The Chaser Report - Scoring Freebies as a Candidate | Dylan Behan

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

Host of NewsFighters podcast and master of funny clips Dylan Behan joins Charles, Chas, and Dom for rundown of the election debates. Meanwhile Chas ponders the pros and cons of the government owning your home. Plus Dom has the latest on everyone's favourite captain's pick with another Devesdropping. 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. Hello and welcome to the election edition of The Chaser Report. It is Thursday, the 12th of May, nine days to go until the election. I'm Dom Knight. Hello, Charles Firth. Hello. And hello, Chas Lichadillo.

Hello. Back from the cave where we have to watch the Sky Election Channel. Thank you for rescuing me for five minutes. Now, I've got two great pieces of news for you both this morning. First of all, no more debates. We've had three. Apparently, that is the absolute limit. So thank God for that.

Dylan's going to recap them for us a bit later on in the podcast. And the second good bit of news is that an old friend of ours has entered the campaign. Tony Abbott is back. in the seat of Warringa. So you might remember Catherine Deaves has been running there for a segment we call Deves Dropping. Deves Dropping. She's really been the breakout star of this election campaign.

And things have gotten so bad in Warringa. Apparently all of her volunteers have quit. So the tiny habits had to come out and said, look, we've got to stick together. You might not like the way she was chosen, but I admire her integrity. She sticks up for what she believes in. And sticking up for what you believe in

and getting smashed in Warringa is exactly what Tony Abbott's an expert on. So Tony Abbott's now the voice of reason in Warringa. That's what's happened. He's not the voice of Warringa. That would be Zali Stegel, quite comprehensively. But nice to have him back. It's been actually quite awkward

because Josh Frydenberg is so worried about losing Kuyong. Yes. He spent the past couple of days distancing himself from Scott Morrison on Catherine Deves. So a little bit awkward there. It's good to know Tony Abbott's coming in strong on this one. I mean, what was Josh Frydenberg's calculation there? Do you think, you know, like, why is he spoken up only now?

Like, Catherine Deves has been on record for weeks, for almost a month and a half now, with all these horrible things, suddenly now, just 10 days out from the election, he suddenly goes, oh, hang on, I reject those things. Was he sort of hoping to pick up the transphobe vote in Kuyong and then sort of realized, oh, hang on, we just don't have enough bigots in this election

to get me across the line? I might have to sort of recalculate. Is there what's going on? Why the fuck hadn't he spoken out before? It's a very good question. I mean, obviously the polls aren't wonderful for Josh Frydenberg right now. I would have thought transgender or not. He's pretty happy for anyone's vote right now.

Yeah, exactly. Why distance yourself from that massive transphobic vote that he can tap into? Isn't he and the other moderate liberals, they're trying to run as non-liberals? Like, if you see Dave Chalmers' posters, there's a giant poster of him on the Edgecliffe centre. Is he in the Liberal Party? He's got the tiniest little postage stamp as a liberal logo. He's a till. He's a till.

I've seen all his posters. He's a till. And the Liberal logo is like on a white background on his posters. You can barely see it. It's appropriate. Freidenberg has said he's been pretty outspoken and strong in my criticism of the way Catherine Deaves has approached this issue. He's also...

He's himself from the PM on the Kangaroo Court. So, Frydenberg's painting himself into a tiny corner where he's... Not as right as the PM, but he's not quite as unstable as the tails. So this is the man who wants to be the liberal opposition leader. So he actually wants to win the seat and have Scott Morrison lose, doesn't he? Isn't that what he wants? He's getting practice now being the opposition leader, isn't he? He's the opposition of the government within the Liberal Party right now,

and he'll be the opposition leader for the entire country should he win his seat. But how do you think it's actually going to play out chairs for him? Because it just feels, hear me out, it just feels like he's wanting to have his cake and eat it too. You know, he's sort of tapped into the transphode vote and then now sort of going, oh, and also I'll try and pretend to not be a transphobe as well, having not said anything for a couple of months. Look, I think it's actually very rational. I'll tell you why.

I think you painted that properly before Charles. This is, for Josh Frydenberg, this is a question of transphobe vote versus transgender vote, right? Which one's larger? Now, I can see why he would have thought in Kuyang that maybe the transphobic vote would have been greater a few weeks back. But with a month of Catherine Deaves, I think most people have now decided that they, if she hates transgender people, they must be transgender. Yes. So I think now the transgender vote is basically 99% of Kiyon. Yes.

