've spent on things like submarines, housing people who need a house might fit in there too, and it sounds like we've got it sorted out. No, it's good.

Now, look, I'm not totally across all the details. Right. But Prince William has decided, has announced that he is going to solve homelessness. Seriously? Yes. Which I assume, I haven't read the details, but I assume he's joined the Greens. Right, of course.

He and Max Chandler Mather are going to team up. They're going to put some caps on rental, all that sort of stuff. And presumably Prince William's going to donate all the billions of dollars he's inherited. Following, you know... Because he's Prince of Wales now. He's got the estate. The Wales estate is massive. Presumably he's donating that to some sort of long-term.

solution so that homelessness across the Commonwealth can be sold forever. Yeah, look, Max Chandler-Math has probably got him to agree to the rent freeze. And given the sheer amount of property that the Duchy of Cornwall, from what I understand, one of his many estates owns, they would make a massive difference if he just forewent a bit of rent himself. Good on him. But I think this is very shrewd politics from the Greens. And you don't usually associate that with the Greens.

No, that's not normally their thing. But, you know, like the Greens have been blocked by Labor saying, no, no, no, you can't put a rent freeze on, that would be far too radical. It'll reckon, that's that it'll wreck the market, Labor World. And they've even stopped the Greens from wanting to sort of change the way that $10 billion fund is distributed. They have, yeah. And so to sort of go above elbow's head and go, well, I'm not going to deal with the

prime minister, the mere Prime Minister of Australia. Oh, I see. This is very clever. But instead go, who's higher up the constitutional rung? The Royals, let's cut a deal with them. shows just how pragmatic the Greens have become nowadays. And so it's divided to democracy. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that, no, I think that this is the thing. They're not letting, like, the perfect way would be to let democracy play out.

Yes. If they're not letting perfect be the enemy of good anymore. Amazing. They're becoming stoutch monarchists, you know, because they're letting royalty be the enemy of democracy. I presume the deal is that the Greens now have to back in the monarchy. Yeah, of course. I think if that solves homelessness, I think that's a good compromise. I mean, when I read the headline, Charles, the Prince William wanted to solve homelessness.

Yes. I thought, my goodness, he's going to give up his title and get elected. Yes. That's the way you would implement a policy. But no, apparently, he doesn't feel he needs to do that to make fundamental societal changes. Yeah. So, look, you know, I'll do a little bit more research over the coming hours and I'll get back to you if things change. But I think just assume for now that if you're in any sort of trouble housing-wise...

Just right to Prince William. Yeah. And I think probably just stop paying your rent Because, you know, I think rents are going to be a thing of the past He'll intercede on your behalf, I'm sure. Well, I mean, he has so much property himself. Just imagine how many thousands of people he could have just squatting on the lawn, just intense.

And any one of his many properties, that would be absolutely fine. Well, I think that's the whole way he makes money, isn't it? Sure. There's like tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of people who pay him rent each year. They definitely would be, yeah, sure. He can just forget their rent and just let everyone else in, even the car parks at Windsor Castle, If they just let open them up.

Yes. Why has it taken them so long, arguably? I know, I know. It's really good. Good on you, your Royal Highness. That's brilliant. If that's what you're actually doing. If it's just some sort of bullshit aspirational statement,

like, you know, his moonshot prize thing that he has. It wouldn't be that. It wouldn't be that. It wouldn't be just getting up and sort of making some vague, unconstitutional comments about just wanting to do something good and then not doing it, not following through. Right. Yeah. I'm just looking at the details here.

apparently he and his wife are donating 500,000 pounds to a charity Oh my goodness, that's... That wants to solve homelessness. That's nearly a million Australian dollars. That would buy half of a house in Sydney. You know that it's actually less than two pounds per homeless person in the UK.

There are 270,000 households who do not have a home in Britain at the moment. So he's giving basically £1.70 per household to solve homelessness. I see what he's done. He says he wants to end homelessness. Oh, it's wants to. Not that he will. Oh, no.

I'd love to be able to end homelessness. I'd love to be able to just accommodate you all in my many hundreds of thousands of hectares. Yes. But instead, I'm just going to buy you one coffee. Yeah. Well, the thing is, I'd like to make an announcement as well, Dawn. Oh, yeah. Which is I've solved bad sex.

