The Chaser Report - Sydney Harbour(ing COVID) | Scott Ludlam

Episode Date: June 23, 2021

Sydney is under lockdown! Well, Charles and Dom aren't allowed to leave Sydney, so it's pretty much lockdown to them. In brief respites from their self-pity, Charles attempts to sell Scott Ludlum on the government's Reef management, and Dom reveals Australia's worst prison. Plus – come rain, hail or lockdown, Rebecca De Unamuno has the Chaser news headlines. 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 for Thursday the 24th of June. Coming to you from a Sydney that is, it's not really locked down, but it's pretty fucking restricted. Hello, Charles. It is lockdown, Dom. I was going to go on holidays on Saturday, and I can't fucking go. How fucking much more lockdown you need to be to be locked down. Well, if you're foolish enough to want to leave,

this wonderful state where we never ever locked down unless it's absolutely desperate, then that's what you get. Is that the spin, is it? It's not really locked down because no one would ever want to leave Sydney anyway. Well, I just saw yesterday flash up on my phone, you know, W.A. introduces hard lockdown. South Australia says no one from New South Wales can come over. And I'm kind of going, yeah, I was kind of there already, to be honest. But it is a big change.

So people from Metropolitan Sydney, which include us, can't leave. the area of metropolitan Sydney, where all the good coffee is. But instead of actually locking things down, they've just put in all these restrictions. And the health minister Brad Hazard wanted to find a way to explain to everyone just how dangerous and infectious this delta variant is. Here's what he went with at the press conference yesterday. The delta variant of the COVID virus is actually a gold medalist when it comes to jumping from one person to another.

It is a long jumper. It's a long jumper. I mean, great TV. in the spirit of Tokyo 2020 already. What a terrible analogy. Show you there are a better ways to illustrate how infectious it is. Surely the Delta variant is it's like a national party leader who disgraces himself, you know, a few years ago

and then comes back years later, having not really changed it all, but be somehow even more creepy and awful. Yeah, I was thinking you could model the spread against the spread of Barnaby Joyce's DNA through his office. I was thinking also because it's from Bondi. You could say it's as fast, like as an Eastern Suburbs drug dealer, just delivering heaps and heaps of stuff in a 24-hour period, just moving around and dropping stuff off.

And also, because it's costing the state, I think, $1 billion a day or something to shut down, which is about the cost of a gram of cocaine at the moment. I was thinking like it leaps more boldly than Scott Morrison going to visit the grave of his ancestor and not telling anyone about it. It's as effective, Charles, as a vaccine rollout, but in the UK. As effective as a non-Australian vaccine.

then roll it. Yep, that's great. Everywhere else, US, wherever like. So in this episode of the podcast, we're going to take a look at the new restrictions and how it all works. We're going to talk about how to survive a school holidays where all of your plans just got cancelled.

And we're going to check in with Scott Ludlam on what's happening in the Great Barry Reef. Scott Luddlum's a former green senator, but I'll tell you what, he's changed his tune. Oh, really? He's pro degradation and slow death of the reef. Is he okay? He's with the Australian government on this one.

Very, very good. All that and more coming up. But first of all, let's go to Rebecca Dana Minow in the Chaser Newsroom. Where she is dutifully wearing a mask. Scott Morrison has taken a snap two-week holiday in Hawaii after the largest city in Australia found itself in a major crisis. The Prime Minister justified the trip saying that he'd already been fully vaccinated and it wasn't his fault that he hadn't ordered enough vaccine.

A writer for News Corp has been fired after they were unable to come up with a way of blaming Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews for the latest Sydney lockdown. The writer was fired after suggesting calling the New South Wales Premier Goulag Gladys after she placed travel restrictions on everyone in metropolitan Sydney. Animal enthusiasts enjoyed a rare spectacle yesterday

as they witnessed a spontaneous mass stampede. The species, known as homo-greaterous Sidnius, rapidly migrated from the CBD to anywhere outside of fucking Sydney to outrun the 4pm restrictions. That's the latest news you can't relax. On, I'm Rebecca Dayunamuno. This episode of The Chase Report is sponsored by working from home.

