The Chaser Report - Super Fuck-ups Have Super Consequences

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Dom briefs Charles on where thirty BILLION dollars of Australian's superannuation went last year. Plus, you'll never guess the crazy addiction rampaging through Adelaide. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence. This is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report. here on Gatigool Land in Sydney and Charles still coming to you from the nation's cultural capital at least in early March. Yes, that's right. The cultural capital for about four weeks

and then everyone, oh, it's just a ghost town. I don't think actually anyone actually lives in Adelaide. I think it's just they turn up for fringe and the festival and then move. Yeah, I think the name Adelaide traditionally means temporary accommodation for creatives. You know, I've been there other than in, in months. And no, it's terrible. But this time of year, it's amazing. Horrible place.

And I don't understand why our ratings in Adelaide keep going down. Yeah, it's strange. Because we love Adelaide. I'm thinking of moving there, aren't you? Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I'm thinking of moving there for about four weeks each year. No, no, but can I just also just tell you about Adelaide, which is, you know, how everywhere else in the world, you know,

people drink Coca-Cola or, you know, lemonade or things? so bad. Yeah. In South Australia, and only in South Australia, the equivalent drink is chocolate milk. Really? Right? And so not only is like there's huge aisles of supermarkets just with chocolate milk, right? And there's all these different brands, but also like the biggest billboard campaign,

you know, outdoor billboard campaign at the moment, is launching a new brand of chocolate milk. Wow. And they all taste the same. But that is, like, chocolate milk is... You've tried them. You fall into the chocolate milk hole. Well, when you're in Adelaide, you can't... You turn on the tap, and what comes out?

Chocolate milk! Is that because in Adelaide, it's still 997? I mean, I remember in our school, you know, move was all, you know, it had moved, and then they introduced oak and things hot it up. I haven't seen a kid drinking flavored milk in many years. I don't think it even exists in New South Wales anymore. Yeah, and look, I don't think... Does it?

They're all local brands. There's no... As far as I can tell, I don't think there's any oak milk or move or anything like that. What are the brands called? Oh, I don't know. There's like, there's farmers community co-off. Oh, Farmer's Cup. It's all South Australian local cringe, you know, like cultural.

Can you quickly research chocolate milk consumption in South Australia? And while we do, I'll mention what we're going to talk about in today's show. Australians drained their super accounts during the pandemic. and we'll take a guess whether or not it was the richest or poorest people who did that and thereby wiped out their future wealth. Charles, what have you found? Well, the funny thing is the top result when you Google it is, flavoured milk and coffee sales rise across South Australia.

Oh my God, South Australians drink an average of 20 litres per person of chocolate milk per year. That's double the national average. So you're right. There's actually stats to back it up. Wow. Oh, now, now it's actually 21. They just updated the statistics. During the pandemic.

Actually, I would have drunk chocolate milk during the pandemic for the sort of reassuring hug of milk fat and sugar and cocoa. What is it about chocolate milk in South Australia? There's a folk belief, Charles, in Adelaide. I think it's, if you have your chocolate milk, the serial killer won't get you today. Yeah, because you're immune. You put in acid and the milk neutralises the acid. It's basic science.

Yes. If you found it. Farmers union. Farmers union. Ice coffee is the key. And Charles, in the rest of the country, neither of those things are worth it. Like the rest of the country despises A unions and B, farmers. Whereas in Adelaide, the two things come together to produce something genuinely popular.

Maybe that's what the union movement needs elsewhere is to be slinging chocolate milk. There's even a whole Wikipedia page devoted to the ads. Or Farmers Union ice chocolate. Presumably it's owned by like... It's... Wow. Nestle or something. It's no longer actually owned by farmers.

It's just owned by some, you know, GM-sling chocolate baron. Yeah. Mondoleil or something. No, I think... No, it's currently owned by Bega. So it's Australian. Oh. And they've brought up Venture Mike.

Well, Bega's probably owned by. Who owns Bega? You've got to... You've got to follow the money, Charles. Is Bega owned by the kind of farmer's co-op in Bega? or is it... No, no, it used to be. Now it's, it's owned by...

Like, Shinawa chemical or something. Well, no, they all got brought up by Kieran a few years ago, which is... Oh, Kieran. This is not a podcast episode. Yeah, but then I think Kieran sold them all because they went, what the fuck are we doing? I know, okay, so Big is a listed... This is just us rambling randomly, but no, I do want to know this, because it matters who owns this stuff.

