The Chaser Report - Rime of the AUKUS Mariner

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

War looms. Submarines are being built and deployed as we speak. Who will save our nations shores form impending doom? 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. It's Dom Knight and live from Adelaide. Charles Furr. Coming to you half an hour behind. I'm amazed we're able to do it together given you're so far behind. Charles?

Well, you know that my 12-year-old all week has been ringing up and telling me what's going to happen in half an hour's time. What a chip off the old block. And I said to him, you know that it's not how it works. And he said, yeah, it's a joke there. That's always the best kind of joke is that we've got to clarify that that's what it was afterwards. We'll mention during today's podcast when we were joking just to make it jump out of you. Can we get into some admin first, Charles? Because I've got to freak out about this impending conflict with China.

I've only got about five minutes for admin before I start genuinely freaking out. I've been reading the City Morning Herald. Oh, right. Okay. Oh, dear, yes. And the sub-plan is finally becoming clear, and it's all about Adelaide. So we'll get to that in a sec. Right after this.

Now, that ad, you can pay to skip. You can join the Deluxe program. It's supposed to be four bucks a month, Charles. But there have been a few admin issues, and if you subscribe through Acast Plus, it's still at the higher price. We are working on that. They're having to reprogram some database or something. I don't know what it is.

So it's still at $7.9. Our message to you is get in on the higher price while you can because it's not going to last long. Yeah. Yep. It's going to get cheaper. Don't subscribe. Which is what it is now. It is that now on Apple Podcasts.

And I can see numbers have actually dropped. People have been unsubscribing from ACAS Plus probably in irritation at the price not going down. So it's going excellently this part of the business. But the other good news, Charles, and I don't know if you're across this very exciting development in the history of the Chaser Podcast but we now have an absurdly overpriced option which is only available

from ACAS Plus Oh fantastic Yes Well that is that is that $2.99 a month Because that seems to be It's $20 a month And in return for $20 a month You get early access to the show

So as soon as they're recorded and upload And you can listen to them straight away On your private feed that you get as part of the ACAS Plus So they're really hot off the press As soon as our trustee producer, Lachlan uploads them, you can get them. Is that worth $20 a month?

Definitely not. So I can't wait to see if anyone subscribes. Unless you're a defamation lawyer and you want to jump on, you know, you could. Yeah, early access to the defamation. The theory is that if you are very rich, you probably believe in trickle down economics. So trickle some money down to us. That's what we're saying.

Right, okay. Yes. It's the boomer option. It's people who don't have to pay. rent in Sydney option. We should also make it the sort of option for, yeah, for older listeners who don't really understand what's going on. We make it the, let's call it the costor option.

Yeah, the compulsory option for over 65s. You have to do this. That's right. So no one, I think, has yet subscribed to the absurdly overpriced subscription. Go to chaser.com.com. Do you think maybe you should just even do it for one month, just to prove you can? Have you ever heard of marketing, Dom? Like, it should be called something like the super supreme goal.

edition or something you know like you don't call it overpriced oh we should call it the value we should call it the value subscription shouldn't we yes because a sarcasm the best deal but also if you ever have to justify to your partner or why is the this $20 per month charge on our credit card if you say oh that's the absurdly overpriced option then no one's going to like it's got to be like the value option but i photoshopped i put pictures of coins There are gold coins in the graphics for it. I figured people would like to feel it's like being part of a VIP club or in a private room at a nightclub except it's nothing like that.

We should talk about China because by now, according to the Fairfax papers, the nine papers, we're at war by now. Oh, yeah. Well, it was going to be 72 hours, I think they said. And it's been 72 hours since they published a whole series of articles about the impending war with China and how we have to strap up and get ready. And I've got to say, Charles, what an amazing way to provoke a war with China to write all these table-rattling articles.

