The Chaser Report - The ABC's Worst Nemesis | John Delmenico

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Back in February, we forced The Chaser editor John Delmenico to watch all four hours of ABC's Nemesis program. This experiment, though unethical, did provide many helpful findings — like why it's funny to make interns do things. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Charles and Dom, but without Charles and with Dom, but only briefly. I'm afraid this is one of those days when life got in the way again, and frankly I thought I'd better record an intro after given what producer Lachlan did yesterday, which made me wonder if he'd made an AI model of Charles's voice. No, turns out he just keeps embarrassing clips of things we say to play.

out of context. Anyway, we have a treat for you today. I'm pleased to say, John Delmenico, the editor of The Chaser, took a good, long, deep dive as he liked to do, or as we make him do, into Nemesis, the ABC TV series, where lots of former liberal leaders

and other significant figures basically took the chance to slam dunk on each other and settle some scores. He certainly got quite a lot out of it. I think he'll enjoy his conclusions. And check it out yourself. It's probably still on Ivy View. I don't think it's good.

going anywhere. 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 fizz.ca.

John, you have subjected yourself to Nemesis, the ABC series about the Abbott Turnbull Morrison years. Welcome. I'm so glad you survived. Thank you. Yeah, I thought the one thing that I needed more of in my life was Scott Morrison, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. And so now I can share it to everyone else who is smart enough to not put themselves through that. Yeah, because I mean, Malcolm Turnbull regularly comments on anything. Anytime you want to comment, you just got a Malcolm Turnbull. But Scott Morrison has been pretty quiet since announcing he's buggering off to the States. And Tony Abbott, let me get this straight. John, didn't even want to comment on this. Didn't you want to settle any scores? What's wrong with the man?

Yeah, it was a weird choice. For some reason, he didn't want to get interviewed and then have his version of events directly compared to everyone else's version of events. Right. I'm really surprised. Did they get Peter Credlin? No, the real leader of the Little Party at the time did not show up. You know, that's really surprising. She's commented on it extensively in other media, but very odd that the shadow prime minister didn't want to set her records straight. Australia's second female prime minister, from what I understand, John. Yeah, that was a main focus of the Tony Abbott era.

Okay, well, let's dive into all the gems that you've unearthed for us. I know you've got a whole bag of audio. It's a playback. So if you haven't watched Nemesis, and I'm in that category, I have to confess. All right, first, I want to say that this show was the peak of journalism meeting entertainment. Really? Some have claimed that the journalism fell to the wayside and the entertainment also fell to the wayside. But I think there's nowhere else we can find scoops like this one.

in the door and I look at Pete and he said, mate, do you want something you eat? And I said, oh, mate, that'd be fantastic. He goes, there's some Tuna Mornay there. Tuna Mornay. I hate Tuna. So I said, mate, you know what? I might order some pizzas as well. What about that? Didn't want to offend him, of course, but I just can't do churn. Oh, John, that's extraordinary. A division over Tuna Mornay in the coalition? Where else would you hear about the intricate details of the food being eaten while planning a spill? than in this show. I mean, sure, the show didn't get into mentioning anything about, like, any of the

roach, the defamation suits, the prayer room, the drought relief water that didn't exist, or anything to do with, like, Scott Morrison's beef with Grace Tame. But they got to the real issue of the Tudor Mornay. So there was no side-eye, but there was a bit of a stink out of the Tuna. Yeah, the Tuna got about as much airtime as Brittany Higgins. Wow. Okay. So who are we hearing from there? I can't remember his name, because I wrote down, I realized I wrote down the wrong

politician, but it was one of the backbenchers who helped Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, oh sorry, Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull organised this bill against Tony Abbott. Was it Craig Laundee? It sounded a little bit Laundie-esque. Made. Sound like someone who owns pubs, basically. So not only do we get great scoops like that, we also have great analysis from people who are inside the rooms at the time. Like the fact that basically every politician agrees on one thing, which is that they didn't

make mistakes, and if there were hypothetical mistakes, it wasn't their fault. Great. Barnaby Joyce gave us some real insight into how independent. intelligence works. My personal views is people have three quadrants of their brain. They have academic intelligence, social intelligence and sporting intelligence. Did he just say three quadrants? Yeah, three quadrants.

Famously, a division into four. I don't know what part of which of the three quadrants caused him to think that there was three quadrants. Yeah. Is there a fourth quadrant called alcohol? Is that what we're talking about? Did he give the interview from the planner box? Because that would have been very on message for this week.

No, I think he might have done this while he was having. the medication and just before he had the alcohol with them. Amazing. So, I mean, that's relatively lucid for Barnaby. I love that sporting intelligence is like up there with everything else. Anyway, so there you go. There was one thing with Barnaby that I wanted to clip up, but it genuinely would have just taken up too long for a podcast.

Oh, yeah. Which was at the start of every episode, they would be like, oh, give us a one word description of the prime minister. And he would just give a full sentence, but he would just try to, he would like halfway through to realize he's supposed to give a word, so then he would speed up the rest of the sentence. He's not a man. You can't tell Dr. Barnaby what to say.