It's a listed company and it's still technically Australian owns. It's pretty good. But wait a minute. Dom, if you see... start worrying about who owns the things you buy you wouldn't buy anything they're all evil yeah like yeah sure big is probably just like a normal small listed company or anything like that but they probably you know like oh for sure also charles they own according to wikipedia they own dare iced coffee and farmers union and dairy farmers they own all of it right so it's all it's a chocolate milk

Monopolis. They're the Amazon of chocolate milk. But also. They're like acquisitive. They just sort of buy everything out. And Farmers Union clearly no longer farmers in a union. So thank God for that. I thought briefly the Union movement had a future.

Anyway, let's move on to the news for today after this. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes mobile plans start at $15 a month certain conditions apply details at fizz.ca. You can subscribe and avoid those ads. Someone signed up to the ridiculously overpriced option the $20 a month option. Oh wow I wonder and they had to go to acast plus to do it chaser.com.com.com or you can subscribe in apple podcast. It's normally $4 a month. We're

getting the price put down on a cast. It's a bit of a taking a while. But someone paid 20 bucks to get the episodes in advance, like by a couple of hours. I hope they're happy. Well, it's what everyone, it's what all the good-looking people are doing nowadays. That's what I hear. If you're good-looking, probably go for the ridiculously over-priced option. Because you get gold coins in the background if you do. It's very attractive.

The absurdly over-priced option is what it's called. Look for that $20 a month. We'll spend it if you ought to give it to us. Speaking of spending money in a ridiculous way, Charles, The stats are out. 2.6 million Australians apparently rushed to drain their super accounts under the early release package owned by, during the Morrison government.

Now, do you remember how there were all those dire warnings from economists that it was a terrible idea because people would, you know, gamble away their future wealth? Well, literally, the stats showed that super accounts got drained to the tune of $38 billion and the money was used for gambling. spending was up by $300 per head amongst those who got their super out early Oh, that, oh, man, oh man, that is, there's nothing funny about that. No, it's absolutely bleak. And apparently, um, users of the scam, you did it their super.

The policy was just targeting problem gamblers and giving them access to funds to work. Helping them, that's what it was all about. I was helping them dip into their super. super which was supposed to be locked away for retirement and gain compound so you've got to remember every hundred dollars you access during that period is worth i don't know many hundreds or even thousands of dollars due to compound interest if you waited 40 years and look the the thing is don that it's actually quite a shrewd move by the gamblers because on the off chance that they one day win three million dollars in cash and then put it into their super it would have been

taxed under Labor an extra 15%. So it's actually saving the money to take it out now and fritter it all the way on gambling lest their super get too large and then they get a little bit of extra tax on it. And Charles, looking at the details here, I'm a bit surprised that this happened because there were safety rails. The Morrison government put in safety rails. In order to access your super, in order to access your super,

you had to A, be eligible to receive job keeper or have been made redundant, or have your work hours cut by at least 20% or be a sole trader whose business had either closed or suffered a 20% fall in turnover. So within those guardrails, everybody, everybody was there. But of course, the only people who did this are people who needed the money. Even fucking Harvey Norman came within those car rails. That's true.

Jerry Harvey could have, maybe he's the guy that has $500 million a super. But no, it's true. It's extraordinarily bad. Just the poorest people as ever absolutely. copped it. But on the bright side, gambling barons had a wonderful... Because gambling barons,

no one was gambling on the pokies. No one thinks of the gambling barons, do they when they're complaining about these policies? Apparently the number one group to hit access their super were bulldozer drivers, then factory process workers. The least likely to use them were teachers because they had steady employment.

And they were too busy day drinking while they'd teached everyone on Zoom. Yeah, actually, they went through a lot. That's true. And the most bizarre thing, Charles, and this is the most tragic thing, is that the stats here on how the spending habits of people who withdrew super changed. The number one thing people spent money on was ATM withdrawals. And this is the time when you couldn't leave the house.

People were going to the ATM and just getting cash. What? They spent money on ATM. What? I don't understand. What do you mean? The average increase amongst people who accessed their super was $1,000 for ATM withdrawals. Oh, in cash.

Yeah. So they got it out as cash. And then somehow there's a separate stat saying that the average was, yeah, $300 of people who did it. So it's pretty fucking depressing. It's sad enough to make me want to access my own super. Oh, that's right. I don't have very much because I'm a sold train. Yeah.

I mean, it's almost as though we should listen to the economists and boffin sometimes when they warn us about things like this. I presume, I mean, the way it was sold, you know, by the federal politicians at the time was, No, no, no, like Tim Wilson and everyone said, no, no, no, this is good because it'll allow people to sort of get money out and use it to sort of pay their mortgage and stuff. Like, it'll go on their home. Yeah. Right. But I presume that all that money is good money after bad anyway, because that's the thing that drove up all the prices, wasn't it? Yes, it was a huge, a huge inflation.

