The Chaser Report - Reviewing Antony Green | Election Aftermath

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

The post election recap continues as the entire Chaser team aim their biting criticism towards the one sacred topic all other media groups fear to touch: Antony Green. Is he an election genius, or would we be better off getting election analysis from Mr Bean? Listen as Chris and Chas make their case for who gave the best coverage of the 2022 Federal Election. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In an election that will determine the fate of the entire universe, there's only one podcast holding politicians accountable. Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese, Who Will Boom? Find out on The Chaser Report, election edition. Welcome to the election edition of The Chaser Report. The aftermath, it is Tuesday, the 24th of May. We've got Charles, Chris, Craig, Chaz, Andrew and. Don with you again. Guys, as you know, I've been during this election campaign reacquain myself with Australian politics because I've been paying no attention to it whatsoever and I'm learning

something all the time and I learned a lot over the last 48 hours as well on election night because I you know, I'd unlearned all there was to know about Australian politics and I flipped all across all the channels and learnt quite a bit. For a start, first of all, the results. People, they spoke loud and clear and I think we need to acknowledge this that the Australian people, they have a resounding note that they want a lot fewer women in the Liberal Party. That's clear. They also want a lot less members like Josh Frydenberg and a lot more members, like the only

person to win in Melbourne from the Liberals, which was Alan Tudge. Yeah, Tudgey. They want a lot more Alan Tudge. It was touching, to be fair, it was a great campaign because he entirely remained so that no one could see him or remember who he was. brilliant, absolute genius. I mean, if Morrison had done that, he had a chance. The mistake Morrison made again and again and again

was to do media appearances. Yes, exactly. If only you hired for six weeks, you have a chance. But no, to be fair to Morrison, though, he has been adopting the Tudge strategy of not doing the job he's being paid to do for many years. That's true. The thing I love the best about Alan Tudge, though,

I have to say, is literally the day after the election, he pops up again. For the first time, like, six months, He was on Sky News talking the day after the election, talking about how Peter Dutton is going to be leader, and Peter Dutton is going to reinstall the traditional values of the Liberal Party. And I just wanted the journalist to stop and go, so Alan Tudge, just tell us what are those values that you think? What are these values exactly that you think the Liberals should have? Things like, you know, marriage should be between a man and a woman and another woman.

And probably another woman. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. There was some money that changed hands. Who knows from whom thought? The second thing I learned, though, about elections. On election night, I learned this, that the commercial networks have just stopped trying.

For years and years, they made a token effort to compete against the ABC in Sky. But this year, they really threw in the towel. I mean, like, take Channel 9, for instance. They've had basically revolving their coverage for the last two decades, some stupid graphic. There's been like a shredder. There's been a boot. There's been a crusher. And they always mangle, like physically destroy the candidates that have lost the election campaign.

It's election night done as a sort of roadrunner cartoon, isn't it? Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. And this year, they clearly, I've never heard a concept that reeked more of first ideas, good enough, guys. Let's move on. Because what their idea was this year was Scott Morrison at one point in time on, on 60 Minutes sung April Sun Cuba on a ukulele, right? Very funny moment, go around on social media.

Great. For some reason, Channel 9 decided that was the pivotal moment of the last three years, and they got a robot to perform April Sun and Cuba on a ukulele in a graphic. This robot had a massive Toyota logo on it as well for some. Yeah, wait for it. It's performing April Sunning Cuba for way too long, I might add, as well, while the hosts are trying to pad for this robot to stop performing. And then they would take the ukulele and hit the MP all the way to Cuba.

Oh, great. So Josh by Cuba by a robot. Sponsored by Toyota. As if Toyota endorsed the decision of the election. Yeah, yeah. Well, we get this one done. Tim Wilson, Goldstein, another one. Sorry about this, Jay.

These are all my friends. This is really sad. All my friends. I understand. Yeah, so that was Channel 9. And if you think that's a pathetic effort, that was a big effort compared to Channel 7 because they didn't even bother with that. All they did was just take their touchscreen TV, which every other network had, and just

call it the screen of dreams. That was it. That was their effort. Dreams of a budget for better graphics. They took that from me. I've been calling my phone the screen of dreams for years. I can't believe they stole that. They simply do not care.

