The Chaser Report - Scott Morrison Swears Himself In As Podcast Host | Chas Licciardello

Episode Date: August 15, 2022

Scott Morrison is back in the news, so Charles and Dom inform Chas Licciardello of the latest jobs he gave himself. The team decides what jobs they would swear themselves into if they had the chance. Plus Charles and Chas give their review of the current state of the Marvel universe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. It is Tuesday the 16th of August 22. Charles Firth is here. I'm Dom Knight. And we've got Chaz Lichitello. I'm so glad, Charles. I thought you were going to interrupt to inform me that you'd sworn yourself in as host.

At the same time as I was introducing the podcast. That was literally going to be my next joke. Are there tensions between you, sir? No, well, no, no, it's completely ordinary. I don't know why everyone's all fussed about this. I secretly swore myself in as host of the podcast a few months ago without telling anyone. There's a swearing-in-in process to be host. Is that how it works?

Yeah, yeah, everyone swears and goes, oh, fuck, Charles is going to be host. Yeah, so, Charles, I've got here a signed legal instrument that you've signed. Yes, so hang on, how have you sworn yourself? into a job. How does that work? Well, my old mate from uni, Christian Porter, actually. He told me this tree, right, which is, and you don't even have to tell anyone. Like, you don't, like, I just sign this piece of paper. My, made myself host of this podcast. Yeah. I didn't even have to, I didn't have to tell, I didn't tell anyone. I didn't told no one at all. Well, I was in the dark about it. But it, but what it meant was that I had all the

powers of the host. So anything that Dom, I could just overrule at any point, secretly. Well, if Christian Poitle taught you this, how come he hasn't sworn himself into another job? Because he desperately needs one. So I wish you explained, because as we know, Chas doesn't follow Australian politics as closely. So this is quite a strange thing.

Imagine if you're Scott Morrison. And this is the most baffling, the most baffling part of this is he wanted more jobs. Firstly, he's Prime Minister, he's in charge of everything anyway, and secondly, it wasn't as though he was interested in doing that job, but we now learn, Chas, he swore himself into other ministries. So he swore himself secretly, he swore himself into being the health minister

at the beginning of the pandemic, he then swore himself in as the finance minister, without telling the finance minister, Mattias Corman, didn't know, we'll get to why in a second. Mattius Corman found out, this weekend that he was not the only finance minister in Australia. Scott Morrison was also. And then the resources minister, Keith Pitt, who was a nationals,

got overridden by Scott Morrison, who was also showing our resources minister and overturned his approval of a mine. By the way, quite a good thing. I have to jump in here because I hadn't heard this story before, okay? The chance is the first time I'm hearing this. Right. And so I am speaking for all the people at home who are wondering what the hell is going on. So let me ask a few quick questions.

Number one, what is the point of being a secret health minister? If no one knows your health has an answer. This actually does have an answer. This one's the most sinister one, which is under the health orders during the pandemic, the health minister had essentially absolute power. Like, power that is unimaginably massive, right? He had the power. It's a marvel style.

Without recourse, yes, without recourse to Parliament, the health minister was allowed to direct anyone in Australia to do anything or to stop doing anything at all in the interests of, you know, public health. Yeah, so for instance, you know how he closed the borders and all this kind of stuff? All these, all those rules were simply signed off on by the health minister completely unilaterally. And so what, what Scott Morrison went to Christian Porter is he went to Christian border and he said, mate, mate, mate. I trust Greg Hahn, but he's not in the same.

same factions as me. Maybe, you know, I also need to have that power, right? Okay. Just in case, you know, Greg Hunt goes power mad. Okay, okay. So that's the Evangerman's secret health master. What's the Evangerman's secret resources minister? So I can understand this on the basis that if Greg Hunt had come down with COVID,

it was near. We didn't know. If it had knocked Greg Hunt out for two weeks, he needed a health order, no one else could do it. Yeah. So it's a stupid law. So it actually makes a degree of sense. But then he didn't tell anyone.

He didn't tell anyone, including Greg Hunt. the Governor-General, who's in charge of swearing in ministers, by the way. Okay. So he's not legal advice. Actually, I think he did tell Greg Hunt. Yeah, Greg Hunt agreed. He said to Greg Hunt, I trust you, mate. But I'm going to do this anyway.

But part of it was, I'll just tell you the story, which is what Scott Morrison said is the solution should be that the prime minister should be allowed to be able to direct public health orders. The public health orders. And under the law, that was not possible. was only the health minister who had absolute power. So that's why he went, oh, well, I want some of that power. So this, to me, is the really dumb thing, is that Christian Porter, who is a politician who worked

for Scott Morrison and who had the job, apparently his legal advice is enough. You don't need to go to the Solicitor General or any of the public service lawyers. You don't have to go to the high court. You just go to your mate in your cabinet. Who you're helping out with a bit of a tricky. He's got a little bit of an issue of his own to do it. I guess Christian Porter swore himself in as the person to give advice. But then you ask, what's the point of being resources?