So I have a theory about this, right, because Joe Dyer did a bit of digging around. She's the former head of Adelaide Riders Week and also host of the shop podcast. She did a bit of digging around. And she found that, so the Herald put together in the age, put together a panel of experts, right? And every single one of those experts had, you know, IPA funding behind them or various other think tanks like the Australian Centre for Strategic Studies or something. All of those think tanks, in turn, were funded by arms manufacturers, right? Like Raytheon and British Aerospace and Boeing, right? Well, of course.

So it is literally very good marketing because there's going, fuck, fuck. this whole orchestra deal may fall through. We may not go to war with China. What do we do? I know, we just declare war on China in the Herald. I know, we'll just funnel some money to some absolute dipshits at nine newspapers, get them to run it on the front page, and we're back in business, baby. Yeah, and I mean, you can guarantee that of all of the strategic issues that people in Beijing were worried about,

all the experts sitting there from the Red Army, the one thing they were not pondering is Australia. you're being stupid enough to provoke a war through Say Bradling, a country of 25 million with clearly crap technology going, let's take on China. That'll work. They wouldn't have even been pondering this until the Harold said within three years. If there's war within three years, we're not ready. Charles, I wouldn't assume we would ever be ready. How is it possible to be ready for a war against a country with a billion people? You know what I think we should do? What? I think we should suck up to China.

I have the one welcome our new overlords. Well, I mean, Kevin Rudd came out. I'm doing the Sam Destiari. Oh, very good. Well, I mean, that's the thing. If you're going to get paid by somebody, would you rather get paid by armed manufacturers or by the Chinese government?

In many respects, I mean, you've got to choose one of the two. China has better deals on, you know, cheap merch. That's true. That's definitely the manufacturing base. for your crap merchandise. I mean, your inflated by avocados and not being made by U.S. defense contractors. See, our inflated avocados,

frankly, did not sell very well. Maybe we need to pivot the chaser in favor of manufacturing arms. Well, maybe the avocado flotilla could be used because we don't have anything to defend us at the moment. This is part of the point of that defense. I mean, besides that massive moat that goes all the way around our entire country, that's making a land attack virtually impossible.

Besides that, we are completely undefended. Except that China could presumably, given the ease with which factories in China supplied your order for massive inflatable avocados, they presumably got a bridge of inflatables from the nearest Chinese base that they could just deploy. But Kevin Rudd ended this debate, who's going to be quite an important person going forward, strangely enough, as the Australian ambassador to the US. And he's worried that we'll go to war by accident. Yes.

Oh, I hate that. Basically, it'll be idiocy that brings Australia and the US into a conflict. And Charles, what better form of idiocy than getting all these people who are in the pay of defence manufacturers to write cyber rattling articles in the City Morning Herald? Yeah, but do you think, I mean, I don't know, do you think, I don't know who the, like the defense minister, whoever the Chinese equivalent of that is. Do you think they sit back over coffee or tea or whatever in the morning and read the herald?

I kind of suspect they don't. I'm sure they don't go, oh, Peter Hatcher. Oh, that's funny what he's got to say about global affairs. I can't start work without knowing what Peter Hatcher thinks. And, Charles, the thing is, when I sat down and read the first article in that series, I knew I was going to get something very balanced and very reasonable. and not at all alarmist by the fact that they called their security review

red alert those words just made me think well this is this hasn't got any sort of an agenda going on I know I'll tell you what has happened I think what has happened is there's been a production era at the Herald and they've accidentally photocopied

some 1950s style red you know red alert propaganda from the early 1950s back when that was last the problem and it's accidentally slipped onto the front page that's I think what has happened

don't you think like that that is a more sensible because because I mean or maybe Peter Harch has just gone a bit lazy or no maybe the AI that they used to pretend that Peter Hutcher still works there you know their Peter Harcher AI

has ingested too much red baiting stuff from the 1950s and it's just making it up Because I don't believe I mean I read occasionally Stuff in the Herald in the age And you go This has to all be AI by now

It's so banal It's so just Like every word You know how AI works Where it just guesses What the next word should be Yeah And it sort of gives you an 80%

Sort of certainty on that I reckon Like that's the entire Herald It's sort of like You just You just know where it's going The whole time Do you think an AI

Would do a better job though than Peter Hachar. I mean, the reader response, they published letters from the readers, almost universally condemning this entire Red Alert series. And my favorite article that they published a couple of weeks ago was, report warns China surging ahead of Western nations in vital technologies.