And then the final nail in the coffin was Tony Abbott coming out in face. of transphobia. It's like, oh, fuck, we're all transgender now. I mean, I think it's important to say, I want to draw a line of sand here, gentlemen, and say that there is a place for moderate liberals, like Frydenberg, there is a place. It's very awkward for him,

but there is a place, and it's called being a dearly dependent. So I look forward to him running next time. The other thing that's coming up on the show is Chaz is going to have a look at Labor's controversial housing policy. And we have a stunt. Alexa went out dressed as an election candidate

to see what free shit he could scab. First though, Charles's election rap. This is the wrap for Thursday the 12th of May. The final debate for this shit show of an election was last night and I would tell you what happened but I forgot to watch it. I had some very important laundry to catch up on. What I can tell you is that Morrison's main line of attack last night was against Labor wanting wages to keep up with inflation. That's right. A man on over half a million dollars a year. appeared on national television last night and said that a buck 50 an hour pay rise was way too much. Mr Albanese is saying $1 an hour additional for people on $20 an hour.

It seems pretty reasonable. You know, you just can't be loose with the economy with things like this. That would push up inflation and it would push up interest. This morning, Josh Frydenberg slammed Labor's position on wages as well, pointing out its incredible impact. And so you've got more than 2.7 million people that are going to be impacted by such a decision. Impact, hang on, what does impact mean in this context? It means not getting a pay cut this year.

Josh, you sound appalled about the impact. It's a good thing. They're going to be impacted by such a decision. How out of touch is the entire fucking political class that Labor is cast as irresponsible on this issue? Somehow, despite literally only arguing for the bare minimum, which is that workers shouldn't get a pay cut this year, the very comfortable political class have deemed labour as the reckless radicals.

Maybe the rise in heart attacks recently has nothing to do with COVID and more to do with how fucking fucked our entire political establishment has become. Sorry, I was probably supposed to make a joke here. Look, put it this way. There is a ripe opportunity in 10 days' time to give many of these people a taste of their own pay cut. permanently. That's the wrap for Thursday the 12th of May, back in a sec.

The Chaser Report, election edition. So we've pre-recorded this bit because Alexer is actually in America. We pre-recorded this with Chaz as well, because Alexer, you haven't had a bit of fun of the sort that I kind of Chaz used to do back in the day as well, mucking around on the campaign trail. Oh, it's a lot. lot of fun. Yeah, we were, we were mucking around. I was impersonating. Oh, wait, no, that's the wrong word legally. What was I doing? The lawyers are doing. I wasn't impersonating anyone. I was, I was telling people that I was an independent candidate called Hollick Savilevich,

and I'd go to businesses and try to do photo ops in order to get free things. Oh, scamming them. Yeah, exactly. Because you see them everywhere, like during the election period, politicians like getting haircuts, eating food and doing all this cool stuff. Like, why can't, I do that? their PR opportunity. And did you get a lot? So much. So much. It was almost depressing because, like, you went to all these small businesses and I guess

they're starved, like, I guess politicians don't go there. And so they were just so excited to see me and they were like telling me all about their problems. It was horrible. And then they were like, oh, here, eat this food or like have these flowers, have this stuff. Did you have a PR guy next to you or did you just show up in a suit? No, we had it.

We added the full entourage. It was great. We had like a bunch of vague people. ER roles. Everyone wearing suits. We had like a big over-the-shoulder camera and like lights and cameras and it was an intimidating sign. Like you'd expect that I'm a politician. Yeah, you'd expect that no person who wasn't actually a politician would go. It's good to see the over-the-shoulder camera coming back because you'd film things on a phone. No, yeah. It's completely useless technology, but it's intimidating, which is important.

So did you scab enough stuff to break even on hiring the camera guy? Oh, probably not. But I did scab enough stuff to get horribly full. I ate so much. much food. We had everything. We had fettuccini, Savlarki, curries. We had, um, no, just all sorts stuff. So would you say this is the solution to the cost of living crisis? Just pretend you're a politician. Yeah, everyone should just start doing photo ops. Although there are some hurdles. The first person we went to was a florist. And I was like, hi, I'm the independent candidate for banks. My name's Alex of all. They're just like, oh, I thought we didn't have any independent candidates. I was like, fuck what I do. I just double down. I'm like, oh, no, there's two.

I mean, what are the odds of someone actually knowing who the candidates were in their electric? I had no idea. I was just like, I thought, I assumed people weren't engaged enough, but there you go, that florist. I mean, how far can you take this? Do you reckon you could get a house out of it? I mean, I'd got some pretty cool stuff. I got a cat. We went into a pet shop and did a photo up there and was playing with one of the animals, and I just walked out.