Have you? Yes, I've solved bad sex. Someone had to do it. Anyone having sex with me from now on will not have bad sex anymore. Is it that you will? Or is it that you want to? I have bad sex. It's an aspiration, Dom. And that's enough. That's enough. I will donate £1.70 to any woman who has sex with me to solve the bad sex problem. The scourge.

Congratulations on finding a way to make Prince William look less ridiculous by comparison. It's an genuinely helpful. Yeah. Thank you. You had to make it about you having sex. Yeah. The Prince Andrew approach. Wonderful.

Well, let's move on to Australia's lamest squad. Now, look, while the conflict is going on with Australian Ukraine, we're practically at war with Ukraine, but it's not declared. We've spent $11 million we're giving to Ukraine. We've already given them all those vehicles and so on. Just today, it's our own announced, yeah. Extra funding for Ukraine.

Right here. But there's another little battle that's been going on in Canbro. where all the pissiest battles take place. Basically, what happened was, Russia had the rights to build a brand new embassy right next to Parliament, basically. Oh. So they're going to construct a new building

uncomfortably close to the parliament. Yes, right. And Australia, what with, you know, almost being at war with them, thought, yeah, not such a good idea. Yes. We will terminate your lease of this land for your new embassy. Yes. And so what Russia did, they decided to do two things.

They decided, A, to invade Crimea. Well, they actually did invade. What they did was... Oh, what did they do? They sent a diplomat. I'm going to show you a photo with the guy. It's a sort of middle-aged pudgy guy and a beanie. What they did was they put a demountable on the site,

and this guy has been sitting there using a puffer jacket in a Canberra winter sleeping inside a demountable building. Mind you, that's a Russian summer. Well, that's the thing. Only a Russian could sleep in a Canberra winter in an unheated building. And so this guy has diplomatic community, right? So the concept was, that he was having a sit in.

It was like the pissiest possible version of the tent embassy. Yes. It was the demountable embassy. Yes. And Russia's thought was, look, if this guy's here, they can't kick us off the land. But why not? Why couldn't they just? Because he can't move him.

He's got diplomatic immunity. It's like when you park a car, you know, you can't give it a parking ticket. But how did he do anything? How did he go to the toilet? Oh, it was a demountable? He probably had a port-a-loom. And then they went, so that was happening. It's sort of genius.

I mean, normally they use tanks for that sort of maneuver, but just a bloke. in a red beanie is what they did. It's sort of the lame camera version. But then at the same time they went to the High Court and tried to stop Australia cancelling its lease, even though we actually, the Australian government passed emergency legislation to do this, to cancel the lease, saying national security, just as Jane Jago has not allowed Russia to have an injunction basically to stop Albo cancelling the lease. She said that the arguments were weak placed by Russia. So it was about the same level of their arguments to Ukraine. There will still be, there will still be a full, you know,

court case later. Yeah, right. But basically the guy's gone home. Oh, he's gone home? They got rid of the guy in the beanie. Oh, right. He's gone home. Yeah.

He may come back later. I mean, who knows? Yeah, yeah. Or some sort of mercenary version that we'll get. Well, they'll probably come back with tanks. Yeah, that's what they'll do. Diplomatic community tanks. That's the thing.

If you put diplomatic plates on a tank chart, it's a quirk in international law. I don't know why they didn't do that for Ukraine. If all those tanks. It had diplomatic plates, you probably would have had to just wave them through. Because you know you can't get a parking ticket if you're in a diplomatic vehicle. It's an amazing perk.

You can park anywhere. All those UN ambassadors in New York City just put their cars anywhere they want. I feel like there must be some sort of pissy little Pacific Island that, you know, doesn't have long to last. Nauru. That would, you know, probably be up for selling off diplomatic license. Can you try to get a diplomatic status?

I'm going to have a ring around. Because if we imagine the stunts the chaser could pull with complete diplomatic immunity. Yeah. Mind you, you don't even need proper diplomatic. That's true. They haven't tended to stop us in the past. Just make them up.

Ironically, the building right next door to the site of the Russian embassy, the Chinese embassy. So there's already a Chinese embassy also uncomfortably closed to Parliament House. So they've cancelled one lease, but the other one, the horse is bolted. So well done, past governments for letting that one get through. Yeah. I mean, it is funny because there's also the ASEO building, which is just across the road from Ballam House. I don't know whether you know that yarn, but it's a great yarn, which is they built it, built it, built it, built it, built it, this is under sort of hockey. Yeah, yeah. I remember they spent a lot of money on a new Azeo building.

