The Chaser Report - QUEEN DEAD (NOT A PRANK)

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

Thats right, the Queen may or may not be dead. Who knows at this point, we're just beating a horse (that may or may not be dead). Also everyone looks back fondly on the times when Tony Abbott was PM. Plus Charles delves into the real reason Sydney's trains were halted. 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 for Thursday the 24th of February. I'm Charles Firth. And with me today are Gabby Bolton. Hello. Alexa Vullivit. Hi. It's time for yet another Royal Death Watch.

One day. I thought this was like a good news day. Yeah. Well, the thing is things do not look good for the country. queen. I know, I get it. She's neither dead nor not dead. It's like Schrodinger's queen. It's so funny, Charles. No, no, no. So, yeah, so that's what it was earlier this week. We confirmed earlier this week that, you know, she was no longer able to say to move. Wait, so, hold on, you're telling us, something's actually

happened. Wait, but then she can't do her job. No, well, this is the thing. No, this is exactly the thing. She can't do anything but light duty. Which is that on Wednesday, yeah, she cancelled her only, because I remember she was doing light duty. She cancelled her only official engagement, which was a Zoom call. Oh, same. Fuck those. But can I just say, I think at this point, I'm calling bullshit on her being sick. I think she's now just chucking a sickie.

She's using the excuse that she tested positive to COVID earlier in the week. She's going, oh, no, I can't move, can't move. Because no one, even if you can't move, you can still do a Zoom call. And also, like, didn't, like, just this week, they scrapped. all COVID restrictions in the UK. This was literally her last chance to have a COVID sick leave. Yes, exactly. Because after that, no one's going to care.

She's just literally gone, oh, fuck, I should get my COVID sick leave in now. The only thing I'd say about that is, I think Prince Charles has a fairly good motive for revealing that the queen is dead. Like, I think if the queen did die, you would hear it very, very quickly from Prince Charles. Yes. My mother's dead. Sorry. Is it that easy just to become king? doesn't she need to do a handover and teach him how to do all the important king jobs?

Yeah. Anyway, by the time you listen to this, she probably, well, she might be dead. Yeah. So if, if that's a case, sorry for saying all these jokes. Yeah. I'm not, you know. What's the queen going to do? Come over here and fight me.

I reckon she's got a catheter. Well, she can't move. We love that bit. We keep talking, but we keep saying, like, every time they change the catheter of the queen, do they have to, like, announce it, like, they change the crown? Yeah, time for the changing of the royal catheter. And they have to like announce it every time. That would be so embarrassing.

Coming up on the show, we're going to talk about, well, Tony Abbott. Oh, fucking hell. Are we that starved for news that we have to go back now? Well, the question we ask is, is it his time to shine? Fuck me. I think he's making a comeback. And I'm going to, I'm going to, we're going to peel back and work out. why the trains actually stopped across New South Wales earlier this week.

All that misinformation and more after this was Rebecca Dayunamuno in the Chaser Newsroom. Thanks, Kevin. You're welcome. I do my job sometimes. Handyman, Scott Morrison, has made an urgent phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin after being informed by staff that he is planning a coup any day now to offer him a power drill and Bunnings' advice. When asked whether his advice about backyard construction resonated with the Russian president, who is on the brink of launching a global nuclear war, Morrison said that he wasn't sure.

Real estate developers in Sydney have rejoiced today as average house prices crossed over the $10 million mark after every house in the city gained a waterfront view. Real estate agents across the city spent their day tirelessly updating every listing to include the new influx of homeowners installing aquariums, waterbeds and indoor pools. Scott Morrison has today demonstrated that the welding incident has had absolutely no effect on his eyesight by going about his daily routine without a single hiccup.

Informed that he is fooling absolutely nobody and that he is clearly blind, Morrison explained that this is not an issue at all, as he has basically been blind to everything going on around him for the last four years, and it only cost a few thousand lives. That's the latest headlines from The Chaser Report. I'm Rebecca Dayunamuno. Okay, guys, I have one question.

With Russia, coming in and... With love? Basically invading Ukraine. Oh, not with love. Is it finally Tony Abbott's time to shine? Oh, no. I'm not following. Why would it be Tony Abbott?

It's time to shine. Tony Abbott had a time to shine. He didn't even shine. No, but this might be, you know, like the actual point where he becomes genuinely relevant rather than making those weird captain's calls where he kept on appointing people dames. Oh, yeah. Oh, right. No, so earlier in the week, he went and addressed a think tank in half.

