The Chaser Report - Sponsored by Tourism Qatar

Episode Date: October 20, 2022

Just a really positive episode about the amazing work of the Qatar government. We love football more than human rights! 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. I'm Charles Furt and with me today is Dominic Knight. Charles, we've got to talk about the World Cup. We're going to talk about the Qatar World Cup starts in a few weeks. We have to. We've got to work out what the plan is. It's in November, Charles.

It's almost here. The World Cup begins very, very soon. No, it's already begun. You're talking about the T20 World Cup. Cup. Yes. I'm talking about the proper World Cup, the Football World Cup. What?

Qatar 2020. The biggest sporting event in the world. Never heard of it. Starts in a month, Charles, and we've got work to do. This is the FIFA World Cup. The FIFA World Cup, soccer. We need to cover it. Sorry, sorry to cut you off, but I thought you were talking about the proper, the one

that the whole world is tuning in for, which is the Rugby League World Cup. The T20 World Cup. Because, you know, like on the weekend, I saw Namibia versus UAE, those cricketing titans. I saw the other night, it was Sri Lanka versus Netherlands. I mean, another great matchup. I think we had Scotland versus Bangladesh a couple of days ago. I mean, these are all, these are the contests that you want to, you have to wait five years. to see, Dom?

Charles, I didn't even realize it was on in Australia. I turned it on to ABC Sport the other day. And I ever heard the, I think it was Namibia playing. Did you think it was like club cricket? I didn't know what it was. It was like Namibia versus, I don't know what it was. Is it? Oh, shit, I've accidentally tuned into some, you know, foreign channels.

I know. I was like, why are they covering this game live? And I realized eventually it was the World Cup. So this is on in Australia at the moment. But Charles, no, the biggest sporting event in the world. The whole world stops. We need a plan. And you do.

Like, I'm sorry, I'm one of those people who, every time the soccer World Cup comes around, I become a soccer watcher just for that. Yeah, that's right. We have to begin to care about the World Cup. Yes, we do. We've got a month to exercise our muscles. Yes. Our soccer muscles to actually bother with it.

And so we're in the chase and need to talk about our plan to cover the World Cup. Okay, we're going to do it. So look, this is a huge thing. This is the World Cup that should have been Australia's, but because the FIFA World Cup voting is entirely done on the basis of corruption, we got one vote. We spent all this money and effort. Yeah, yeah.

We were clearly the best option in terms of having great stadiums. Yeah, yeah. And we got one vote. So instead, they're hosting it in a country where they had to build, I think it's eight new air-conditioned stadiums right next to each other pretty much, because there's just no – and it has to happen in November rather than July because it's so hot. I love how you claim that –

it's because of corruption that Australia didn't get the soccer world go. In what universe do we... We don't even make the World Cup most years. We do always now. We always make the World Cup lately. So anyway, so this is going to happen. Well, I would say that's because of corruption. So, but the thing is, there are some complicated restrictions, though,

for our World Cup coverage. Like, I wanted to go over there. But there are a few rules that have been... Well, they've been described as chilling rules for international media organisations, such as the Chase. For instance, you can't film at accommodation sites, particularly those housing migrant workers under the terms of filming permits,

which is a bit of a surprise because apparently some of the migrant workers who worked on the World Cup are actually still alive. That's not what I was expecting. No, I didn't. I thought that they'd all fallen down. Yeah, no, it's extraordinary. I mean, the estimate of the deaths by some is put in the thousands.

Well, wasn't it slavery? Yeah, basically. So what they do is they, like, But it's an innovative labour approach to labour. What they do is they get people from places like Sri Lanka and India and so on to come over. And then what they do is they look after their passports, Charles. So the employer, this is what when you know you're really free, when the employer, they want to make sure that your passport doesn't get stolen.

