The Chaser Report - Sami Befriends Clive Palmer | Sami Shah

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

After receiving numerous texts from Craig Kelly, Sami Shah has realised his fondness for the UAP. Dom explains how NewsCorp have solved climate change, while Zander discusses the hottest gossip from their senate enquiry. Plus Charles has discovered a new favourite podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode of The Chaser Report is brought to you by Ospole Twitter, the worst place on earth, with anger for the whole family. Come visit and enjoy rides like seeing all the political hacks in the media and political hacks in the public throwing tantrums about how much everyone else sucks. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome the Chaser Report on Tuesday, the 7th of June. Gabby Bolt, Charles Firth and me Dom Knight. And Gabby and Charles, this is a day on which history was made.

History. Really? Yeah. It was. What went on? You might remember that in 2008, Barack Obama said these inspiring words. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. No, that's the moment that climate change became a thing that everyone was paying

attention to. That was the moment that we started doing something about it. That was when he won the Democratic nomination. Unfortunately, it didn't really turn out the way that he'd hoped the climate is fun or fuck now that it was in 2008. But yesterday, yesterday was the day when truly the seas stopped rising and the planet began to heal because yesterday News Corp committed to fixing climate change. What? So wait a minute. You're saying the people who literally promote climate denial on things like Fox News are suddenly what dirty

environmentalists. Suddenly they've come around to the right cause. I mean, because after decades of promoting all that stuff about climate and lies, they're going to spend two weeks campaigning for net zero in 2050.

Two whole weeks, guys. Two whole weeks. Sometimes I think I'm living in a simulation. Like, I sometimes think I'm living in a game of Sims and I've gained sentience and nobody else has. Very Truman show. Like, I don't trust a single thing.

thing Sky News says. But Gabby, company-wide. What are they going to do, buy fucking key cups in the office? What are they going to fucking drink through metal straws? What's the plan? Look, when I say company-wide, it doesn't actually include the Australian, okay? But it includes the Metro newspapers and Sky News for two weeks. And Sky's going to do a featured documentary.

And if there's one thing Sky News is known for, it's well-researched and argued documentaries. Do you think they're accidentally going to reverse engineer themselves in education? Look, do you think during those two weeks, they might actually find have an epiphany that's like, wow, actually, wow, the climate is a bit fucked. No, no, I think everyone will see that Sky News is now pro the environment. And they immediately go, like, I know I will go, oh shit, okay, I'm on the wrong side of that and become anti-environmentalist. Charles, no, that's so, that's so cynical and negative.

They've got their best guy on this, okay? Oh, yeah, who've they got? Tucker Carlson. Joe Hilderbrand. Joe Hilderbrand! Oh, great. What do you mean Craig's not doing it? No, you don't get Craig we didn't get Hilderbrand. I mean, Hilderbrand has been talking up climate change as a real thing for a very, very long time.

I mean, admittedly, in an interview on Corey Bernardi's show not long ago, he doesn't seem to like the people involved in actually campaigning against climate change. Dushbags like Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg, who I'm not quite sure I even knows what she's doing, are the worst possible advocates for this cause. Hold on, did you just call a child a douchebag? He did. So he's the one he's going to change Australia's mind and improve things. Aren't you excited?

I'm sick of it. I'm sick of this fucking country. I'm sick of this world. I'm over it. Fuck. Admittedly some cynics, including friend of the show Cam Wilson, have argued that this whole thing is just to provide cover for SCOMO so that he can make a tiny, meaningless commitment to net zero.

in 2050, stop the US and criticising us every week and not have to do anything meaningful. I choose to believe it's a new News Corp and we're all saved. On today's show, Zand is going to take a look

at the News Corp adherence at the Senate inquiry. Wait, hang on a sec. Surely the timing's coincidental. Oh no, I'm sure it's just coincidental that there was a Senate hearing hours after they announced this whole climate change reversal.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, no, it's nothing to do with that. And speaking of pollution, Sammy Schar is going to take a look at all the Craig Kelly text messages that we've all been receiving. I still haven't got mine. It'll come. But let's first of all go to Rebecca Day and Minow in the Chaser Newsroom. Scott Morrison has shown his commitment to listening to women by booking himself as the opening keynote speaker at a women's safety summit.