That's it working, sorry, working from home. Shut up. Now, Don, you know the worst thing about this stupid Sydney lockdown? And look, I do apologise if you don't live in Sydney. But we're just going to talk about it. It's just about us. We're finally the one suffering. We're finally our sense that it is all about us is justified,

given that we are in metropolitan Sydney. It's not locked down, but it's all but. But the worst part is that New South Wales school holidays start on Friday. It's just like Christmas. Remember how this is that's been during the Christmas holidays? Yes. Ah, it's just so terrible. You just locked down with our fucking kids.

Like, I think it's fine to be locked down if your kids still get to go to school. or whatever. And they're not even going to have school. It's not going to be like homeschooling them. Yeah. We're going to have to actually, I don't know, talk to them, interact with them. And what am I going to do, Dom? Charles, you know, in wartime, what they used to do was send all the kids to the country.

Remember that for their own safety. What if that happened in a semi-permanent manner? I mean, this whole COVID thing will be done by probably 2030. Yes. They'll be nice and safe there in the bush. Yeah. And also then they'll, you know, like if they, return as sort of mid-20-somethings.

They'll return as really interesting, well-rounded people who've had, you know, a whole lot of experience in the bush. Yeah. Mentally damaged by separation from their families, but that will make them, that'll mean they're really good stand-up comedy routines at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. Yeah, they'll have massive psychological damage from their childhood trauma. But other than that, it'll be great, yeah. So, no, I think that's a good idea.

I was thinking one thing that could be very, like a fun, because we're going to think of fun activities to do with them. Because, like, I don't think we're going to be going to movies or, you know, going to the local Temping Bowling area and things like that. Like, all those things we're going to be required to wear masks. There's too many restrictions. I suppose we could go to the park or go to another park. But I was thinking a really exciting activity would be, imagine getting vaccinated. Wouldn't that be cool? You already have been.

So I presume that there are childhood vaccines. You haven't gotten around to giving them yet. And you use over two. Just get them vaccinated for those. Yeah, we just get them randomly vaccinated against. Yellow fever? Yeah, yellow fever or what's the one, the rabies. Yeah, rabies, that's three shots.

You've got to get three shots in a row. Well, Charles, I had an idea like that for my daughter, actually, because she likes getting a COVID test, and she's had to do it twice. She would just go to a drive-thew and she's three. They just stick a thing up and actually it only goes in her mouth. But every time she goes to get tested, she gets a caramel a koala. So she loves it. So I mean, I could just give her the chocolate, but that wouldn't kill two hours.

So we can just go every day and you all get tested. Yeah, and you get your caramel a koala. So do the government hand them out free. No, I do it as a bribe. Can I come and get tested with you? You can. Yeah, you can all feed him. It's quite like a caramel koala.

Very nice. I mean, she would just gladly watch Ivy for 16 hours straight. I'm just telling myself it's good for her language development. except that Pepper is giving her a cockney accent. I'm not sure about that point. Yeah, no, you don't want that. What about talking to them? Do you think?

Look, I mean, I've tried that. My daughter used to say all these really cute things where she got it wrong, and now she's really good at speaking, so it's just getting... I mean, you can't have a profound intellectual conversation with a three-year-old child. I just mentioned Nietzsche, and she just doesn't understand.

Yeah, and the problem with Hartley is he's so into Bitcoin now, I just feel every time I enter into a conversation with him, because he's 12, I'm just likely to lose money. You know what I was thinking. I'm actually looking seriously at this. I'm pondering moving to Bondi, right? Because imagine how cheap the rent is going to be at the moment. And then by the time summer comes,

it will actually be nice to live in Bondi. I think that's a very good idea. And in actual fact, that could lead to probably the most exciting thing you could do all school holidays, which is to get infected with the Delta variant. It's going viral. It's never a dull moment. And at least something would then happen.

That's true. You'd get put in intensive care and you'd get all this attention. You'd make the news. Everywhere that I'd been in the past week would get published in the newspaper. Exactly. Well, the last idea that I have, it's been tried in Melbourne and it worked well. What you do is you get COVID, but then you drive all the way to the Sunshine Coast. I like that idea.

Yeah, but you've got to go via Victoria as well. I'll go via Victoria. And finally, another thing, and I'm not sure whether it's allowed. I was seeing you're just taking the kids on a tour of English pubs and not wear masks or anything like that and just claim that it was because I accidentally had some fog and ended up there and it was a total accident. So that's my plan.

