The Chaser Report - Sydney's Lockdown Begins At Last | Jan Fran

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

At it starts its eighth week of stay-at-home orders, Sydney finally goes into lockdown. Plus, Jan Fran joins us to preview her new show 'Question Everything', which we attempt to do. And, because this podcast never shies away from the tough debates, Charles dares to share his lockdown hair issues. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by that cup of tea you made this morning and then you forgot to drink it, so you popped it in the microwave, and then you forgot to get it out of the microwave, so it's just still in there. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Monday, the 16th of August, 2021. Charles and Gabby, before we get into the dark despair that is right now, let's all say something good that happened on the weekend to start the week with an uplifting and positive note.

Gabby. Well, I mean, I turned 25 on Saturday. Yeah. And may I say, yeah, the theme actually amongst my housemates and I had a theme and the theme was obviously quarter life crisis and may I say the entire East Coast of the country really showed up for that theme on Saturday.

Gabby, we're getting to that. We're getting to that. No, no, I know. I just wanted to thank the country for really going all out. Okay, we didn't quite achieve the goal of an upbeat start to the podcast there, but congratulations. 25, you had a birthday, time passed, which is basically all that's happening at the moment.

Just time is just ticking over without anything to try for it. Boy, did I age. Yeah. Charles, did anything good happen to you? Well, my son had his birthday yesterday. Turn 13. Happy birthday. Wow.

Teenager in the house. Yes. That's much more exciting than 25. And it was great. I got him great present, which is I gave him my iPhone as the birthday. And he loved it. Like, it was just the best thing he's ever had. But instead, I, so I now have ended up with his phone.

And I'll just, so two minutes ago, I think the podcast started. And my phone battery was at 100%. It is now at 63%. I shit you not. I mean, they're great phones. Like, for the half hour that you get to use for day. Yeah. Like, I sort of go, you know, like love for sun is one thing.

But also having a good phone is probably more important. wouldn't have done it. I wouldn't have done it. You're a good dad, Charles. You're a good dad. My good thing, and this was on your advice, Charles, this was a very good thing. I went to the beach yesterday with my daughter. I took my daughter to the beach. She splashed around in the cold water. She's very brave. She put her feet in. She had an absolute ball of a time. From today, we are no longer allowed to do that for the near future. It's a $5,000 fine. The one moment of Joy that was available to my three-year-old daughter is now over. But I want to focus on the positive, which is that we did do it.

Yes. Even though now I feel absolute despair that I can't do that anymore. But let's not focus on that. She didn't have that much fun that she's going to ask you to go for the next, you know, three or four weeks. Oh, shit, Gabby. It'll be fine. She's going to say every day, every single day.

No, you've really made a great parenting choice with that. Every time I'm into her, I'll remind her of the beach. Yeah. All right. today's episode, we're going to have a chat to the wonderful Jan Fran about her news series with Will Anderson in Question Everything, all about misinformation. And right after we go to the news headlines, we're going to talk about all the restrictions and all the changes that have happened from today.

But first, let's head to Rebecca Day and Muno in the Chaser Newsroom. Scott Morrison has announced there are one million extra doses of the Pfizer vaccine arriving in Australia for the one millionth time. In announcing the announcement, the Prime Minister said they would be targeted at those most likely to change their votes at the next election. New South Wales was plunged into a statewide lockdown on the weekend. The New South Wales government announced the decision affecting 8 million people on Saturday afternoon via personal ads in a regional newspaper.

Scott Morrison has set a new land speed record after he was caught running away from dealing with a disaster. Morrison was clocked breaking the sound barrier over the weekend when he was asked to give a single fuck about anything that Australians have. going through at the moment. That's the latest Chaser News you can't trust. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno, and I'm seriously considering emigrating

from this godforsaken country. I mean, why even bother at this point? Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by the complimentary coffee that your co-worker brought you this morning, but it's actually a really awful cup of coffee, but you and your co-worker are not yet in a place socially where you can tell them your real coffee

order, so you just sit there and begrudgingly drink it. Here in Greater Sydney, we are now in our eighth week of lockdown, but on the weekend, everything got a whole lot tighter, so let's take a quick look. Doven watch. And Gabby, how are you enjoying all the new restrictions that we got you for your 25th birthday? Yeah, it's literally, it's like I woke up and the country said, you know what, we need to give Gabby a gift. Let's go all out.

66 cases. There you go. Happy birthday. Yeah. War is not always better. I didn't really think through what it would mean if the lockdown in Greater Sydney, where we all are, hello rest of the country. Oh, yeah, true.