People have tried for many, many years. You can't. I love that they went, okay, let's ask him just for a one word answer. Because they probably knew that would give them, like, it would be only five or six minutes, the answer. If they did that. The show itself, just like brains, split up into three quadrants. That's it. They started with Tony Abbott.

Then they went to Turnbull and Morrison. So let's start with the Abbott episode. Yes, there's one episode per Prime Minister, I guess. So like we said earlier, Tony Abbott refused to show up, so we didn't get to hear his perspective on how things went down. That's a real shame. Yeah, I mean, I missed Tony. But however, we did get amazing insights from other people like this one.

He didn't welcome my inquiries. What did he say? He generally told me to fuck off. Possibly not the first time Malcolm Turnbull's been told to fuck off during his long career in business and politics, John. No, and to be honest with you, I'd now think Tony Adam made the definite right call not to show up, because all we get is him telling

a Malcolm Turnbull to fuck off, which makes him look great. I remember hearing a lot of stories about when Brendan Nelson was opposition leader. Do you remember that before Turnbull's first time in the job? It was right after Kevin Rudd won. John Howard lost his seat and they went with Brendan Nelson, the former

health minister, as their leader. And apparently Turnbull was in there basically constantly going, Brendan, Brendan, you're ho-plus, you're stuffing it up. And the problem with Brendan Nelson was he didn't tell Turnbull to fuck off. So he didn't get to be prime minister. He just basically fell out of politics a few months later. Yeah, they did reveal that in the spill motion, the last signature for Turnbull's One had

underneath it for Brendan Nelson. Oh, one person remembered Brendan. Yeah, someone held on to that grudge for years and a whole other leader in between them and just used that as the last knife. That's extraordinary. Okay, I would love to know who that was. Anyway, the ghost of Brendan Nelson remembered by one person in the party room. But of course, there was the main shocking revelation that was most of the episode that Peter Credlin secretly ran the show. No.

I know. Shocking. And that the attempt to make the public think that Peter Credlin was no longer running the show after the empty chair spill was also just Peter Credlin again. That all the meetings that are having with the backbenchers to be like, oh, we're bringing in the whole party now. That all those meetings were orchestrated by Peter Credlin and she was the chair of those meetings. Right. So when we were talking about Peter Credlin being the real prime minister during the Abbott years, that was not an exaggeration.

That was actually entirely confirmed by nemesis. Yeah, they even acknowledged that, like, she would apparently yell at the back benches to stay in their place, despite the fact that she was not in her place. That's extraordinary. Well, I mean, to be fair, it's probably to her credit that Abbott lasted for nearly two years, right? I mean, he probably would have been gone in a month otherwise. Yeah, and she got him into the, like, into the job as well.

Like, she did an amazing job pretending to be Tony Abbott so that Tony Abbott could win. She deserves the credit. I don't quite understand why if Peter Cretlin was really the Prime Minister, he named that first cabinet, which I only had the one female member. Do you remember Julie Bishop, who was there because she was the deputy? Do you think he basically said, if I can't have Peter in the cabinet in a sort of Scott Morrison-style, multiple roles, I'm not having any women? No, yeah.

They did show an old clip of him saying that he was very disappointed that the cabinet only had one woman. Sure. As if that wasn't his choice? Look, John, I don't know whether you've ever tried to operate a meritocratic process and be entirely fair and something, oh no, what a pity there are no women. That's what happened to Tony. I mean, that's why he had to be minister for women. He didn't want to be.

He knew from the cabinet process, John, that there was a terrible dearth of senior women in the Liberal Party. And the best way to fix that was for him to pay the minister for women. He stepped up where no woman was allowed to. And look what's happened now. There are at least like a handful, right? That's all thanks to Tony. He doesn't get the credit. But there was also another big focus of the lies that Abbott told about the first budget,

where just before the election he and the arts, no cuts at all and no higher taxes, and then immediately went back on that. And that did lead to a massive revelation about Wyatt Roy. And I said what we should kind of do is what we'd in Queensland call do a Peter Beattie. Front up, say, this is what we've got to do. I'm sorry that this is the case and get about fixing it, which the public really respects that honesty and directness. And unfortunately, you know, the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott saw that as a very personal attack,

had a very visceral and angry response. He sort of smashed his hands on the table and said, we can't admit that we fucking lie. There's been no fucking lies in this. That's extraordinary. I talked about this actually recently on the podcast, John. Peter Beattie constantly went up and said, it's all my fault. I'm sorry. I had to do this.

I have no. Don't blame them, blame me. And people loved him for it. Albo could have done that. Yeah. With this stage three. Yeah, like Albo, that was a weird thing where Albo just refused to take it. Where it'd be like, oh yeah, things are different now. We made a bad call. We're changing it. Boom. Good.