You could inspect the graves of your ancestors. Or if you die from the Delta variant, your kids could inspect your grave. It would be perfect. This episode of The Chase Report is brought to you by Foresight. Who could have predicted that not ordering enough vaccines during a pandemic would be a problem? Foresight. With Sydney locking down, I thought it might be a good opportunity to go back and look through the history of Australia's vaccine rollout. This will be uplifting.

Yes. Because I just want to remind people how great things look to the middle of the middle of the of the last year when Scott Morrison first announced a sovereign vaccine plan which will keep Australia right up the front. We're up at the front of the queue. It was Scott Morrison's promise. And even towards the end of last year, Greg Hunt was confident that by about now, by about, you know, middle of this year, that most of Australia would be vaccinated and even...

By the end of 2021, we'll be very close to... I would put it this way, widespread international travel. That's right. We're all just going to jet off around the world by the end of this year, just in a few months' time. Widespread. You know what's widespread? Fucking COVID.

Yeah. Yeah, well, this is the whole thing, Dom. I reckon the promises that the federal government made were a gold standard. We were at the front of the queue when it came to promises. Our hypothetical vaccine rollout was going to be amazing. It was going to be a big. not roll gold. It was going to be rolled platinum, Charles. But then 2021 came around, mind you, even at the beginning of 2021,

even though they knew that they hadn't quite bought enough, Morrison was still, he was pretty cocky. By the end of February, end of March, I should say, to have reached some four million population. Four million, four million by the end of the March. Wasn't that good? What I love about that clip is that it went by the end of February, I mean by the end of March

and the update of that is up by the end of April, by the May I think June, perhaps July we're thinking Christmas Charles Yeah, they still haven't reached that goal At the end of March they were 85% short of that goal So this was after it had completely fallen over

It then took another two months For the government to actually say this It's not a competition It's not a race You've got to get it right And it's got to be safe It's not a race It's not a competition

So it's not a race We don't have to worry about being vaccinated because, you know, you don't want to be competitive. To be fair to the government, if it was a race, it would be an area of policy where they've also made absolutely no progress. So it doesn't really matter either way, I think. Yeah. It's actually probably quite a good thing that it's not a race because they probably lock them up and kill them in custody. But look, I've got a solution to this problem, Tom. Thank goodness, someone does.

It borrows heavily from the Philippines vaccination program. Yeah. So you know how the Philippines has this President Duterte who likes to kill drug dealers and things like that? Well, he's got this new policy, which is if you don't get vaccinated, you go to jail. Wow. Yeah. Now, obviously, that wouldn't work in Australia because we'd have to put everyone in jail because there's no vaccine, right? So I'm not saying we exactly copy the Philippines model. What about if we did this plan, which is you go to jail

if you don't order enough vaccine in the first fucking place? The New South Wales government has brought in tough new restrictions from 4pm yesterday. All pubs and clubs in the Bondi area must observe a strict limit of 4 grams of cocaine per toilet cubicle.

Cafes in Sydney's inner west must observe a strict limit of 4 p.m. macchiados per person. Aldi shoppers will be restricted to a strict limit of four discount trombones per visit. Children in metropolitan Sydney are strongly advised to stand at least 1.5 metres away from Catholic priests at all times. Finally, if you're the Prime Minister and have already been fully vaccinated than even gone on a trip overseas to the pubs of England, while the rest of the country waits to receive the vaccine that you didn't order enough of, please fuck off. This has been a message on behalf of the people of Sydney.

So yesterday we talked about the Grey Bowery Reef and how the government has said that as long as you ignore climate change, that the Great Barrier Reef is one of the most well-managed reefs in the world. Well, I've got on the line Scott Ludlam, and he's one of those, you know, greeny-type ex-senators who goes around talking about the environment all the time. And I just want to put to him some of the government's very persuasive arguments that Susan Lay, who's the Environment Minister put yesterday. Scott Lullum, welcome to the Chase Report.