Got much tighter, but it has. It's actually gotten even worse. And yeah, this may bring the cases down. But do you think that's a good thing? Don't you think that we're finally doing something that will actually work? Well, Melbourne would say you've been in lockdown for three days at this point. I love the fact that they're rolling out to the rest of New South Wales the restrictions that they know don't work because they're rolling out the old restrictions to the rest of New South Wales knowing that it's not going to work and then they're tightening everything in Sydney because you wouldn't want the restrictions to work everywhere. You just want them to work in Sydney now.

So the whole idea is we'll get the cases down in Sydney. kidney and then but we'll let let let let's let new south wales bloom for a while i actually think this is my honest opinion and i think there should be an i cac inquiry into this which is that i think that the the new south wales liberal party is funded by the coronavirus i think that there is some sort of backroom corrupt deal like eddie obed style you know let's give you some money thing that's going on that means that, you know, every time they bring in a rule, they bring in another rule that means the coronavirus, oh, they've just said to the coronavirus, who we're not going to give you Sydney anymore, it's too unpopular, but why don't you go out

to the regions and we'll just let you? I mean, to be fair, the coronavirus is probably a better coalition partner than the nationals at this point, but it gets more done and it reaches more people. It's more, it's the choice between syphilis and COVID, isn't it? Yeah, like I think, I think the main source of frustration more so comes from the fact that it's like, so Melbourneians will say we've probably been in lockdown for three days. Elsewhere will say we've been in lockdown for what, coming into eight weeks now. Yeah, we're not eight weeks.

My problem is that if I knew that the last eight weeks weren't a real lockdown, I would have gone and lived my best life for the last eight weeks. I've been doing the right thing like a chump. Yes, because you were in your early 20s up until Saturday. And now, and now you're in your late 20s. I'm closer to 30 because of this virus. You basically did. Yeah, well, yeah.

You know what? It's either the virus gets me or I get myself. That's what I've always maintained. If I'd known that people were going to go up to Byron and that someone who didn't even believe in check-ins and thought COVID was a myth was going to go up there and spread COVID anyway, I would have gone up to Byron. I would have broken the rules.

Yeah. And I just love that all of this has just come like two months too late. I love that for us. And you know what? When things come two months too late, that should cause alarm for most people. They might. But we shouldn't be Sydney centric here. We've got to broaden the things.

So let's take a moment to welcome Canberra to the big league of actual cities that are locked down. Well done, ACT. You finally made it onto the A list. You joined the cool kids. I did want to say if anyone in Canberra, because they had a whole lot of toilet paper shortages, It's the first time that they've been locked down properly, so they did the whole toilet paper thing. And if anyone does want to buy toilet paper,

chasershop.com. You already did this inappropriate plug on Friday's episode. How many roles have you got left? We've got quite a lot left. Discount them. I mean, you can wipe your ass on a photo of Scott Morrison, on a photo of Peter Dutton. What about the coronavirus?

I want to wipe my ass on a photo of the coronavirus. This podcast is We'll get that for your birthday Gabby. That's your birthday prison. Great. I'll tell everyone. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Cups. Use them, fill them, make them, spill them. Now, thanks to lockdown, which spreads day by day further across the country.

We're all desperate for stuff to watch. Fortunately, we have the first ever comedy news panel show on the ABC. at least so it says in the press release. It's called Question Everything and Jan Fran is co-hosting with Will Anderson. Hey, Jan. Hey, man. Yeah, we did invent the comedy panel show format. I've never seen it before on any network ever.

So we're pretty proud of ourselves. Now, I'm pretty excited about this because it's about misinformation, which is pretty much the most important thing going around at the moment. Have you managed to get Craig Kelly and George Christensen for the panel? No. not yet and something tells me that if we were to approach them they might turn us down um no we're going to have much funnier people on the panel three funny albeit highly questionable comedians joining us every week so there's no there's no need for the craigellies and the george christiansensens of

the world on the panel just yet although i think they'll come up now i love the topic all this new stuff um all the craziness going around the lab leak theories all the kind of stuff but how do you make misinformation into a panel show. Oh, that's, um... What's the secret source? Well, the secret source one is a good ringmaster, check. Is that you? No, that's Will.

Oh, Will's the... So, what's your role in? So I'm bringing the answers. So Will's got the questions, I've got the answers. And our panellists have the jokes. Right, okay. And in that delightful Venn diagram, right in the middle, is where the magic happens. and that's how you make misinformation funny.

Oh, great. So you're the ultimate authority on all things. That sounds amazing. Yeah, look, it was the role I was born to play, frankly. Yeah. Are you trustworthy enough? Absolutely not. No, Charles.

No one should trust me. At least of all, Will Anderson, but he has decided to. And here we are going to air next week, so fingers crossed. Don't you think there's a bit of a demark issue? Because comedians have long had the trade in making things up, right? That's our job. The last 25 years, it's just been all about putting out fake news with the chase. That's what we've been doing.