I'll say how far you could take it. You could get a primary school education, because these politicians are always showing up in primary school. You go back to year two. Let's do some colouring in. That sounds great. Well done, Alex. It certainly doesn't make me want to be a candidate, but it's good to know that police can get Paola so easily on the trail.

The thing is, it was weird because I felt so much like a candidate in the sense that all these people were talking about my problems. I was getting free food and I knew deep down that I wasn't going to do anything about any of their issues. Well, that is like a politician. Exactly, yeah. Election News You Can't Trust, the Chaser Report. So in the past week, there have been. Not one, but two debates where the two leaders squared off. Dylan Bain of the Newsfighters podcast, a very old colleague of ours,

who's worked on many Chaser TV shows, is here to run through them for us. Hey, Dylan. Hey, guys, how are you going today? I'm good because I didn't watch either of the debates. I was working both nights. We weren't up to 4 a.m. trying to find clips to make jokes out of, of which there were absolutely none from last night's very boring debate. I did briefly tune into the first debate,

and I saw two men shouting at each other and moderators trying to break them up, and failing it. Exactly. So the second debate on Sunday night basically sounded like this. It honestly sounds like you've been it honestly sounds like you've faked that clip Dylan. No, that was actual clips from the debate. That's the kind of adults conversation we like from our leaders, right? I hope you're not complaining, Dill, because that to me sounded better than I've ever heard Albo and Morrison.

I couldn't understand either of them. That's perfect. Exactly. The debates were a great chance. A lot of people, I think, outside of Sydney, don't know Albanese. So he took a chance to kind of introduce himself to people outside of Sydney who don't know him. I don't know how successfully he was, though. I came out of the womb a Labor voter and with three great face.

So I was raised by my late mum, who I paid tribute to today. I came out with three great face. Labor Party, the Catholic Church and the South Sydney Rugby League Football Club. All right. Don't know how many people outside of Sydney know what the South Sydney Rugby League Football Club is or care. Although, to be fair, it's a stronger brand than the Catholic Church. I was going to say, I don't know if you got the memo about the popularity of the Catholic Church lately. But also, just the terminology I came out of my mother's...

They're very graphic. I don't know. Was his umbilical cord a South scarf or something, wasn't it? Yeah, I don't know, I just, I find the whole essentialisation of everything that Albo does, sort of weird. Because it's the same as when he talks about the Labor Party will always be better on health education. Did he say that last night? The Labor Party will all, and you're just going, there's no, sorry. I'm just completely incoher here and on that.

He kind of tried to talk up the role of government, which we'll get to a bit later. But there were some recurring themes in the debates. Morrison kept coming back to what a rough couple of years it's been, but it sounded like he was just talking about himself. As we all know, the last few years have been very tough. It's been tough. It's been incredibly tough. The last three years, last two years in particular, have been incredibly tough. Over the last couple of years, we've come through the most difficult times

that we could have ever imagined and couldn't have contemplated three years ago. And people say he doesn't take responsibility. Yes, yes. That's just his polling numbers, I think he's talking about there. Meanwhile, Albanese's theme that he repeated a lot in last night's debate was basically, we can do better, and by we, I think he means Scott Morrison. We can do better. We can do better than that. We can do better than that.

And we can do better than that. We can do so much better than that. And we can do so much better than we're doing right now. His writers can do better than they're doing right now. There are such a things as synonyms, Alba. Maybe he's talking about the debate, because those two can definitely do better than what I saw the last two debates. Well, at least he's got his concession speech written for Saturday week if he loses. There were some great gotcha questions.

At the nine debate, the Sydney Morning Herald's David Crowe tried to snag Morrison with this great gotcha question. Mr Morrison, have you seen any corruption on your side of politics in your time? And if so, what did you do about it? No, I haven't. Never. No wrongdoing? No. Never happened in the Liberal Party at all.

I haven't seen that, no. Like, no, I haven't, but my blind trust would like to offer you a bag of money if you stop asking me these questions. Speaking of money, though, cost of living was sent to stage, and there was one very important cost of living issue that both seven and nine made sure to ask the candidates about. Can I get a commitment from both of you that families won't have to pay to see sport on their televisions?

Will Australia's continue to have access to the sports that they love on free-to-air TV if you are in power? I wonder why 7 and 9 were so interested in that topic. Exactly. Nobody in Australia can afford lettuce or housing, but we need to have our footy for free. And of course, Morrison also used the cost of living issue to repeat his latest daggy dad insult against Albanesey at the debate last night. This has been doing the round. He's a loose unit when it comes to the economy. Mr. Albanese showed yesterday that he is a complete loose unit on this stuff. Where does he get these?