I mean, as far as I'm concerned, Channel 7 are just one step away from replacing the House of Reps with the Big Brother House and just getting it over with. They do not care at all about politics. But there is another way. And I learned this as well on election night. Richo showed us the way because like on Sky News, at 651 by my count, the first numbers start to come in. We all joke about the moment when there's like 16 votes in McNamara or something and they're going, well, I'll be too close to call this point in time, et cetera. And yeah, and they, they were rehearsing their talking points.

And then Richo just shut up for five minutes while they were doing all the different hacks were residing their talking points. And then just, I've seen enough, Labor's going to win. And then they just stopped because they didn't know what to do. That's right. Literally the first, like, they couldn't argue with him because I had no data to argue. None of them had come in. It's funny.

I think that's exact same time that Charles was tweeting, fuck, Labor's not looking good. Charles, you should have been watching Sky, mate. I love how Richo's basically dead. I mean, he's sort of a corpse just held up on a Sky News armchair. And yet, even in death, he still got his finger on the polls. And called it correctly sooner than anyone. The Numbersman is still the great numbersman.

I don't know if that's fair to say that. I think if you look back at all of the Sky News coverage of every election, he just does the same thing he's just all he just sits there and the first thing he says is Labor's won this and then he kind of goes back to sleep you know clock stops and it's right every

you think maybe it's just a recording and he is actually dead oh it's just a hologram from last time yeah yeah that's what they're there remember the American election coverage years ago had the hologram and there was that huge thing

imagine this guy went to all the trouble of getting enormous amounts of money together for a hologram And then they just made a hologram of Graham Richardson saying, I've seen enough. Labor's got this. He's such a sort of odd character in the punditry landscape now, because he inhabits the sky after dark space as a member of the Labour Party. So on some issues, I think he's actually become as sort of nutty as your Paul Murray's.

But then on election night, he's still sort of a true believer, isn't he? Yeah, oh, yeah. Oh, he absolutely is. There's no doubt about that. I should say, though, he does actually show the way forward, I feel, for the commercial networks who I, as I said, I mean, Channel 10, you look at Channel 10. They basically had three quarters of the project panel on there.

They were just, they did not want to be there. No one was watching them. Even the floor manager of their broadcast wasn't watching them. The ratings figures came out. It was something like 60,000 people watched Channel 10. No, I did, I actually did Channel 10's election coverage in 2016. Oh, that's when the Trump election. And I actually, I called it correctly earlier than anyone else.

in Australia. And then you called it incorrectly and then incorrectly and then incorrect. But it is true that the control room and the floor manager, this is absolutely true, was watching the Channel 9 coverage. To get their results. Yeah. To sort of, no, no, because I think it was better coverage than our coverage. And just kept on communicating to us through our earpieces what Channel 9 was doing.

And that was how we got our sort of direction for what to do. That's true. That's great. That's great. Given that, I just reckon what they should do is just hire the hologram ghost of Richo, get him on, then end the coverage after 10 minutes and there's throw to the NBL or something like that. Like, that's what Channel 10 want to do. Yeah, put on a repeat of have you been paying attention, which they know will rate better than election coverage.

They used to just be there play, Happy Gilmore. That's what you want. You want to watch Happy Gilmore instead. Exactly. I just hope that the hologram of Richard doesn't get near any holograms of any factories. You're absolutely right, yeah. It's so interesting how, we're old enough to remember when Channel 9's election coverage was vaguely credible. You know, you're Lorry Oaks, period.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they took it seriously. It's almost now they're so insecure that the only things that rate are like maths and reality shows that they try to turn political coverage into a reality contest with, you know, it's not that far off, holy moly, you know, with all the graphics and the way they treat the contest. So it's not a contest of ideas. It's just, as Chaz described, it's boiled down to wacky graphics, silly slogans and stuff, and it's sort of a real shame.

The flip side of this, I actually didn't think the ABC coverage was very good this year. They were actually incredibly slow to call. They were very, almost suspiciously slow as if they almost look disappointed in the results. The thing is, Anthony is very cautious, and so he's always wanting to be cautious about it. But exactly, I was flicking between. Unfortunately, I was in the country area, did not have Channel 9, so I didn't get to see the April Sunday, Cuba thing. But you'd flip between them and it would be like the ABC going,

oh, we're not sure, this could go either way. And you'd cut it, kind of Channel 7 literally, and Skydove had massive things going, Labor wins. By 11pm, I don't think the ABC had really technically called it. They never did. They never did. Because we were watching ABC. We only watched ABC.