Yes. Or it doesn't get abused by someone. So they just keep it safe under lock and key. Yes. And you can have it back when they say. And in the meantime, you're stuck in an incredibly small. Wait a minute, so you can't even go. home. No, they've got your passport. They tend to pay their workers only at the end of the

contract. So you don't have any money for a very, very long time. I mean, this is, I don't know if this is true with the World Cup specifically, but these sorts of employment deals in the Middle East work like this, you get paid at the end of the year. So they'll give you basic accommodate, very basic accommodation in some sort of hovel. They'll give you just enough food not to die. You'll work to work seven days a week. And then at the end of the contract, they maybe will pay you. Sounds like working for the chase. It's actually better than working for the chaser because there is pay. But no, no, no, that was flippant.

That was flippant. I don't want to. I don't want to belittle. What, what, no, this is a terrible situation. Well, can I just add to that, which is that, and not wanting to divert away from the, you know, attention on the sport element of this, right? But I don't like saying nice things about billionaires, right?

Yeah. But it is true that Andrew Forrest, you know, Twiggy Forest. He has always come out strongly against slavery. Yeah, modern slavery. He's very much against modern slavery, too. Which I think is hilarious because it's like the least controversial, you know, like, who is pro-slavery in 2022?

Well, other than the Qatari government. Well, exactly. But, yeah, so, and he's got this organization called Walk Free. And they've been working to sort of stop the Qatari government doing it. But they obviously were very unsuccessful. Yeah, it hasn't. It worked, but it's a good idea. Because all the stadiums got built, you know, head of schedule, really.

So you can't film at accommodation sites. You also can't interview on subjects such as the mistreatment of migrant workers, and you certainly can't discuss LGBTQ plus rights. That's all been made very clear, the broadcasters. I thought the Arab countries were often quite sort of liberal. On gay rights? Well, maybe not the sort of Islamic ones. I think their position is that gay people don't exist,

so it's easy to cover them when they don't exist. So what's happening is that some... No one's boycotted it. So there's terrible human rights, but what they are doing is they're wearing rainbow armbands, the captains. This is their one protest against the terrible situation in Qataris, wearing these rainbow armbands for the captains. So that'll fix it overnight, I'm sure.

The Chaser Report. News a few days after it happens. So I'm just not sure how we're going to be able to cover it, Charles, if we can't go anywhere in Qatar and talk to anyone. I feel like we should crowd fund a couple of flights over there. Absolutely. And we should actually cover it with the promise that we will totally ask all those questions to the migrant workers

and kill the migrant workers. So this article from The Guardian, it's saying, swearing public displays of affection and dressing immodestly as seen as offensive. I think we could do all those things in one minute of slipping off the plane. Homosexual behaviour is illegal, so that's something to tick off.

Okay. So they're allowing, they're trying to pretend that they're briefly being tolerant. They're allowing alcohol at the stadiums that the slave is built with the air-in-shunds. Oh, that's right. Yeah, because it's dry, isn't it? It's dry.

So... Well, how does the rest of the population feel about the fact that all these Western fuckwits? of flying in and drinking alcohol. That's a very good question. So are you saying that we're not being sufficiently respectful about their way of life? Isn't it the case that the actual sort of,

if you're a citizen of Qatar, they look after it, there's only about 2 million of them. Yes, and there's far more migrant workers. They are the richest people in the world by far, aren't they? It's incredibly wealthy. Yeah, yeah. Because they've got all the gas. They've got all the oil and they can basically buy whatever they want,

including the World Cup. Maybe we should not complain about the migrant workers. I mean, just spitballing here. Maybe the whole queer rights thing is a bit overblown. Charles, I have always said, haven't I, that when the World Cup starts, that's the end of politics. Yes, politics ends here. You leave the politics outside the stadium built by slave labour.

It's air-conditioned. I agree. I mean, it's also, oh, you know, Like, can we just put that to one side? Can't you ever break from human rights? Can we just, can we? It's like, we're so into a dinner party. Like, we know people who work in human rights.

I mean, abstractly, what they do is very respectable. When they start talking about their work, it's time to leave the room. Exactly. And you go, oh, yes, well, good on you. Yes, you're making a lot of better place. Can we please just talk about like television or something? Yeah. So maybe that's what we should do.