But also, my understanding, like, that's a compliment, isn't it? Like, everyone I've ever referred to as a loose unit is somebody, you just go, the type of person you want to hang out? I mean, Albuoy will enjoy that because he's modelling his campaign on the ultimate loose unit, Bob Hawke. Now, Bob Hawke loose his pants were almost never done up when he was Prime Minister. I think they're trying to make him feel like Mark Latham, aren't they? They're trying to say, yeah, the guy who has been a career politician for 27 years is the same as the guy who came into Parliament, bashed up a taxi driver, and then left in a drunken rage, each night.

The problem, though, is when there's a toilet loose unit, that is true that Mark Latham was the ultimate loose unit, but so is Barbie Joyce. That's a good point. I mean, I would just wish he was more of a loose unit. That's what you won out of Albanesey, not this sort of, yeah, we can do better. Loose units don't go around, we can do better. If he wins, I actually want him to go full loose week one.

I just want him to just pig out, just eat elbow, get out of the fancy suit, just get in your trackies, and just give us three years of your real self. Yeah, just go full rugby league play. I just go nuts. It'd be great to watch. Go to church. Go to the Catholic Church. It was interesting insult coming from Morrison

because there's only one candidate I've seen this election who's been hooning around a Tazzy Speedway drinking whiskey at 10 o'clock in the morning and getting yelled at by punters in pubs. And it was Morrison. He's been more of a loose unit on the campaign trail and elbow hats.

While that's a great observation, Dylan, I think even in comedy, we can't pretend that Scott Morrison is a loose... I don't know, there was that one time in Eggadine. The tightest unit on earth. I never said a single thing that has been polled by a thousand different companies. I still haven't seen Albanese getting yelled at in pubs yet.

He's not quite as, he's a bit more risk-averse than Morrison, I guess. There were closing arguments, of course, and Albanese's summary of where Australia is at was kind of depressing. There are real issues right now. Childcare costs are spiraling right now. now. Age care is in crisis right now. Work has never been more insecure than it is right now. And I mean, Albo's job. Yes. Yes, Albo's job also insecure. What a depressing. What happened to how good is Australia? Where's the optimistic message there? I mean, it was almost like the talking points for a euthanasia commercial. Everything stopped. What was Morrison's closing message,

apart from the word strong repeated 5,000 times, Dylan? Well, it's funny you should ask. Chas, because it was basically this. See, in the Liberals and Nationals, we believe in you. We want to back you in. We believe a strong economy is based on you. We don't believe the government is the answer. We believe you are the answer. You know what we've achieved together, and we can keep achieving that.

Achieved what? What have they achieved? Well, it's an interesting question, deal. I've got to say, on one hand, I find the prospect of hiring a random Australian watching the debate rather than. Scott Morrison, a very attractive proposition, which is what he's suggesting there. But on the other hand, they did spend an entire hour after the debate last night talking to those random Australians who are watching the debate in pubs.

They call it the pub test. And after that, I just want to move to a different country. I don't want any of those people in charge. It was so depressing. Maybe they did it to make the Albanese and Morrison look better in comparison. They used to go, you know, if you think these people are fucked hards, look at the rest of Australia. Maybe it's actually a productivity move.

Alba would like this. He wants to improve productivity. Maybe they're trying to keep people out pubs. They're going to see in the pub. You'll make people like this. So go back to work. Or worse, you get dragged into watching a debate. Now, I'll stay home.

No, it was interesting. So nine, of course, had people vote by QR code, which I think Craig and Andrew talked about was a complete debacle and wound up being a tie for some reason. Seven, of course, went the pub test solution because, of course, everyone in pubs loves Scott Morrison, they love shouting at him.

Albanesee won 50% to 34 on the pub test questions that had people all around Australia and swing electorates, which of course means that, just like Bill Shorten in 2019, who also won the debates, Arbenisi is probably going to lose the election. So hang on. So 50 to 34, that means only 16% of us transmen. Fuck both of them. I'm very surprised by those figures.

Yeah, so that's the debate. No one missed anything. And thanks for having me, guys. Can we just say goodbye to Dylan in true debate fashion by Chas, Charles and I all talking simultaneously? Dylan, it's been great having you on the show. No, stop it. I don't want to hear what you've got to say. Where's your plan? Where's your plan? You've had three years. You've had three years. Rigging elections since before it was cool, The Chaser Report. Now, guys, I've been watching an awful lot of the Sky Election Channel, which has its cons. The cons are I'm watching wall-the-wall press conferences.