We would have had a much better party if we did. They kept super in Labor wins, and then Anthony kept walking it back. But the best thing, the best thing about the ABC coverage by mile was every time they threw to Anthony Green, they'd say, Anthony Green now has an update on the seat of Tangie or an important announcement, breaking news. And he goes, oh, no, no, I'm not going to do that. Yeah, we jump around going, oh, oh, but first of all, I just want to look at the seat of Fowler instead. If anyone needs further evidence that Anthony Green is not this legendary broadcaster, watch the

fucking broad car. Every time they threw to him, he was flustered. He was like Mr. Bean doing the election coverage. I don't think he'd use the catch screen before. He spends more time apologising for his tech or trying to explain his process than actually giving you fucking numbers.

The one thing he has a reputation for. Can we just, if this podcast does nothing else, can we end the belief that Anthony Green is some election master? Craig Rukasel would like to distance him himself from the comments of Chris Daylor.

I'm not involved in that. Charles is right. Every time they threw to him, he'd be a producer's nightmare. They've obviously in Lee Sales' ear going, okay, well, now throw to Ante to look at the national picture. And he goes, oh, no.

No, I just want to look at Deacon. But at one point there was a big, yeah, the big breaking news fan fair. Yes. That was great. And he was like, oh, oh, what? Well, he's got no sense of show biz or the show must go on.

He goes, no, fuck what they've thrown to me to do. I'm just going to do what I want to do. And all hell hell. be paid. But the revolution is underway, right? Because they had a whole other set of numbers. Like, what was the division between him and then David Spears? There's this whole other panel that's, because Spears previously held on the sky coverage. So you know he's a good anchor of election night. I thought Spears was quite slick. Yeah, yeah. And he's got this amazing giant wall that's much better than it in his touchscreen. He's got the 3D

grass. Oh, you think there was a bit of one-up and shit. Yeah. And then he had another panel that he got to talk to for a video. There's always too many cooks. Yeah. I didn't even know who they were. Andrew Proben did nothing. I don't know why Probin was there. I thought Crabb gives really good analysis and good interviews. Yeah, yeah. Tingle's great. Yeah. Why Provin was there and, you know, my thoughts on Green are very clear. You barely heard from Tingle the whole night. I should come back about once every two hours and nail it and then you wouldn't say one of the greatest political analysts in the country and we heard from a three time. To be fair to Anthony Green though, like, I mean,

I agree with Christi, he was, it was very slow. But it's not so much about him taking time to make calls. It's more that his time to, the time it takes from to operate his touch Like every time I put the ABC, he's fumbling around, pressing... You've got to remember he's a senior. Like, they're not good with technology. And you've given him a job that requires operating the most complicated screen in the country. This isn't an ATM. This is like an advanced touchscreen that's trying to predict our democracy.

And getting it to work with his punch card system. Election News You Can't Trust, the Chaser, report. Anyway, it wasn't all about the numbers and the presentation of election. I actually learned about policy, which is strange after this election campaign. But I learned from endless labor talking heads on all the networks, the elbow was going to end the climate wars. Wow.

And now that to me, that was an interesting talking point, the ending the climate wars, because it really to me conjures up images of the clone wars from Star Wars. They don't be associated with that series of Star Wars in any way, shape, or form. But number one, I'd just like to know what exactly are the climate wars? Why are there many of them? Why is there multiple wars out there that are climate wars? And are we talking about every single, like the 85% of Australia that supports climate, that believes in climate change versus the Australian editorial board?

Is that the climate wars? Because that's not much of a war. That's an actual war. And secondly, I feel that might be unwise for Albo the set expectations that he's going to end the climate wars when three years time there is going to be an election between him and Peter Dutton. And something tells me that the climate wars will not have been ended by then in three years time.

I don't know. Call me Ostradamus, but I don't think it'll all be sorted out in three years time. Chaz, I've got to pull you up. You've just suggested that a lot of it. Labor leader would go full-term. Yeah, that's true. What was I think? I mean, yeah, I mean, I totally agree, Chaz.

I guess, let's say that Labor improves their current climate targets, like with a bit of pressure from the Greens and the Teals. You'd have to be stupid, wouldn't you, as a Lib leader, going into the next election, on a platform of winding that back? Wouldn't they almost appreciate the cover of Labor and government making some inroads on this? Because the lesson of last Saturday was that there's no votes in winding it back further. They've either just got to meet to it and go, I agree with the current position and not make an issue of it. Or, as is being proposed, go so far to the right as to risk, you know, oblivion.