Maybe we should ask the Qatar government. In fact, I think we should do this. We should write to them and see if it's too late to get accreditation. to make sure that there's balance in the Australian media covering the tournament positively. Because there'll all be people like the Guardian trying to sort of... Interview migrant workers about their friends who's been killed.

Politicising, what is just a... I mean, we just want to have fun. See, for instance, Craig Foster, you know, he's a human rights activist, he's a soccer analyst, he's a legend sort of soccerer. He said he's going to call the World Cup from Australia, but he's not going to go there

because that would be wrong. So he's going to commentate it, but he doesn't want to go there because he wants the chance and the platform to talk about these sorts of issues. What we should do, I'm thinking, is the opposite of one. So we should go to Qatar and not discuss any of the problems. Yes. And I only talk about the good things. Sort of advertorial for Qatar.

I mean, because in some ways, if this works, like if the World Cup comes off and there's not really any protests or consequence, then who's to stop, you know, any other nation from bringing in the same sensible policies that the Qatar government has done to pull off such a successful event. But also, I mean, Australia really wants to host the Soccer World Cup. I would love that. We have got the Women's World Cup coming up.

That's not as hotly contested for sexist reasons. So what we should do is do what Qatar do. If you can't beat them, copy them. We need to have terrible, yeah, slavery. I mean, we've got labourers in Australia building all these building sites here. Why do we do that when we could bring in an underpaid? migrant workers, treat them badly and then kill them so they can't complain about. And we've got a history there.

We've got the, you know, Pacific Islanders, the Canucks. They used to come, well, I mean, they were slaves. They were. It was appalling. And we can, to the point where we probably shouldn't joke about this anymore, but let's do it anyway. Well, no, but I'm just saying, slave labor for the Australian world country. I'm just saying there's precedent. Like this would not, we could actually, you know, I imagine Peter Dutton would get on board very quickly,

just saying, look, this is part of Australia's historical. And Charles, I think the thing that we can do to improve things, and go one up on Qatar, right? Yes. For them, it's all about bringing people from overseas. So the Qatari citizens, they're very rich. They're not going to be doing this. In Australia, after this recession, anyone should be able to be a slave laborer who gets killed. Well, I mean, Charles, you've discussed on the podcast recently that you need money.

Yeah. I say sign up, give your passport over. I work seven days in the sweltering heat until you die. I must say. That does sound quite appealing compared to trying to make ends meet at the moment. And also, you wouldn't have to see your kids. So it's sort of... That's true, you wouldn't be allowed to.

You'd be in a different country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sort of double win, becoming a slope. So when you watch the... But would you be allowed to watch the World Cup? That's the problem. Well, you'd be dead. That'd be the problem.

But no, of course they're not. This is the whole point is that the migrant workers have to go in their slum camp. that are deliberately horrible. But wait a minute, why do they still have mogul work? Like, aren't all the stadiums built? No, they'd be on to the next stupid project, but I don't know what it is. Katar's probably building some, like, giant ski resort or something

with air conditioning. There actually are, though, in the Middle East, you know. They have skiing mountain, like ski slopes you can go on in there. So, all right, well, if you write to the Qatar government, ask for media passes, free flights and accommodation, and we will promise to have absolutely no negative coverage of the World Cup. Okay, I can't see any problems with that. Well, except for ethical ones.

You'd better not see any, because otherwise you'll be locked in the camp. You won't be getting out of Qatar alive. I don't want to sound unkind, but it's worth it for football, isn't it? I mean, we could have had it in Australia where we already have had stadiums that have been built, not by slaves. I'll tell you what, though, this would never have happened under set bladder. I blame the current administration of FIFA. Giovanni Infantino, is the current president of FIFA.

Which makes me think that infant labour, probably not far away. Our gear is from road, and we're part of the ACAST creator network. And we're sponsored by the Qatari government. Tourism, Qatar. Unless you're a migrant worker, it's a great place to be. Qatar.