Yeah, yeah, it was like hundreds of millions of dollars. And then they realized that one of the contractors worked for China or something. And... Oh, they had to undo it all. Well, they realized that there was no way they could tell whether it hadn't been compromised or not. Amazing. And given that it was ASEO that was supposed to go there, they went, oh, no, no, it was not even ASEO. It was the direct signals directorate, the DSD. Oh, which is the tapping.

Internet hacking. Yeah, it's literally the one that you would. The one one that you wouldn't want them to hack into. And so, I mean, it stood there empty for years. And it's now, I believe, used for like, you know, the Ministry of Sport. That's so funny. Yeah, so there you go. Genius.

All right. So there you go. Australia's lamest squatter is out of the Big Brother House. The Chaser Report. News you can't trust. It's not great for the voice, Charles. I mean, the national poll doesn't matter. No.

I mean, you need a majority overall and a majority in four of six states. But I think it'll get that, won't it? News poll. Well, not if you believe the latest news poll. This is from Sunday. Yes. No vote at 47%. The yes vote at 43%.

Yes. That's behind. So can I tell you my genius plan for this? What's your genius plan? I think that they should, just before the vote happens, yeah. Or maybe a day before. Switch it round so that if you vote yes, it goes down.

Oh! No, it goes up. That's a very good idea. Yes. Because people do automatically vote no. And then I don't think anyone's going to pay much attention because it's actually not going to have that much impact. Like it'll just mean that indigenous.

people get to have a say on things that affect them, right? Like, no one's going to care if it actually happens. Presumably, Indigenous people would care quite a lot. Well, yeah, no, no, but, like, yeah, but, no, no, I'm saying, like, no, no, no, this is the thing that's been lost. It's actually, like, the fear campaign is completely dishonest, so it's not like. It's, as you said before, it's not at all radical, this proposal. Even if, whether you're for it or against it, it's very minor.

It's about having a little consultative committee. Yes. So, it's like, it's like, it's like. a national PNC, basically. But, so, yeah, because it doesn't actually have any formal power. No, like the principal, at our school, the principal sits down once a month with the PNC and listens to whatever all the parents have to say. Yes.

She doesn't have to do it. No. Like, she just is there to be polite. Yes. It's basically being polite. Yes. That's what the case should be. And that is...

The voice is just fucking polite. No, and I think that what is happening is Australians are starting to realize that that's what it is. Oh, and that's why they don't like it. That's why they don't like it. Well, Charles, maybe there's a genius strategy in this. Yes. Because the amazing thing about the yes campaign is that it hasn't started.

And so maybe Albo is just miles ahead in reading the mood of the nation. And for months now, you know, Dutton, Sky, Tilly, all the commentary. They've all been going, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's saturated. The no vote has been had the only case for months now. Yes. No one's really saying yes. And maybe what they'll do is a week before.

they'll suddenly come up with some brilliant arguments in favour of the voice. And everyone will go, oh, now we're paying attention. And the no will seem hackneyed and boring because we've heard all of that stuff. Okay. Although that said, if the voice goes down, you know who's going to bring it down. So it won't be Peter Dunn. It'll be Sky News. They are launching a 24-7 channel, and I'm not making this up,

to cover the voice referendum and nothing else, which I presume will mean endlessly replaying Rowan-Deen satirical pieces on the voice. It's just 24-7. But what a bizarre idea. But what does Chris Kenny think of that? He's a pro-voice. Well, maybe they'll have balance for the first time in the history of Scotland. How did Chris Kenny get away with being pro-voice?

I don't know, but he's one of the most sensible commentators on the whole of the... I must confess, just on general principle I don't read Chris Kennedy. Clearly, I'm making a terrible mistake. I know. But this is the whole point is that it is designed. Julian Lisa helped make this theory up. It's designed for people who don't want. dramatic change.

I mean, they're trying to claim now that Thomas Mayo said it's the first step towards reparations. It's not Julian Lisa cut all that stuff out. It's just consultation. Yeah, you can still vote yes and be a cund to Aboriginal people. You can still ignore them. Yes, exactly. Like, in a way, it's ruder.

Maybe this is the case that needs to be made. Yes. It's actually ruder to hear someone say their bit and ignore them. Yes. Like, okay, we're going to pass the law affecting indigenous people. Indigenous people. What do you think makes a reasonable objection? Yeah.