Bold of Tony Abbott to address anything with the word think in it, but go on. It was in Hungary. Oh, no. And, look, he basically gave his take on, you know, what's going on in Ukraine. And it was a fairly sort of inflammatory set of words. It will former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has warned that Russia could look to take over Poland and the Baltic states if it invades Ukraine. So basically, that is possibly the most idiotic statement that Tony Abbottes.

that Tony Abbott has ever made. Well, I don't know. I think suppository of all wisdom is pretty up there. No, I think it's a pretty good, like, broad, racist thing if you assume all those countries are the same country. It's just like, what's stopping them from evading all the other identical ones? Yeah. You come from Poland, don't you, Alexa?

Fucking good one. Pretty much. Serbia, but like, you know. Serbia or Holland. Who's counting? Baltic states. Yeah. All the same.

Anyway, the point is. that Poland is in NATO, right? Yeah. And so NATO has a military that has a budget 10 times that of Russia. The idea that Russia would ever, like, and Putin, I mean, Putin is not an idiot. Like, only a moron would invade Poland. Only a moron would think that Russia would invade Poland. And I've got some good news for you, Charles.

Tony Abbott is a moron. But the thing is, this is not the first time that Tony Abbott has tried to sort of insert himself in global politics when it comes to Putin. Do you not remember his famous quote in 2014, which I am obliged, I'm legally obliged to play here now. Maybe I might play it even twice. Look, I'm going to shirt front, Mr Putin. You bet you are. You bet I am. My favorite thing, my favorite thing is the fumble afterwards, like,

you bet you are, I bet I am. It literally sounds like he's recovering from being shirtfronted a few seconds before. Yeah, it's almost, you know, like when you're in high school and you get bullied, actually you two might not get this, but you know when you get bullied and then like, you go home and you think about what you could have said? And then you get, like, in the moment, though, you get fucking flustered. So you like, you practice and you practice. And then when something actually happens to you, you're like,

I can do this, I've got to come back, ready to go. And then you just mix all the words up. Sounds like that. But the world needs someone who can shirt front Putin. I don't think it's Tony Abbott. I reckon I could shirt front Tony Abbott. No, you bet you are. You bet I am.

You bet he is. You bet he is. Yes. If anyone was going to do it, it's going to be Tony. They have like very, very similar PR strategies. They're the same kind of person. You know, shirtless doing these manly activities. Yeah.

Writing boards. Being a bit homophobic. Yeah, classic. Yeah. Classic Tony. Yeah, but I still think that Putin would just have to, like, sit on Tony and he'd be dead. Putin looks like a bit of a tank. But isn't Putin incredibly small?

I think he's a tiny guy, but he gives off that, like, freaky KGB vibe, like he knows secret moves. Oh, yeah, yeah. He gives off wombat vibes, but they're small, but they weigh a lot. Like, I reckon he'd be, like, small, but, like... A low center of gravity. Tough. Like, you couldn't put a thumbtack through that man. I feel like it would bounce back.

It'd a bend. I don't know. I reckon he sounds pretty tough. Let me just play the clip again and you can just hear his aggression and he's competent. Look, I'm going to shirt front, Mr Putin.

You bet you are. You bet I'm at you know. It's funny every side. It's like he's squaring up for a UFC fight. He's really aggressive. Let's just do that. Well, I'm going to shirt front. But it wasn't, he had that upwards inflection

so it sounded like he wasn't even so sure of each minute. I'm going to shirt front. Is that right? You bet you are. Oh, sorry, you bet I am. Yeah. No, I feel like we could just solve World War III by sticking the mini cage fight.

I'm not for it. What I wonder, like, what was the actual question before that? Were they like, what? How is your day going? No, it was, are you going to respond to the down? And his response was I'm going to fucking fight him. Yeah, I'm going to tackle here at the conference. Yeah, going to rugby scrum him.

So weird. Isn't he a Christian man? And aren't they all about fucking pacifism and just like, you know, destroying people's lives with words? He's a Catholic. Oh, it's all about abuse. Covering up sex crime. It is a sad time where I find myself doing it every day,

just getting more and more Tony Abbott nostalgia. And it's a position I never wanted to be in. No. But like when you compare it to Scott Morrison, it's just like Tony Abbott was an asshole, but he like stood for something. Yeah, he had a decision. Yeah.

They were all the wrong decisions. Oh, they were horrible views. But he had views. He seemed like a real person who was dedicated to something awful. Scott Morrison is like an empty person dedicated to nothing. You know, we're frogs in boiling water, aren't we? And we're looking back to the time when the temperature and you just reached the bubbling. You decrees, like, and he always delivered the weekly jokes, you know, like, you know, one week he's eating an onion.

The next week he's, like, naked on the beach. Yeah, shit happens. Although then again. Oh, yeah, when he said that about, you know, like, troops. When troops die in Afghanistan, my favorite bit after that was when a journalist wanted to approach him about that response and he just stood there and shook his head for six minutes. Don't you think those comments were inappropriate?