Don't you think it's a little bit unfair now that politicians are really coming onto our side of the thing and doing all that stuff? Whereas they should back off and just let us get on with the fake news. Although maybe this means that what we need is more comedians to become politicians. You know what I mean? Maybe the problem is that it's just gone in one direction. Don't say that to Craig. Oh, yeah. I've been worried about that for years.

Because, you know, in Ukraine, that actually happened. Yeah, I know. And he ran as a joke, I think, didn't he ended up winning. It was a good joke. Same in the US. But it's quite strange. I mean, the other day we had a news article about, you know, private. school's just getting more supplies of Pfizer.

And then the Australian published a news story saying exactly the same thing if they were two later. It's impossible to know what's reality anymore. Yeah, man. I mean, that was the problem with Donald Trump, right, is that he just became almost impossible to satirise because he was just more bat shit crazy than anything that you could possibly write about the man.

Yeah. It was the golden era of the chaser because it just meant that we just transcribed everything that went on. You know how there's that comedian Sarah Cooper who, you know, she just did the kind of the TikTok lip thing. Like, all you have to do is just say his exact words. That's true. And that is insane enough to be hilarious. But you know what?

I think it's actually good that he is out of office and that we're doing this show now rather than say at any point in the last four years. Because I think, you know, he would have just usurped that entirely. Like it just would have been all about Trump. and like this we kind of have a bit of a bit of breathing room. You know what I mean? To look at all of the other. Are you saying that this format was designed for a Trump era and you've just missed the boat on the whole thing?

I'm pretty sure Will has been thinking about it for a number of years principally because of what happened in 2016 that lasted until 2020 and, you know, the misinformation that ended up out there. True or false? Before the chase ravened TV, there was a meeting with Will Anderson to potentially work with him on a TV project. But he said it was going to be, and it became the glass house, but he said it was going to be smart and funny, not like those people who just held up sausages in front of Kim Beasley, which turned out to be the chaser, true or false? What do you think?

Oh, man. God, I kind of want to say true. It was true. It was true. The most awkward meeting in the history of television. He just spent the rest of the meeting apologising And then about an hour later We just walked out

Yeah, well we're not going to work together Oh, that's so good But look, it's such rich territory, Jan, And I've got to list some of the things you're looking at covering And I mean, the royal family Are you going to dive into the Prince Andrews stuff? You're going to drive into them all being potentially reptiles? Yeah, well they are all reptiles, aren't they?

I mean, I don't need to fact-check that? That's absolutely true. I have a feeling you're not going to be a very good sort of fact-checker person who knows the things. Nah, I'm garbage. You're right. If you're just going to agree with all the conspiracies there is, what about Q&On? Have you got any stuff?

Love them, my faith. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. And they turn out to be, they check out all right. Wait a minute. Is the ABC now just, you know, running all this propaganda as truth? You know what we've discovered in, in, we had this moment where we were like, you know, kind of planning the show.

And we thought, oh, gee, are we going to have enough content? Like, you know, what if we don't have enough content? Mate, mate, not only do we have enough content, we have got so much content that it's actually a liability. I mean, it's great for the show, terrible for humanity, great for the show. You know, so, yeah, we're talking about everything, man. But this is a whole new era.

Like, when politicians in Parliament are spouting absolute bullshit, I mean, before it was just stuff that was offensive or what you disagreed with, but stuff that is just mad, I don't really recall this happening before, Charles. Is this a new thing? Let's ask the expert, Jan, is this a new thing? Is misinformation a new thing? Yeah, just the fact that a large part of political life and people in office, is just people making.

Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, George Christensen, just believe things that are demonstrably false. I'm sure there's always been people who have been outliers who've believed things that are demonstrably false but they've never had a massive platform by which to espouse them to the world, right? And people haven't necessarily needed to care because they're like, whatever, that person believes what they believe.

But now, if you believe something false and you have a platform and you have hundreds of thousands of followers in the case of Craig Kelly, which he has, you know, via Facebook, Twitter, whatever social media platform he uses, then you're sort of obliged to, to deal with it and to listen to it and to tackle it.

Before he got banned on Facebook, Craig Kelly, by some measures, was by far the most successful politician on Facebook. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and Sky News was the most successful media organisation globally, Australian Sky News, in terms of producing videos. And they were all, you know, Alan Jones, the most 4.6 million views for COVID-19 is not a pandemic.

Yeah, exactly. So in answer to your question, Like, is it new? Yes and no. Misinformation is not new, but I think the mediums through which misinformation can spread are new. Like, it was not like this five years ago. It certainly was not like this 10 years ago. And I remember, like 20 years ago, 30 years ago, it would be people handing out these pamphlets on election day.

And you'd go, who are the crazy people of those? You know, remember the CEC and stuff like that? Like there were these sort of fringe groups that would pop out at election time, the LaRoucheites and things like that. And they'd all have that, yeah, that sort of thing of Jewish space lasers are causing the California bushfires, which is what Audrey Taylor Green was elected on. But the difference is now, yeah, you're right.