Yeah, resources. Well, this is where all our left liberal instincts go haywire, right? Which is we're going, this is outrageous that he would just become all these ministers. But the reason why is because they wanted to do a gas exploration less than 50 kilometres off the coast of New South Wales. But it was right, it's like in front of the northern beaches, right? A lot of nice, well-heeled blue ribbons. seats for the lives. And Morrison didn't want, you know, you can explore gas, but give it to the fucking

Queenslanders or something of that. He didn't want to lose seats. He didn't want to lose those seats. And he obviously probably also thought his view in Cronella would end up being a bit gassy. And so he just swore himself in his resources minister, didn't tell anyone and then just stopped the, you just said, this is a year later. This is in 2021. He was like, oh, I'm going to swear myself here to another ministry and stop the resource.

So while he swearing himself in for every single cabinet position, how come he didn't swear himself in for education minister for the last six months when Alan Tudge was hiding his home? That's a very good question. How do we know he didn't? So how did this come out? How did we find out about it? He must have just taught. There's a new book.

So there's a new, Simon Benson's got a new book called Plagued. Yeah, so Benson knows somehow, even though the actual health minister and resources of minister and finance Mr. didn't know. Simon Benson's the minister for communications. No, but it's completely bizarre. And I mean, Albanese's come out and absolutely slammed it and said, look,

we were running the shadow ministries, but Scott Morrison was running a shadow government, which is bizarre when you consider he didn't run the regular government. To be going on the job of running another whole secret government. I think it's bizarre. I think it makes scenes when you look at all the photos of Scott Morrison. Right. Because he liked cosplaying jobs.

He did. He loved. pretending that he was a hairdresser. No, no, no. Can I go, I'm going to correct you. He wasn't pretending he was a licensed hairdresser. He saw himself in. He swore himself.

It's right. He loved being a coal, mate. He loved, like, he just sort of, he was like a little child in the lolly factory. And then he suddenly found himself, he's allowed any lolly. He's allowed to play any character in this whole factory. Is it time then to re-evaluate Scottie's holiday to Hawaii, given that he really needed the holiday? He had so many jobs Apparently he flew the plane over there

He swore himself as a pilot My theory With the flight center guy The little flight center captain Actually he had a flight center now That Scott Morrison's behind him Awquately And he served himself drinks

Because he was the stewardess The Chaser Report More news Less often It's not clear to me I think someone needs to check And I don't know who this person is Maybe it's Christian Porter

is Scott Morrison still a shadow prominently? Is he actually still in power in a way that we just somehow can't tell? We've been wondering what he's been doing, what his jobs are. He just went to Japan. Maybe he swapsed him over to the Japanese government as well. But where does it end? Because you just don't know. It's so bizarre.

I mean, one Labor hack said, oh, it was Bill Shorten, said, does he have some sort of, is it a messianic thing? Like, did he think he was the Messiah? Like, you're sort of going around sort of touching portfolios and making miracle work. It doesn't reflect very well on Jesus, does it? If he was trying to be like Jesus and turning sort of not doing a terrible job and taking other people's work away. Like he didn't, when Jesus was before Pontius pilot, he didn't say,

I'm sorry, Pontius, I'm actually the governor of the province of Judea. I've got the things to me here. Christian Porter told me it would be illegal. So do you ever use any of these powers? He actually... No, I don't think he did as health minister, but the resources one he did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the one that I don't understand, the finance one. Yeah, the finance one is very bizarre because he's... Or the explanation... I think in the book, it actually said he'd said it, but did he talk to Simon Benzer? I don't think... I'm not sure where the info. But the whole idea was that it's very important to have two people's hands

on the public purse at this point. That's a strange quote. Disbursts all of all these. Because there was a whole idea. of extra money sloshing through the thing. I mean, it sounds a little bit corrupty, to be honest. I know Scott Morrison's a fan of people laying hands on each other in the industries. Oh, I'm sure, actually.

But not in the finance world. Maybe he did tell everyone about it at a cabinet meeting, but he was speaking in tongues, so I didn't understand it. No, but it's true, but he wasn't treasurer. So he didn't have the top economic portfolio. I mean, he was just the finance minister. That's completely bizarre. Yeah.

And Matthias Corman, the fact that Mattis Corman didn't know about it is quite bizarre. Yeah. Although some people are saying, oh yeah, come on, he must have known. But, like, how would you know? Yeah. I mean, Dom didn't know that I was the host of the Chaser Report.