The Prime Minister said he decided to speak after double checking that the Women's Safety Summit didn't come at the expense of a men's safety summit. The opposition leader in Victoria, um, what? His name is under pressure this morning after a number of Liberal Party colleagues quit the front bench yesterday, all but ensuring a spill for the top job. Matthew Someone, Tim Watson, Tim Watson's face, James Hoosers Watson and a guy called Bill resigned, saying that the current opposition leader doesn't have enough name recognition to win against the Andrews government. News Corp has announced it will pretend to care about climate misinformation. The announcement came hours before a Senate hearing on misinformation.

The push will be led by Joe Hilderbrand, showing just how much News Corp cares about this issue. That's the latest Chaser News you can't trust. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno, and I'm going to go and find out the Victorian opposition leader's name now. Oh, actually, who cares? The Chaser Report, sponsored by OzPol Twitter, with daily hashtags about how Scott Morrison is a liar who cares more about photo ops than actually drafting policies that would solve the problems in this country. and how Anthony Albanese, isn't that?

It's time once again to catch up with the wonderful Sammy Shah, and I promise this time it's not going to be about Sydney and Melbourne tensions because, you know, they're ongoing, but it's still boring. Hey, Sammy, we can't. At this point, it doesn't matter. At this point, every number is infinite, and numbers mean nothing. Yes, your Premier said that, didn't he?

Yes. It's more philosophical than I thought a Premier's press conference would get, you know, kind of getting into what's the definitive real numbers and imaginary numbers, prime versus binomal and things like that. But here we are, you know, we're looking in fractions now just to make ourselves feel better. But Sammy, we've been for so long being like, oh, you're a Labor State, we're a Liberal State, you know, coalition state. But there's more to Australian politics and that.

There's a new force riding in to Save us all, isn't there? I mean, look, if I had to choose between Labor State and Liberal State, one-nation state and green state, clearly the answer is the United Australia Party state. I mean, why can't we all be united? Sorry? Why can't we be united? It's a beautiful vision, Sammy. It's a beautiful vision and it's a beautiful name.

I mean, it's so optimistic. It's headed by a man who is the face of trustworthiness. I mean, if you look up the word trustworthy in the dictionary, there is a picture of Clive Palmer right next to it, being hugged by Craig Kelly, you know, the two of them together. Can't think of a trustworthy of pace. And more importantly, they sent me a text message. Lockdown is lonely. When is the last time Liberal or Labour sent me a text message?

Clyde Palmer messaged me. Has he messaged you? Yes. Yes. Oh, really? I thought it was just me. He's messaged everyone in Australia, Sammy. Except for Gabby, obviously. They've got a random number generator, Sammy. So at best, you can say that you're random. Uh-huh.

So he's sliding into DMs on a random level and not, this isn't a personal preference thing. I'll be honest, I'm a little bit hurt and wounded right now. I thought that this was me and him kind of connecting finally. He would be the guy who'd help me kind of get out of this morass that is my life and start something. I went to his website. I even went to his website. Have you been? There's a link that you get in the text message.

And if you click on it, it opens up a website. You clicked on it? I thought that would somehow put Ivermectin into my veins. I wasn't brave enough. You have no idea how fascinating the privacy section of that website is in and of itself. So if you don't go to the website, now how do you recommend you don't? Because I have done it for you. Just like I listened to Matt Canavan on the Steve Bannon podcast, I have now done the great journalistic enterprise of visiting Clive Palmer's United Australia Party website.

The first thing you notice is there's a lot of yellow. And like a bright vitamin C overdose piss yellow, right? It's very, very yellow. Luminous piss yellow. That's great vision. Right? I'm painting a picture with my words. Now, the first thing you'll see is a picture of Clyde Farmer saying,

help us make Australia great, followed by three banners that say freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, lockdown destroy jobs, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, United Australia Party. So I don't know if you notice this, but they're pro-freedom and anti-non-freedom. Well, they definitely pro the freedom to just send spam text messages to millions of people, aren't they? That's a freedom that they exercise very liberally.

I mean, I don't know how you identify freedom, but for me, that's what could be freer than that, right? No one's freer in the world than spam message people. So they've got this amazing website. You go across the website. Now, the first thing I did was I checked the policies section, because that's pretty interesting to me. what policies do they actually have? Let's go ahead and take a look. I've got a bunch of different policies and lockdowns,

no domestic vaccine passports, respect the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, abolish the national cabinet. It suddenly jumps up a level. Wow. And then strengthen Australia's defense. So there's a bunch of different things. The amazing thing about it is, hang on,

and they've got this wonderful list of all the things that Clive Farmer has achieved. in his time in Parliament. I don't know if you remember, but he was a parliamentarian briefly. This is a long list. I'm going to go through as really quick as I can. Apparently, since, and he's saying, since I was elected the federal member for Fairfax late 2013, I've achieved some remarkable success in Parliament for you. He stopped the GP co-payment, personally. He freed over 436 children and families from detention. He resolved over 30,000 cases in detention. He saved low-income super for over 2 million Australians.