The pros is, it has none of the Sky News as normal programming. So there's no Paul Murray, there's none of that. But the, but watching this wall-the-wall press conference. conferences, I've been seeing a lot of scaremongering about Labor's shared equity scheme. So what we're talking about there is it's something which Scott Morris is trying to make a big thing out of where Labor is allowing the government to put some of the money into your home if you qualify, if you don't have much money and you can't buy your own home and then the government will take a slice of the equity. This is only for I think 10,000 people. So it's not

like it's going to revolutionise the country or anything, but Scott Morrison is acting like it will end the country but anyway uh there's been a lot of scaring going on at the last week uh from the libs about whether owning having the government also own your home can be a terrible thing they think it's terrible terrible terrible news right this scheme does exist in some states already uh like victoria for instance but they they they reckon it's awful to have the government own you partly own your home and i was having to think about it and i was trying to think through the pros and cons of having the government partly own your home, and I'd like to take you through it.

Please. Yeah, pull a lot of research into this, guys, as you might imagine. Now, first of all, I've got to say there's a few cons. Number one, I've got real concerns about how they're going, the government, they're going to act in your house if they are part of your house. I mean, have you seen how they act in their own house, for instance? Like you're walking down the corridor, shame, here, here. It'd be constant.

It'd be very, very, very. annoying. I don't need that. So that's a big con. Yes, definitely. Next con, I've got a simple question. Who has control or the remote control? Oh, God. I would prefer to be homeless than have Sky News on all day in my house. Trust me, I've had the Sky Election Channel, which is close enough. That would be disastrous, especially at nighttime. I really do not want them to have control, remote control at nighttime. But wouldn't, I mean, if it was the government, wouldn't it be the government funded channels, like, wouldn't you be limited to only watching ABC and SPS? No, haven't you heard this government's view on the ABC?

No, no, but this is under Labor. No, no, remember, this is the Labor wins, right? Oh, you'll be all, you'll have to watch Gardening Australia on repeat. That's what it would be. Boredom. Yes. That is a good point. That's a good point.

I mean, they'll be fine over it, obviously. It'll probably be a hung parliament. So they'll just be wrestling on the couch for control. In the end, some teal independent will probably just have some arts show on. But anyway, I'll tell you another problem, visitors. Because think about the kind of people who hang around politicians. You don't have mining magnates or is there union honchos popping over. Not to mention journalists from the Australian, they'd basically be licking your skirting boards.

be the Roombas of the house. Like Dennis Shanahan, you might be I get rid of it. He's just going to be there all the time. So that would be pretty bad. Renovations? You want to fix your house. Scott Morrison's been talking about this as well. He says, oh, yeah, who's going to, what happens when this renovate?

You've got to ask the government permission? Yeah. Well, think about it. If you want to fix anything in the house, Labor's going to insist on there being a never ending inquiry, guaranteed, right? And the Libs, they're going to say they've already fixed it. They're going to say that had they fixed it strongly. And then they'll change a topic to Albo for getting the unemployment rate.

That's what's going to happen every time you want to fix anything. I feel like, yeah, if your plumbing's bung or something like that, what would happen is Scott Morrison would just say, well, you know, your plumbing's bunk. But I did build a chicken coop out the back. So, you know, call it evens. That's true. Although there's one area where they'd both be united in when it comes to this kind of thing. when there's dirty laundry.

I mean, think about it. Like, there's dirty laundry every day. They just hide it everywhere. You find dirty laundry under every couch, under every, you know, desk. The washing machine will never get used. It's terrible. I mean, speaking of dirty laundry, Chazzy, you mentioned visitors. I'm really worried about who's going to come into the prayer room

that the government's going to insist that we have in our houses. And I'm also very... That'll be the best place to hang out. Yeah, but I mean, also, when you're talking about cleaning and doing chores, the state of the desks is going to be absolutely disgusting. Oh, don't even mention, Tom, that's a terrible image. Oh, no. I need to clean my brain now.

I have been thinking about this, though. I could think of one pro. I know this is all cons at the moment. Yeah. This is a very anti-Labor segment. I'm just trashing their policy with all this good reasoned debate. But I could think of one pro. This is a big pro.

And that is, if the government is meant to be in your house, at least you'll never see Alan Tudge there That's great news Actually Chazi I think there's some more pros in the prayer room Our gear is from road microphones We're part of the ACAST creator network And use PIDA clean on your desks See ya