And now everyone's underwater. They basically gambled away on the... Well, it certainly helped gambling barons pay their mortgages, I'm sure, in the unlikely event, they had any. I mean, Josh Frydenberg said, look, it's the people's money. They should be able to access it, thereby completely undermining the very concept of superannuation. Because I presume... Which is to force people to save. As a result of this policy, what it means that is that in, what, 30 years time, when all those people don't have any super, they'll end up on pensions.

Well, I suppose, you know what we need to do. We need to expand the number of pokies in order to pay for the pensions that we're going to have to pay. Yes. Pokees as pensions. Because they're already played by pensioners. Why not complete the circle? We get the pensions played straight into the pokies. Charles, I mean, I was going to say you're naive because there's no way that we're going to have a welfare state in 30 years.

It will have already crumbled under the weight of the baby boomers. But if you could invest a scheme whereby the government invest directly in pokies, that's the kind of thing that an Australian government might get behind. I've actually just worked out how to fund the submarine. you know the $368 billion for the eight submarines what we do is we take it out of super what an excellent idea and it's sort of little from itself

I mean super's there for peace of mind Charles but how can you have peace of mind without eight submarines cruising around defending us? Much better and then you know like sure we won't be able to eat or house ourselves but poor kidding had an amazing rant.

If you haven't read the full text of Paul Ketting's rant, by the way, it's well worth the rate. The sheer bile in that man is just an amazing end of a hole. But his point was where basically this is a massive transfer of cash from the Australian taxpayer to defence manufacturers in the US and the UK. And all that we do is just link that into pensions and pokies. So that way it won't affect control out of gravity.

Just get pensioners to pay it directly, take it out of super accounts, It's taken out of pension payments straight to cut out the middleman. Just go straight from the pension to the sub, you know. You don't get your pension this year, but you do get a submarine. Maybe you can send them a photo of the submarine. Won't it be embarrassing if China turns out to not be a threat at all? That will be very embarrassing. That would be embarrassing.

You know, in 20 years on. If they... China goes, oh, we're just going to be a democracy now. But also if they just go, you know what, we've got 1.4 billion people or whatever it is, the 1.7. We don't actually need. We're not actually expansionist here. We're just worried you're going to come in and try and impose democracy on us. But the other embarrassing thing would be, Charles, we've given China, let's say that they're hostile. I don't know that they are, but let's say that they are. We've given them, what, 20 years warning that our

strategy is going to be submarine-based. That gives them 20 years to develop long-range drones that make submarines utterly pointless. Like, do you think they'll work out? But hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, Dom. Going under the sea? No, Dom, they don't need 20 years. They exist now, those drones. They do.

Like, they keep using them in Ukraine. The ones that Iran makes, and China and Iran just signed a deal, like literally about two days ago, including Saudi Arabia, is a very bizarre pact that they signed. So they could just buy the drones from Iran in 20 years' time, and we wouldn't need our And fuck, why, like, what happened? Why do we, did, did Albo just get a little bit sort of starstruck when he went over to the U.S.? Well, because you saw Joe Biden gave him the, gave him a pair of rebands. That's what we got for $368 billion.

Yes. A pair of rauban. None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report. So we've just, we've gone back to sucking up to the UK. and the US in the hope that somehow, if we get invaded, they'll step up and defend Australia. I mean, well, I remember it.

Why would they? Why would they bother? Well, I'm pretty sure. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month.

Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. Last war, I mean the last World War, you know, World War II, the British were trying to convince Menzies at the beginning of the war to just concede everything north of Brisbane. Remember that, the Brisbane line? Oh yes, although to be fair. And Menzies... What would we have lost if he'd done that? Because what happened was, this is honestly true.

This is not true. You can look it up. It's called the Brisbane line. Yeah, no, I have had this. The whole idea is, um, Look, oh, come on, Robert Menzies, who was Prime Minister at the time. This was the first time as Prime Minister. They said, look, we need a whole lot of people fighting over in France.

We need all your Australian troops over in France. Why don't you just concede everything north of Brisbane and come at there? And then Menzies was sort of going, okay, yeah, that sounds fair. And that's when they went, okay, Menzies, you're not going to be a wartime pro-minister. And they decide, they actually put in a Labor guy. Like, they didn't have an election. They just went, okay, let's just change government and not concede everything north of Brisbane.