He kept low-income support. And this is my favorite one. He stopped Campbell Newman. Now, he doesn't tell us how he stopped Campbell Newman. He didn't tell us what he stopped Campbell Newman from doing. The mind boggles. Maybe Campbell Newman was running down the streets of Queensland with a machete just chopping people's

heads off. And Clive Palmer person stepped in and tackled him. Then you have this one, which is my favorite, removed Bronwyn Bishop as speaker. Just got up, picked her up, tossed her out. He was done. Unbelievable.

And there's a long list of achievements that keeps going on. Further from that, then you end up in sections where the only person, really, that they've got right now that they're fielding is, you know, Craig Kelly and what a great and amazing man, Craig Kelly is. But you go to the privacy policy of the website.

And this is where things get really interesting. They spend a lot of time talking about how we protect your personal information and how they do not get any access to any of your personal information. and then the list some of the things that they do get access to you when you sign up with the Clive Palmer United Party and as soon as I find the section, give you one second. Can I just on that, just want to look at that. It sounds like he's been working with Labor, right?

Like all those things that Clive achieved as members of Fairfax were things that Labor also have. So is he a Labor mole under very, very deep cover having spent decades working closely to elect the coalition? Well, what's fascinating is if you head over to they vote for you.org, which is just a website, a, you know, a human website not run by politicians, but keeps a track record of all the things that politicians in the parliament have voted for. You see the thing that Clive Farmer actually did vote for versus what he claims he voted for. And the list of has never voted on or voted against is far longer than the list of voted for. and so it's really bizarre

to see him taking credit for a lot of things. I think he does take credit for a lot of labor things. I don't know whether he is pro-labor, but here's what I do know is if I was to fill out the website

and sign up to be a member of the Clive Farmer Party, the website will then, quote, we ask for information such as your email address, name, date of birth, address, phone number, feedback, online inquiry,

submit forms, telephone conversations and emails. It jumps a little bit. It goes from... Telephone conversations. Yes. So not only do they get my email address, my name, my date of birth, my address, a phone number, they also want access to my telephone conversations and emails.

Are they listening to this? Wow. Are you listening to us right now? I mean, I'd be disappointed if you wasn't, to be honest. I'd even make it some great content here. In fairness, that is a freedom, isn't it? A freedom to listen in on your phone conversation. Yeah, exactly.

It's all about freedom. He loves freedom, as we know. Freedom and large dinosaur plastic figurines on his lawn or whatever the hell they get up to in his neck of the woods. Now, just stepping back, my understanding is the whole role that Clive Palmer plays is he spends $90 million on his campaign. He doesn't get any seats or anything like that. but by making himself out to be this sort of lyrican freedom-lobbing fuck-wit,

which is funnels votes from Labor, gives them to the Liberal Party and ensures that Labor can never be elected. Is that the... So here's the thing, though. I like that narrative because that narrative is convenient to our understanding of Australian politics and Labour is seen as the underdog. and, you know, but at this point, Labor's losing the federal election because

of News Corp and their campaign. Labor's losing the federal election because of Clive Farmer. Labor's losing the federal election because of negative Gary. Labor's losing the federal election because maybe at some point, Labor's just losing the federal election because Labor is shit at politics and really, really needs

to learn how to do politics on a 101 level. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sammy, Sammy. Sorry. Look, I'm going to just pull the hard on you here and just say, I don't think you understand how Labor politics works, right? Which is that you're not supposed to, as a leader, like, do anything at all. In fact, it's actually the only pursuit in the world where you should be as bad as possible when you're in opposition.

And then you just, and then, because what it does is it focuses all. the attention on the other side, you just disappear. And as long as you're not very good at your job, you'll then magically be elected because everyone will just only be focused on the other side. So that's the theory. And that is how they've tried to win most of their elections in the last 20 years. Of course, all those elections that they've done on. Yeah, they did it with Mark Latham.