Hey, it's nice to be here at last. Now, Scott, do you admit that as long as you ignore climate change, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the best managed reefs in the world? Yeah, I think that's entirely fair and reasonable. As long as you ignore the fact that it's dying, it's doing great. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And also, don't you agree that the government's approach to climate change

should be ignored because all those issues are not a UNESCO thing. They're actually, it's a different committee that deals with climate change. So the government is right to ignore climate change when it comes to the reef. Yeah, because that's exactly how ecosystems work. That's how the atmosphere works, the southern ocean works, and that's how the environment works overall. I think it's incredibly irresponsible of the reef to have done this. So are you calling on the reef to get looked at,

have to buy a separate committee? Like, surely, that's on the reef. That's the Reef's fault, isn't it? I'm glad that we're so stridently in agreement on this. The reef, quite frankly, needs to get this fit together. This is a disgrace. It needs to be able to work with the government to time these announcements a little bit more conveniently.

It's just a little bit suspicious, isn't it? The reef would be bringing up climate change just when it's dying out. Like, that's a bit of a suspicious timing, isn't it? It is. It's clearly political. And the minister, I don't think, I think you're correctly referred to as the Environment Minister.

I think she prefer to be referred to as the alternative oil and gas minister quite correctly blamed the reef for politicising this issue. It's a disgrace. Yes, good. I'm so glad. Yeah, because this is the whole problem, isn't it? The climate change keeps on being politicised as if politicians can do something about climate change. Look, gas balances in the atmosphere clearly have a left.

wing buyer that's been clear since the 1990s. Yes, yes, good. And look, while I've got you and, you know, just on broader issues, seeing you seem to be so in agreement with the government, just leaving aside climate change, don't you think the government's just doing a great job? I can't think of a single thing that's gone wrong in the last 12, 24 months. Yeah.

Like, it's a flawless machine working exactly as it's intended to work. See, I'm very surprised by what you've, just told me, Scott, because your book is a sort of hand-wringing, lefty, greeny exercise. What's it, what's it called? It's called Full Circle, and, yeah, it's basically a full bottle condemnation of the kind of extractive capitalism that has led us to this catastrophe. Right. So, so you're just doing that book for the money.

Yeah, but I'm doing a little bit of lobbying for the oil and gas industry on the side, which is what this pitch is all about. Scott Latham, thank you very much for your time. It's been a pleasure. Weird, but a pleasure. This episode of The Chaser Report is sponsored by not making any plans ever. If you don't make plans, they can't get ruined. Not making any plans.

One more thing before we go, Charles. We do have something to talk about, which is not ourselves and what's going on in Sydney. Not far from here in Wellington in rural New South Wales, a prison has been taken over by mice. They've gone in, they've gnawed through electrical wiring. there are dead and decaying mice in the walls on the ceiling. They've had to move 200 staff and 420 inmates to other prisons because the mice have taken over the prison. And I've got to say, that sounds like an amazing dystopian fiction project.

Whoever came up with that plan, whichever criminal mastermind came up with the plan to just have a huge drought and a huge flood and then a plague in order to jail break out of that thing. It's genius. It is, isn't it? And so, Charles, according to the AP report on this, the most common complaint is an ever-present stench of mice urine and decaying flesh,

which is the one thing that would make conditions in prison actually seem genuinely pleasant by comparison. Yeah, yeah. I suppose the mice didn't bring a bar of soap, did they? I think, yeah, I think you'd need more than one bar to clean this up. If you want more Chaserheadlines, chaser.com. com is the place to get. You can follow us on all the social platforms.

And Charles, what's the code word today if people want to leave a five-star review at Apple podcast? Not a race? It's not a fucking race. I don't know why people, you know, want a vaccine because being locked down every fucking few months is just so fucking fantastic. Look, Charles, I know you're still very upset about the cancellation of your two-week trip to beautiful parts of Australia. But on the upside, it will mean you can spend more time in a room with me.

Oh, great. I'm really looking forward to it. Our gear is thanks to road microphones. We've got an appearance coming up at the Melbourne Podcast Festival on the 1st of August. You can book now, and I presume that they're going to refund your tickets in the scenario that it gets cancelled. Don't say that.

It'll definitely be on. It's fine. Yeah, we'll do it by Zoom. It will be just as good. And we are part of the ACAST Creator Network. See ya.