On the one hand, that's a good idea. On the one hand, that's very nice that they didn't. But if you think about it, everything north of Brisbane is a bit of a shithole anyway. So maybe... I mean, they could have drawn the line further south, couldn't they? But then it was... They could have drawn it at the tweed.

But then it was later on, Douglas MacArthur was the American commander of the Pacific. And he actually, he was the general, actually, and it was his idea that actually Australia should defend itself. So, you know, maybe, you know, I don't know. But also, I mean, I suppose the point is, why the fuck do we look to America and Britain to defend ourselves in the Pacific?

Well, this is Paul Keating's point. But Charles, also, if you imagine if they'd done that, let's just say that the British military strategists had been given their way and we conceded everything north of Darwin. How the fuck would you defend a border as big as, you know, the width of Australia against the army that said, what did it say? No wonder they lost Gallipoli.

We should never have listened to those idiots. But wait a minute. So, because it would have been the Japanese, because they were the ones who were sort of in Darwin. Yeah. So the Japanese, I mean, there aren't enough Japanese in the world to be able to hold that, that line, that 5,000 kilometre long borderline.

Like, what would happen? Like, why? And also, anyway, look, the whole thing is Australia is surrounded by a moat. Like, it doesn't matter if China wants Australia. They're not going to get it anyway. Like, if they want it, though, let's just say that submarines aren't going to stop them. Yeah. And you know what you would do?

You would just, what you would just, what you would. do this is if i was china and i wanted australia's mineral resources for myself what i would do is i would cut a sweetheart deal with twiggy forest right back you know maybe 10 or 15 years ago and then i'd get all the minerals anyway and then i'd help him fund the campaign to make sure that there's no mining tax paid on it yeah and so it'd be essentially like owning australia but without any of the admin well that's the thing you know why bother Why bother annexing Australia If you can already get all the natural resources

Why else would they want us? They don't want the culture You know They don't want access to Adelaide fringe every year Like But Charles, if it comes to that I've got a new defence doctrine for Australia Oh yeah

It's called the Sydney line You basically draw a circle around Sydney And you know what Fuck the rest of it No well hang on, hang on What about Melbourne? I don't want to concede Melbourne Yeah, but if we had to

I mean, it would be sad And you'd give people from Melbourne time to move up here Oh, imagine how that had that And we could visit We could still go to Melbourne Oh, it'd just be occupied by the country It'd be like a Shanghai I bet you Melbourne would become like Shanghai

Wouldn't it? It'd be really trendy Very cosmopolitan Oh Shanghai's fantastic actually Maybe we should concede Sydney So if it's China though There'll be some sort of horrible part Where it's all slave labour

Well you wouldn't want to You wouldn't want to be critical of China I mean we certainly of our new overlords. But who would end up being the Uyghurs of Australia? Who would be... This is not a nice way to think. People from South Australia.

But there's always Tasmania. Oh, Tasmania. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Although we want Mona, don't we? That's true. We can't concede moa. Couldn't you just cut mona off and lift it by drying up to the mainland?

Why don't we, look, Chinese probably don't know much about Australia. Why don't we just sort of cut a deal that sounds good, but actually, shit like we just say to them okay you can have everything that's like 200 kilometers inland and we do we'll take the outside you take the inside yeah it's fucking huge you can have it for like a dollar per hectare actually you know like a fucking squillion we could repay all our super we could buy all those subs oh my goodness which we made because we'd basically be only this is a good idea charles but there's also another model out there if we're if we're thinking about this the best way to deal with

an aggressive China. Not that I think China's going to invade. I don't read the Sydney Morning Herald that closely. All you need to do is find an island offshore. Do what Chankajek did. We all move to Tasmania. We make it the new Taiwan, and we concede the mainland to the Red Army. It's worked before, Charles.

We call it the Republic of Australia. Yes, and it's... And then Australia becomes the People's Republic of Australia. That's right, a puppet state. And we all just set up a nice little utopia. on Tasmania. Yes, I love it. And actually, Melbourne, in that analogy,

Melbourne could be the sort of Hong Kong. Melbourne or the Shanghai, yes. It could be a special administrative region. And what's Macau? Macau. Barangaroo would be Macau. Or New Zealand could be Macau. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. The analogy falls over at some point.

But look, Charles, at least we have a plan. And you know what? It's probably more practical than the submarine plan. At least it doesn't cost $368 billion. So, well done to us. Okay, well, that's good. You'll have to leave Adelaide soon though Yeah, no, I'm definitely going to leave

I think I've drunk my 20 litres of chocolate milk per year And I'll be heading back to Sydney next week Our Gear is from Road We're part of the iconoclast podcast network See you on Monday Thank you.