They've got the same platform as NBC and CNN. And so to some people they have the same credibility. That's the great terror, isn't it? It's like we, you know, social media happens and we go, oh, amazing. Like, anyone with an opinion can now say anything anywhere. And then, like, 90 seconds later, it's like, oh, fuck. Anyone with an opinion can now say anything anywhere. You know what I mean?

The gatekeepers had something good about what they're doing, didn't they? Although that said, if you want to get a lot of web traffic for the show, all you need to do is take the videos where you outline the theories, cut off the fact check and you'll get millions of views online. Yes, that's the plan. That's a great strategy, Dom. I'm just going to talk about, you know, Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine and pandemics and, yeah,

get those clicks, baby. And apparently the idea for the show leaked from a lab in Wuhan, is that right? Fact check, that's correct, yes. All right. So the show premieres on Wednesday, 8.30 p.m. on ABC TV and Ivy, It's going to continue for eight weeks. It's called Question Everything. All the best, Jan.

Oh, thanks, guys. Yeah, I hope you like it. I'm sure you'll be watching. Confirm or denied. My current content bar is so far below this show. It's going to be straight to the top of the list. All the best. Thanks, mate.

Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by the cup you refuse to wash up. that is now just growing a small but mighty mould colony. Soon there will be a mould world with mould religions, mould social constructs, mouldy stores with mouldy offices and little mould people living little mouldy mouldy lives with their little mouldy cups of their own. So give it a wash or face the dirty mouldy god complex circumstances. So before we go, my wife is usually very protective of how I look for some reason, which I find very odd, right?

To reflectable on her, yeah. Anyway, I said to her yesterday, so I'm thinking of shaving my head off because my hair is a disaster. I've got COVID hair. You've got mad professor hair at the moment. Yeah, it's just insane, right? It's just horrible.

Horrible, horrible. They're tough sticking out in every direction. And I was expecting her response to be, oh, no, no, no, just use products. It'll be all right. it's salvageable and instead you went oh yeah probably shaving your hair off is the best option at this point so i'm just a little depressed because i think my wife has given up on she hasn't given up on you she's just given up on your hair follicles and to be fair they started it

yeah as someone who's further along the same path despite being younger than you charles um there's not much you can do when the hair follicle gives up the game you've got to bring out the clippers basically but then i Turned it back on her, of course, because it's like, hang on, if you're going to attack me and my hair, I'm going to attack you. So I then turned it back on her and said, well, you know, what are you doing about your hair? Because everyone's roots are growing out. It's all a disaster.

Because she keeps on complaining about the fact that she colors her hair or whatever. I don't know, the process. Die? Yeah, she's died. Bleach. Yeah, that's like mine, but mine's grown out. She gets somebody professional to do it, Rose. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I said, why don't you just do it yourself? Like, it can't be bad hard. No, no. This is what she said. This is exactly the conversation I just said. And she said, oh, no, no, that would be like hundreds of dollars worth of damage if I even touched it because my hairdresser would not approve. Yeah, I think when I think about doing my hair, because I mean, I went three years in my teens, I used to bleach my own hair and then color it myself with my mom. And I had no problem back then doing that because I didn't really see hairdressers all that often anyway.

But then I went through adulthood and paying myself, like paying with my own money for my hair to be professionally bleached or professionally colored by a hairdresser. And I think I can't tell whether it's I don't want to do it at home because it'll be so much damage to my hair or whether it, I don't want to do it at home because that means it's like easily $800 over the last two years wasted. that's legit no oh okay so you think that yeah negotiating against us yeah we always do like my hair's grown out heaps too and i just can't bring myself to cut it or dye it myself because of the amount of money i've already spent on getting it done professionally that is but so because my wife made it sound like it was sort of like a tradey thing which is like she went oh look mate you know like if if you uh don't do your own plumbing you did your own plumbing and like this is like

800 bucks worth of damage. This is going to take three months to do. I'm going to have to get in. I'm going to get some 2B4s and a drill. Yeah. I'm just going to have to start again. That's why I really hate when men don't just cut their own hair because you're already getting your haircut for like $20 max anyway.

Let me just put it in these terms of sales that you might understand. Your wife has a carefully tended mansion on our head. Like it's well manicured. It's looked after. There are professionals doing this stuff. You have a shitty bed sit. Just fucking shave it off and start again. You better off making firewood, you know.

Yeah. Cheaper. Yeah. Just burn baby burn, Charles. Just there's nothing left to lose. Our mics are by road or something. And we're supported by the ACAST, Creator Network. Although I don't know if we will be after this podcast.

Good night. Go away. Leave us a fire star review on Apple Podcasts and catch you tomorrow. Bye. Thank you.