They did it with, you know, they just do it all the time. And it's never worked. But that is a, that is, there is not a single Labor policy. who won't tell you that that's the clever way of getting elected. Yeah, and so in that case, at some point, maybe we have to accept that maybe Clyde Palmer is smarter than Labour Policy. That's just a damning statement indeed. Well, it's funny because I think his very yellow web design

is actually classier than the Labor Party. So, yeah, maybe you're right. You know what? I haven't been to the Labour website in years. I don't even know what the Labor website. I haven't been to the Labour website. They haven't been to the Labour website in years. It's still a banner photo of Kevin Rudd.

It's a Geocities.com. I give it Gonski. Yeah, it's a vote, Kevin 07, Gonski. Yeah, it's all. I mean, I still have fond memories of Clive when he posted a DVD to everyone in Australia. Do you remember that? Every letterbox got a yellow DVD from Clive. So now we're getting text.

This was, um, I don't remember that. I want to say around about late in 2010, or thereabouts before he got elected. So he posted upwards of 10 million DVDs across Australia? It was a shit video about Clive Palmer, but that's more than Labor's done for me, all the coalitions. That'd never give me even a bad DVD. That never given me even a text message to let me know that they care and that they're still alive. I appreciate his efforts to keep, I mean, you didn't manage to save the DVD industry in Australia,

but he spent millions. He certainly gave it a good go. Well, I mean, look, I will go on the. record as saying in my newfound changed, you know, lockdown personality in which I now have a love for Queensland, I have a sympathy for the suffering of the anti-vaxer. I might as well embrace Clyde Farmer as well. You know what? It's been too long since Chesa had a far-right conspiracy theorist member of the team who was willing to go out there and fight for invermecate. What is Joe Rogan having these days?

That's it. Inspector Gadgett, yeah, Inspector Gadget, thank you. Then I will go out and fight for that. Sammy, I here by formally challenge you to get to know Clive Palmer and become the Victorian leader of the United Australia Party. Now, here's the thing.

Here's the thing. I considered it. I was going to do it. I was going to surprise you guys today by saying I've signed up for it, but it requires me to give up my due citizenship. And, yeah, I'm still a citizen of Pakistan as well as Australia. and it'll really hurt my parents' feelings if I give up the Pakistani citizenship for Clyde Farmore.

And also, at this point, Pakistan's looking like probably a more stable opposite. The Chaser Report, sponsored by OzPol Twitter. Come enjoy the fun political debate where you have to have an opinion on everything. Unless you're a woman, then you just get told to fuck off because we're not welcome here. Now, I mentioned at the start of the show that news, news, Corp are going to save the world from climate change. But, Zand, have they been up to some other things in the past 24 hours? What have they been doing?

Yes, News Corp has successfully argued in the Senate that Ivermectin is an effective cure for COVID. What? Yeah. Fine, effectively. Is it as effective as Ivermectin is effective against COVID or actually effectively? Yeah, so essentially, Skydews argued that Corey Bernardi tweeting, Ivermectin will set you three, was not a misuse of their platform.

Well, it's true if you are a horse and you have worms. Exactly. I mean, that's the thing, right. Sky News said, we post over 50,000 videos on YouTube. And I mean, if you post it over 50,000 videos on YouTube, of course you can have a stuff up somewhere. I've actually made that very argument in terms of the chase of television career. But anyway. Yeah.

Like, how can Sky News be responsible if a little conspiracy theory or a bit of racism or a bit of bigotry or climate misinformation slide through? That's 50,000 videos. How can you expect a multi-million dollar company to check everything they upload? It's a fair point. Fair point, Santa. You know, and I mean, Kevin Rudd was getting on there saying that Sky News should be doing more, but, you know, he's an ex-politician. What does he know?

I'm so torn about this, because on the one hand, I think that what Kevin Rudd's been saying about news is really convincing and that I'm really impressed by it. But on the other hand, he's still Kevin Rudd. I mean, Kevin Rudd, we all know that Kevin Rudd. Rudd just wants a late-night chat show and the fact that Sky News has repeatedly turned down his offers for Kevin Rudd after dark. I have a solution for this.

We give Kevin Rudd James Corden's spot. Yes. Yeah. The late-late show with Kevin Rudd. Because a very wouldn't know who the fuck he is. And we don't have to listen to James Gordon anymore. Can you imagine carpal karaoke with Kevin Rudd? Hilarious.

Oh my God. Oh, my God. It wouldn't be called the light shot. It'd be called Induce season with Kevin. At this point, just induce season. Programmatic specificity. would be one of the segments. Late night's programmatic specificity

with Kevin Rudd. Okay, guys. And they'd have a dictionary segment where he'd just read out some dictionary words. Can you imagine the opening? So, the Senate. Yeah, those little rat fuckies are going to fuck us.