Oh, thanks. We're going to do it anyway. Like, that's much worse. Well, actually, Rio Tinto showed exactly how to do the voice with their Jukong Gorge. That's right. Which is what happened is in 2014, there was this sacred Aboriginal rock shelter in the Pilbara that had iron ore underneath it. And so what they did is they commissioned a report. They brought in the local elders.

They wrote hundreds of pages of report. the board of Rio Tinto then read those reports and then they went out to the site and they stood in front of it and they'd blow it up right. Yeah, that's right. And you're right that is, that's much ruder. It's much ruder but that's exactly what the voice does. It's writing a 100 page report that can then be ignored. Ignored, exactly.

So that's the case study that they should use. They should say do you want more things like the Jukong Gorge? So all that the yes is doing is bringing in the Rio Tinto model where you blow artefacts up, just that you know what you're doing. And if you're the kind of person that has absolute contempt for Indigenous people, why is this argument not being made by the US case?

I know, I know, it would be a very popular argument. If you have utter contempt for Indigenous people, if you don't want them to have special treatment, if you don't think that any of their culture should be respected in any way at all, get them to talk about the value of their culture, their continuous millennial-long culture, and then ignore them and blow the shit up anyway.

That's an argument for yes. Does Peter Dutton know this, do you think? Maybe he doesn't. I think he's going to change his tune. Yeah. I mean, the other thing that we published in a shot, John Delmenico actually wrote an article on Friday about it, arguing that perhaps maybe, just maybe,

the master strategy that Albo, who I increasingly think of as the baldrick of Australian politics, who always has cunning plans, maybe, in fact, instead of not saying what, the voice will be until after the referendum is a little contemptuous of Australians. And maybe there is an argument to say, why don't we actually just put some flesh on the bones and say, this is what it's going to look like. It's going to be 15 or 12 people or 15 people or 30 people, whatever it is.

And they're all going to have staff and it'll cost $15 million a year or 20 million a year or whatever it is for a committee. for a committee that can then and they'll meet with the executive once a fortnight and they'll meet, you know, with legislators as necessary and that's how it'll work. Like actually, just give a sense of what it will be so that people can go, oh, well, that sounds completely reasonable.

I mean, this sounds exactly like a thing that I said on this podcast months ago and got laughed, you know, dismissed as being racist by you and Dave Miller. But this is the whole, maybe that's the plan. Maybe what he's going to do is a month before the referendum come out, look, here's some thoughts. We haven't, no, the model's probably going to be, and then he'll start talking and everyone will get so incredibly bored,

that they'll go, oh, yeah. Yeah, that's all right. Maybe that's the plan. Maybe the flesh will come late in the peace. Dom, you're a huge constitutional expert. Sure. Has there ever been a case in Australia where a proposal to change the referendum has polled this badly...

Change the constitution? To change the constitution a few months out. and then it's been passed by a majority of states in a majority of people. I can't recall one because the ones that have got enough of tend to be fairly uncontroversial. I mean, Albo said, I'm quoting him here now. He said, it's always easier in a referendum to put in no argument. That's why the success rate is something like 8 out of 48 referenda. Yes.

But then he says, I'm very confident Australians will embrace the opportunity to say yes in the last quarter of this year. So he says, yeah, they always lose. It's easy for them to lose. Nevertheless, we're going to win. The two halves of the argument don't connect, but that's where Alba is at in his process. Yeah, they do always lose. However, this one, we will win. I don't know why.

Maybe he has a cunning plan. It doesn't seem likely. Well, Baldrick always had cunning plans, so... Well, I mean, if Alba was entertaining as Bordrick, I think that would probably be doing better. Anyway, no, it would be interesting to see if the EES campaign does come up with any, you know, actual reasons to vote yes, rather than just sort of vibe. Yes, yes. We've come up with several. It's polite to ask.

I think we... And also, it's more enjoyable for racists. Okay. I'm going to... I think that that's the killer argument. And I think... I think I've just solved the yes case. Yes, I think we should contact D. Madigan or something like that

and get it a... Yeah, if you really... If you really don't want to listen to Aboriginal people, it's much better if they're speaking and you ignore them rather than that you just don't pay any attention at all. Yes. Yep, because it's less polite. Less polite.

Yep. Okay. Well, that's another problem solved on this podcast, Charles. A job well done. Our gear is from Roe. We are part of the Aconiclass Network. for more stunningly cunningly cunning solutions. Tune in tomorrow.

Indeed.