But you told him. You couldn't hold on to it for more than a day. Scott Morrison held on to it for three years. The really awkward thing is that I've been, the co-hosed of Planet America since it started, getting the paychecks. That explains a lot. I fall over.

I think this is what we should do. We should go around and swear ourselves into the jobs that we've always coveted. Like, I'm going to run the ABC from now on. That's the job you've always coveted. No, no. Don't know any higher than that. Just be David Anderson, a bureaucrat who got promoted to the point of it. No, no.

I mean, like, Iter. Oh, you want to be Iter. I want to be Iter. Yeah. I don't want to do the day-to-day running. No, no. I just want to set the general direction. You just want the estranged right editorials about you.

I thought they were in. I just want to cobble the flats. He just want to go to estimates. What would you swear yourself in as? I think I would swear myself in as the Chal Nying voiceover guy who talks about the sitcoms. However, there's like a, like a, like a, for the past 30 years now, Channel 9 has had these terrible rerun, like, the kind of like mum or, yeah,

or two and a half men or something. And there's a voiceover guy who always goes, a riotous new episode. That guy there. That guy has the easiest job in the world. Like literally all he does is say the word riotous once every six months and they just loop it over and over and over again

for the last 30 years being the same guy. I want to be that guy. Can't do that? I think you could probably do that without swearing. Ask. Yeah, I would like to be a rock star. I think I'd, what would be the best rock star? You're going to swear yourself in as Bono.

It's a bono, yeah. I've certainly got the pomposity down, Pat. You only know how to play the bass. You'll have to swear yourself in. I might swear myself in as Ed Sheeran. Oh, yeah. Because it's just him. Like, he wouldn't know if someone else was behind him getting the paychecks.

He just loops at all anyway. I just get all of his loops and play back the loops. I think I'm going to swear myself in as Thor. Like, if we're allowed to sort of... I'm feeling pretty bad about that Amy as the Channel 9 voiceover guy. You've chosen Thor. In which sense? Do you mean actually the God of Thunder?

Or do you mean Chris Hemsworth? Because they're both pretty good job. Oh, yeah. Why not part? Well, but you can. You don't have to choose. That's right. Actually, throwing myself in his head of Marvel would be pretty fun.

It's just to reproving all sorts of increasingly ridiculous superhero movies. No, well, except, and this is a total left turn, but I'm just going to say it anyway. Have you seen everything everywhere all at once? No, what's this? What are we talking about? To our three words. No, this is a multiverse movie. Michelle Yeo is in it.

Okay. It is just, it destroys the entire Marvel canon. It suddenly you go, oh, Marvel is now unwatchable. You see that movie, and suddenly you go, oh, that's what a multiverse movie is supposed to be. That's why it's interesting. It's the same woman being in lost different dimensions. Okay.

But it's actually, it's got things like emotional truth. It's got like, you know, the character. The characters have motivations. See, that's what. What I would swear myself in is, I'd swear myself in as the director of that movie, which was a fucking amazing movie. It was like the best movie of the decade. And it makes, it makes all Marvel movies unwatchable.

Suddenly you go, why would you do Wham Bam Thank You Man? I know you love this movie you just said. But can I just say, I am absolutely sick to death of, can Marvel just choose one area and stay in there? They're just taking over the entire cinema industry. Every single genre is now Marvel. That's right. Yeah, so Love and Thunder was just basically a comedy. Yes.

Yes, there are like 20 different genres in the Marvel universe now. You're saying that they've got a multiverse of genres. They do. They do. Just stay in your bloody lane, Marvel. Let's someone else make a movie. Yes. Just one other person, please.

So let me just see if I get the theory of the multiverse right. Like you can have the same person, so they look the same, in different universes, different dimensions, doing different jobs. Like in Michelle, he goes on, she's always a for jobs. Is there a universe in which Scott Morrison is still prime minister? Yes. Well, according to this, absolutely. When he won the last election, how the fuck would he have done that?

I'd love to know. Well, the truth is that the universes get more and more unlikely, like, as you go along. So this is what I'm wondering. So this would be on the very, very extreme of the universe. But hang on, let's push it even further. Like, how unlikely is too unlikely? Is there, like, is every theoretical possibility? Yes.

A different universe. Because could there then be a universe in which Scott Morrison was competent? He's pushing it even for Marvel, sure. I actually think when we say the same thing at the same time, that creates a new model. Well, that's it for today. You know, as the host, I'd just like to say our gear is from Road. And we are part of the A-cast-creator network. And my gear is from the guy in the corner down the street.

Catch you tomorrow