Actually, I would watch that. So how did it go? Have we resolved the issue yet? Does Skyny is going to behave itself? No. I don't know if I'm. listeners have ever watched a Senate inquiry before, but it's essentially old, overpaid people trying to launch the shittest ever zingers at each other. It's horrific.

Senator Rennick, have you got a question? Just to be clear, Mr Rudd has made it absolutely clear. He's not a doctor. He is not a medical expert. Neither are you. So I'm just wondering what evidence you would like out of Mr Rudd. Okay, then he shouldn't be calling people who are scientific doctors and experts, quack. Is he prepared to retract the statement? That is my question, yes or no? Senator, the term quack is spelled Q-U-A-C-K. It's been used to describe medicines and potions put together by charlatans to treat a particular

condition. My view, backed up by the Chief Medical Office of this country, is that anyone who seeks to advertise these treatments as being effective against COVID-19 is engaged in quackery, they are quacks, for which I make zero apology. So you're calling these people quacks, just to be clear. I think my most recent response, Senator, to your question just now was clearly clear. Thank you, Mr. Ruck. So you've got no respect for science at all.

Okay, that's the one each time. Thank you. And I presume a whole lot of Liberal Party senators made a point of pointing out all the likes on Twitter that Sky News Journows made, did they? No, no mention of that, not at all. However, they did mention that YouTube should not block any of the videos that Sky News uploads. Right. So YouTube is, so they're allowed to be in own business and exercise their own editorial control. YouTube isn't, is that the idea?

No, no, no, no. YouTube is a public town square because we all know that YouTube is a public resource and that it is not owned by a privately owned company. YouTube is, of course, owned by the Australian government and therefore shouldn't be able to exercise any control whatsoever. So if Sky News wants to upload Nazi videos, that's their prerogative.

That's what they can do. Sandra, I'm so sorry we made you watch the Senate inquiry. It's not fair. No intern should have to endure this. I'm actually really grateful because before today, I didn't know how to spell the word quack, Q-U-A-C-K, and now, any time that word comes up, if it's a social setting or maybe even a spelling bee, which I felt like I was watching today, I can nail it. You watched a pilot episode of Late Late Show with Kevin Rudd.

In all seriousness, Santa, at this point, would you rather spend an hour watching Sky News or Kevin and run. Sky News. For sure. This episode of The Chaser Report has been brought to you by Ospole Twitter. From hashtag Scotty from hair plugs to hashtag dictator Dan, this Wonderland can provide you with a real slice of what it feels like to be stuck in hell for all eternity. Before we go, I just want to share with you a podcast.

This is a podcast called Not So Random Facts. Right. And I was trying to wean my 13-year-old. of listening to sort of really boring books about facts and everything like that. So I was sort of trying to tempt him into the world of podcasts. You know, ideally with the idea that he listened to some professional podcast and eventually he might end up listening to The Chaser Report. Respecting Dad.

Yeah, yeah. I get it. Part of that long campaign. And so he likes facts, you know, as a 13-year-old boy would. You know, the first few episodes actually sounded quite interesting. Like, it starts like this. Human beings, you and I and everyone you know, actually glow. Right, so, you know, sort of odd subject matter, but it's quite interesting, right?

Like, would you listen to that? I guess, yeah. Yeah. Well, now I want to know why we glow. It doesn't sound true to me, but anyway. So I leave him to listen to that. This is to try and go to sleep, and me. And then he comes back, a bit 10 minutes later, he's yelling, Dad, Dad, come and listen to him. And he points out that, like, most of the rest of the ones, like, they've used the same music.

But they're horrendous subject matters. So this is the next one. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed more people than World War I. So you've got this nice upbeat music. And it's all about the Spanish flu killing, 18 million people. And then it just keeps going. So we've got another one. This never changed the music, no matter what the topic note.

Theodore Roosevelt was once shot in the chest during a campaign event. Oh, my God. And I promise, there are hundreds. There are hundreds like this. This is this. Dogs can detect cancer from smell alone. What the fuck? So it's fair to say my son is now addicted to podcast

only because they're unintentionally funny. Why do I feel like you're going to be murdered to this song? There are 47 bodies in Charles's backyard. I just think we need some new theme music. COVID is out of control in New South Wales. It's never going to get under control. Oh, man. Our gear is from road microphones.

Yeah, and that was worth a five-star review. Just that one segment in that podcast place, go in there and leave one. And we're part of the ACAS CRADA Network. Death is inevitable. Bye.