Gee, do you think? But, yeah. Okay, so. So what do we've already lost? We've already lost. Yeah, because of TikTok. Oh, yes. That's right.

So does that mean, like, because my 14-year-old loves TikTok. Do you think that one day he'll be like a bit like the Manchurian candidate and they'll activate him? Yeah. And he'll come in. And the very concept of which is so massively racist. Yeah. And murder us. There'll be a sleeping army of TikTok.

But why would they bother that? They've already got a billion. And it'll be called the, let's do the Invade Australia challenge. It'll be a dance. It'll be a special invading dance that will go viral. Yeah. The Chaser Report, news you know you can't trust. Okay, well, Charles, you ask what we're going to do.

The good news is we have a plan. Albo and Jim Chalmers, they've been putting together a big old plan. And it's or orcs, as I like pronouncing it. Yes. And so what we're going to do, it's a brilliant, brilliant strategy. And the thing I like about it is that we've learned from mistakes of the past, Charles. We don't want to make the same. as before.

No. So what we're doing is we're probably buying Virginia-class submarines from the US. We're getting old ones. Yes. And they've promised us that there won't be any like clankers. There'll be ones that work. But then having adapted to these American ones and gotten used to them and figured it all out, we're going to stop using those ones and buy a new British design that doesn't

yet exist. What? We're buying a new British design. design. And you know where they're going to be made, Charles? I thought these things were going to be made offshore. No. They were going to be made by people who know how to make them and already make them. I thought

it was the whole point of this deal. No, no. We're going to make them in Adelaide. Oh, really? Oh. In Adelaide. I thought it was Port Kimbler in New South Wales. Port Campbell might be the base. Oh, okay. Really. But the manufacturing, for some reason, it's Adelaide. It always comes down to jobs in Adelaide, just

like last time. If you're, you know, a person who's an expert in making submarines and you've just been sacked because they've got rid of all Australian submarines, just hang on for another, what, 10, 15 years. A couple of decades, yeah. And you'll have your job back. So the good news is, Charles, that we looked around all the available options, all the designs that were out there. Yes.

And we chose an untested British design. What is this? If there's one country you go to for high-tech manufacturing without. absolute reliable, reliability. It's Britain. But do you think maybe, can I just pose to you a counterfactual, like a sort of idea about what might actually be going on, which is, so defence projects always run late, right?

And over budget, right? That's the nature of these things, because, you know, the only people who get involved are people who are scammers. Oh, they're always very late, very late and overblown, yeah. So by announcing, that you're purchasing something that doesn't even exist yet, you're sort of basically banking on the fact that it will never exist and you'll never have to spend the money.

This is just genius, passive aggression by the Australian government. That's genius. Yes. And you get the jobs announcement as well. And they probably said, oh, can we make them here? And the British probably said, no way. And the Australian said, well, can we just say that we're going to manufacture it here, seeing the whole thing's never going to happen anyway? And they went, yeah, sure.

Actually, that works really well for everyone. Genius, Charles. So if you're not going to build subs, if there's no chance you're going to build subs, make sure that you don't build them in Adelaide to get votes from South Australia. So wait a minute, how much are the subs that don't exist yet going to cost? Do we know? Oh, I don't think we know the cost yet. Of course.

They haven't got the design. You can't possibly put a price on them because they haven't worked out what the design is yet. Oh, this is genius. How good is it? So this is Scott Morrison-level genius. But no, but it's not because we've actually got the, Virginia class submarines actually exist and we will actually have them. See, that's where they went wrong.

Now there's something solid to, you know. And do the Virginia class work? Yeah, they do. And this is the thing that's so amazing about them. Can they turn left? I believe that they can. It's actually a genuinely effective US product. But Charles, you know the most amazing thing about these submarines?