You would think that that was true in 2013. Yeah. Because the Greens and Labor made a whole of inroads. And then Abbott just turned it into a carbon test. Yeah, Abbott was masterful. And suddenly it was... But I reckon... Victory winning stuff.

Don't you think the message has sort of sunk in from this election? No, I actually do think it was a turning point that they think, oh, voters in safe liberal seats do actually care about climate. But they always did. Our only chance of winning back those seats is to not push back any further on this. But they can't get back those seats. The seats they've got to go after are outer suburban Labor seats now. But they're pro-climate, aren't they pro-climate too?

Well, they are now, but if you tell them that everything's gone up in a matter, You've got a high inflation for the next three years. You blame it all on the carbon tax. I agree. Inflation's the only thing that the licks can bank on. And then you just wind it back. We've got to look after ourselves. Once again, I hate to bring actual analysis into our common discussion.

But there's no doubt. I shouldn't say there's no doubt. I think it's very likely that power prices, regardless of who's in power, are going to increase a lot over the next three years. Not just inflation, but just that's the part of the cycle. we're in and it's going to be a cost of living election like it's going to be in three years time they're not going to say we we hate climate climate um climate action they're going to say we need to bring down power prices that's what they're going to say yeah but ironically the problem

with that is that the reason the power prices are going up at the moment is because coal and gas is much more expensive yeah but there's no you just you just lie but there's no i know i know that yeah but the problem is it was really effective but the reason why we've had this whole thing is because of the nationals, which have 4% of the primary vote, being funded by the coal lobby. Like, it has nothing to do with what the voters want. The Liberal Party has to do what the nationals say in the coalition agreement for it to work at all.

That's why Turnbull couldn't do it. What don't they just spike that? It's 4%. Are they entirely dependent on that? Well, they're talking about getting rid of the coalition. Because one of the genuinely sad things about, you know, whatever your politics, Frydenberg's loss, was that he did negotiate the neg with Turnbull,

which was, you know, a genuine attempt to try and end the so-called climate wars and have an energy policy that would have kept, would have just sort of neutered this whole issue and the country could just move on. But because the nationals and the far right with Abbott all spoiled for political reasons to oust Turnbull over it, we never got the NEG policy. And now we're in the position where it looks like the LIBS don't care about this issue at all. I don't think the NEG was that good, but yes, yeah. But it was something.

It was something, exactly. It was all he could get. Could you teal regional, like rural seats? Could you teal the Nats? What do you mean? That's where it came from. The first teal was Indar. Yeah, Indy.

Which was a traditionally conservative seat. Yeah. Throughout conservative. So, yes, you totally can. And Homes of Court did say on election night, I think it was an interview with the ABC. There's plenty more seats. In next election, we're going to be going for more. Yeah.

I just want to hear from Andrew on this. Look, I'm just still disappointed that ABC didn't have a Toyota branded local. I'm fuming and I haven't heard of word. They were meant to, but Anthony Green couldn't get it up on his screen. Let me wrap this up. There's been a lot of change over the last couple of days, but some things have never changed. Even for me who's been tuned out for last five years, some things. Like for instance, Australian politicians desperately hoping to be liked by America.

That has never changed. That is eternal. John Howard did it with Bush, Gillard did it with Obama, Morrison did it with Trump, and now Albo is off to a flyer with Joe Biden. This is how Anthony Albanese described the conversation he had with Joe Biden.

I received a phone call last night and had a very fruitful and positive conversation renewing my acquaintance with President Biden. the relationship. Okay, fruitful and positive conversation, renewing acquaintance. This is how Joe Biden described exactly the same conversation. I'm looking forward to seeing him and the quiet matters.

Have you spoken to him yet? I called him on congratulations, but that's it. You know, you can't expect Joe Biden to retain any details of anything, jazz. But also, in what way, Chaz, is that not fruitful? I mean, if he'd rung him and said, you're a fuck with, that's not fruitful. But a congratulations is sort of,

Productive? I'm just glad that Albert didn't release the text messages that they sent each other. Our Gives from Road Microphones are part of the ACAST Creator Network. Catch you next time.