I would play the audio of that, but I can't. There's nothing. The Chaser Report, less news, less often. Okay, so before we go, we have to talk about the New South Wales train system. Oh, that's right. Because I know everyone's fascinated, especially people outside of New South Wales. It's a hot topic. Everyone wants to know.

Yeah. No, no. But so what happened is on Monday, all the trains in New South Wales got cancelled. Yeah. They got cancelled. They don't have any Netflix specials. They're not allowed to release any books. And initially, the government blamed it on the workers.

They said, oh, the workers must be on strike, right? Yeah. And then over the course of about 12 hours, they sort of admitted, oh, no, actually, it turns out we cancelled all the trains. The workers showed up to work and we said no. Then the next 24 hours, all the journalists were asking, well, hang on, how did you not know that you had been the people to cancel the train? So doesn't that sound a bit weird that you'd think you'd know that you made that decision?

It's now Thursday. Classic. And we have a little bit more clarity on it because the Transport Minister of New South Wales has come out and given a reason for what? why he didn't know that it was him who'd cancelled the trains, which is that he was asleep at the time. He was asleep. That's such a hard job.

You've got to be awake 24-7, like, for the night trains, for the morning train, saying this train can go, this train can go. If he falls asleep, all the train stop? Is that what happens? No, well, not quite. No, so he knew that there might be a bit of trouble brewing, right? But the point is that on Sunday night, when all this was going down, he was busy tweeting stuff about how much he hates the gays.

I forgot. And he thinks that the Catholic Church is hard done by when it comes to criticism by the gays running the Mardi Gras in Sydney, right? Oh. And so, because that's a much more important issue than being able to get to work. That is a much more important issue. As transport minister, keeping the train train.

They go hand in hand sometimes the night of grapillarade blocks a couple roads. I think it's natural for transport ministers to be homophobic. The amount of strain that a big, beautiful celebration takes on the transport networks.

But also being subjected all day to trains going into tunnels. It would just be so alluring. It is a very heteronormative transport system. So exhausted from tweeting about you know all these you know,

problematic gaze. Yeah, yeah. Dave Elliott hops into bed at 1130. He knows that there's a sort of negotiation going down. But he's too busy thinking about all of the trains. But he falls fast asleep. And then the journalists have asked him, well, why didn't anyone call you when at 1.30pm,

his manager of the train system decided, well, I'm just going to cancel everything. I'm just going to cancel everything. Fuck the workers. It's too complicated. We just won't have any trains. It was like, why didn't you call the minister and tell him, by the way, I'm shutting down the train system? And the answer was, oh, well, you know, like, and David Elliott's, the transport minister's answer was, well, I wouldn't have answered anyway because I was asleep.

And I would have turned my mobile off. And then Dominic Perridae, who's the premier, woke up after the trains had been cancelled. Like, he woke up at 5.30 in the morning. Yeah, well, he's got 70 children. Oh, yeah, okay, I'm fair enough. Anyway, point is, don't you think that's the weird, like, do you think, what? Yeah. I mean, it's, there are a couple of possibilities here.

Either it's a really, really lame excuse for him doing the wrong thing and trying to save face. Yeah, it doesn't sound like him, though. Or, I think, like, so considering the tweets he was making the night before, all this, like, homophobic stuff, I think he was in such a deep slumber because it was a Scrooge moment. He was being visited by the ghosts of homosexuality past, present, and few. And like he obviously couldn't wake up because it was so gripping and he came up and he's no long he woke up he's no longer homophobe But that whole process made him neglect his duties. Yes. So actually we should probably thank the fact that there's no Traits on Monday because now the commissioner is no longer homophobic. Yeah, due to the gay ghosts. Yeah, although I don't think that's true because he still is a

I think I think that he's just fulfilling the role he was born to play which is that that of the fat controller from Thomas the Tank Engine. I've always hated that car. Oh, yeah. And he never did anything on that show. He was a cat. And the trains were always sad and they always wanted better. And the fact controller was always just like, no, your trains.

And then it was always, I just hated him as a kid. So I think he's just, it's just art begets life, isn't that? I'm working on the theory that, like, no one actually knows how trains work. Like, they don't, I mean, they don't make much sense to me. Wait. And so, like, I think it's just like, it's going to happen that they're going to stop. And everyone needs to come up with excuses, like, oh, like, it's his fault, it's his fault. But secretly, like, no one knows how these things run and when they're sentient.

Yeah, exactly. We actually know. Oh, my God, they're real. No, we know who's to blame for the train's not running on Monday. The gays. Yeah, it's always the gays fault. Our gear is from Road Microphone, and we are part of the ACASCRED Network.