I mean, I'm very anti-nuclear. I've always thought Australia should never have anything nuclear. But then I learned that they come with a lot. lifetime supply of nuclear fuel, that once you have the power plant in there, you never have to add anything else. There's never any servicing, whatever. They might be servicing, but you don't never have to put more fuel in it, which makes me think, shouldn't we get this for our cars?

That's right. Yeah, because I reckon, you know, having lots of people driving around with nuclear power plants in their boot is a great idea, Dom. I think that sounds like it genius. But wait a minute, so they're like a nuclear battery almost, right? Yeah. But then at the end of their life, what happens to all the nuclear waste? Oh, you just, I know, 50,000 years or something.

Oh, and also, anyway, it doesn't matter. It'll be at Port Kimberler. And I mean... Yeah, it'll be at Port Kempler, that's right. So it's called the next generation astute class is what we're going to get. From the UK. You're so right. I'm looking at the details of you.

Of course, from the Sydney. So the British ones, just listen to the timing of this. Yeah. expected to begin construction in the 2030s and expect to stand a service in the 2040s, this is never going to exist. Well, it's the China War. It's for China War II, isn't it? Because we'll be at war in three years.

We'll use the Virginia class ones. The Harold Thomas, yeah. And then this new one. And the great thing is, you know, hopefully we can pay for them in British pounds, which by then will be worth less than the Venezuelan peso. So it'll be like, oh, 100 trillion British pounds, please. and there'll be like one Australian dollar by then, and we'll get the nuclear subs really cheaply.

Look, iron people have said for years that labour a crap at defence. Yeah. This is absolutely genius. See, other governments in the past would have committed to the hypothetical submarines, as indeed the Turnbull government and the Morrison government did. They would have only gone for the hypothetical ones, whereas we've gone, we're going to get even more hypothetical ones. But we'll get some in the meantime that actually were.

Look, I think this. really, it bodes well. I'm actually thinking of pivoting my career and becoming a submariner. A submariner? Yeah, as a result of this Virginia class thing. You should. Yeah. Take it out.

You know, they can spend three months underwater. They're the only quiet ones, aren't they? Yeah, no one knows that they're there. Whereas apparently one of the big problem with the Collins class is that they need to air regularly. So the one thing that a submarine is meant to do, which is have stealth and go under the water, our own Collins class can't do because it's got to constantly go up for air.

And also it can't turn left. I mean, imagine it'd be so good for relationships, wouldn't it? Just going, you know what, I'm going to be out of action for three months. Yes. I'm under the water. Yes. You can't possibly contact me. I'm on a stealth mission.

Sorry, I can't help you with your homework this afternoon. Yeah. I've got to go on the submarine for three months. I'm somewhere under the water I can't tell you where I have So there you go So our impending war with The only problem is Charles

If you put the two things together We are going to get These new submarines from America After we've already lost the War with China That's going to start within three years Oh so when do the Virginia class ones come along I'm not sure when the Virginia class is coming

But given that it's Australia Trying to acquire a submarine You can guarantee that it will be later than we need them Yeah I think Paul Keyes Hitting said that it was like throwing toothpicks at a woodpile, our contribution to the Taiwan Straits. The defence of the Pacific. Yeah.

The conclusion of all this is, we really had better not piss off China. Yeah, well, as I said, you know, I for one welcome our new overlords. I'm happy with that. You can't tell me there's any way that either of these countries can build submarines without using Chinese parts. But also, won't the Chinese arrive in Australia and then realize what massive racists we are and then just want to leave? This is the thing that has never been answered. Why would China want Australia? And if they did, they'd already have it.

Well, isn't it for the, I know. Why can't, why won't we just let them have the Pilbara or something like that? They can have Twiggy Forrest and Gina Reinhardt and Clive Palmer and we get the rest of Australia. That's a deal. I think. It's quite a good deal. I think that deal's probably being made as we speak. Petty Harch is leading the negotiations.

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