But we can also see from there why Wyatt Roy is no longer a politician in federal politics. He didn't understand what Albo does, which is that you can never be, like, you can never just front up. That's so funny. Obviously, like, Wyatt Roy, just an amazing character clearly shown from this. And he wouldn't try to get one over anyone. Also, congratulations to Wyatt Roy, who recently announced that he is the new head of innovation at Neum working on the line. I know, this is our favourite thing we've ever talked about in the podcast. I didn't know if you were aware of that, because I was going to mention it.

You might have heard the multiple episodes we've done about the Saudi plan. So I think it's 150 kilometres, the skyscraper there building in the desert, all in a straight line. Wyatt Roy is running that. And when it fucks up and the construction goes incredibly over time and there are human rights failings, White Roy is going to get in front of the cameras and say, It's all my fault. I'm very sorry. I had no idea of knowing that a Saudi-run massive project

would involve human rights violations. I'm so shocked. Anyway, there you go. He's got a big job. And funny, he was a, wasn't he a teenager at the time? He was in the Abbott government. Yeah, and I wonder he was so naive to think that federal politicians would be honest with their constituents.

How funny. Okay. Glad that Wyatt's come out of the woodwork, though. Good on you, White. You should come on the podcast and tell us about Neo. I'm sure I won't be at all creepy. That could be the next sponsor for the podcast. Oh, so good.

All right, love it. Well, there you go. Good to hear from Wyatt, if not Tony Abbott. What else happened in the Abbott episode, John? Yeah. The other obvious big thing was that there was a leadership spill against Tony Abbott. Yes. And the main revelation from the leadership spill was that Tony Abbott's plan to stop the spill from happening

was calling up Scott Morrison the night before, inviting him to his office and offering him the role of deputy leader. Wow. Like, wanting Scott Morrison to challenge Julia Bishop for the role. and again, something that monumental effect, you need the great analysis of the people who were there. So here is Scott Morrison's main takeaway. I went back to my office with a friend and I had a curry that night.

Classic scomo. Right. So, okay, so Tony Abbott's solution to the fact that the Liberal Party was about to elect an empty chair instead of him as later. And this is because I think Turnbull's a minister, so he didn't want to run against, he didn't want to show his hand initially, right? was to go to Scott

was to dump the one woman that he had and to go to Scott Morrison, the man who famously, subsequently as I'm sure is revealed in the Turnbull episode, you don't trust if there's a leadership coup in the win, right? So this was, sorry, to clarify, this was the second spill, not the chest.

Okay, so this is one that actually got rid of, um... Yeah, he's also, yeah, but he's playing it in any sense because the reason he chose Scott Morrison was because Scott Morrison was helping term but with the knifing. Right. And he was helping him do all the numbers. And it's like, but why would Scott Morrison wanting to get rid of you, he would still be the deputy leader if you're gone anyway? Yes. Because like that would just be, hey, the person you want to become prime minister,

do you want to be his deputy? Absolutely. Basically saying, hey, Scott, why don't you knife me in a few months, right? So this is after he'd already lost the empty chair, a point at which everybody understood that it was terminal, apparently, except Peter Credlin, right? Well, Well, that's where Peter Credlin has an amazing idea of pretending that she was no longer running the show. How funny. Okay. Instead of just not running the show anymore. Now, I think it's time we should move over to the Malcolm Turnbull era.

Yes, okay. Let's just take a moment. After this, the Turnbull era, brief and glorious as it was. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. Fizz is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month

Certain conditions apply Details at fizz.ca The Chaser Report Now with extra whispers Okay John so this is episode two The Turnbull How long was it a couple of years It felt like a blink of an eye in hindsight

Yeah it was a bit of a short run And he bragged about how much it did In that short run a lot But I want to make something clear to the audience right now Because I haven't made many jokes about knifeings yet And that's because as Turnbull described in this episode episode. These aren't just leadership spills. They are something far worse. That this is madness. He agreed it was madness. I said this is terrorism. Terrorism.

Terrorism. Malcolm Turnbull is a terrorist. I remember hearing this phrase from Turnbull at the time, not acknowledging that he had done it himself, right, to Brendan Nelson and to Tony Abbott. Yeah. Well, you know, terrorists know when terrorists are being terrorists. So he could tell that there was terrorism a foot against him. Look, once you've been part of a terrorist plot, John, you can smell it in the air, can't you? How fascinating, so, in this exercise of introspection, I gather that all that they've done the ABC is basically, it's the enough rope trick, right? Keep the cameras rolling.

And at some point, Malcolm Turnbull is going to accuse others of terrorism while not acknowledging having done exactly the same thing. Presumably, in his, as with the standard narrative, in his view, he was a freedom fighter who liberated Australia from Brennan Nelson and Tony Abbott. Yeah, he was the hero, he referred to him. of as the young hero. Of course. Amazing. So one of the focuses on the Malcolm era was a climate policy called the neg that never saw the light of day in the house of racing.

The worst acronym ever. Like for something you're trying to get people to believe is it's literally negging, a national energy guarantee, wasn't it? Yeah. And people like, and there were people in the clips who clearly understood that other people would be like, oh, the neg short for negative. And they were like, no, that's not what it means at all. If anyone says that, it's a lie. But, um, Turbo made something very clear, which is that they never dropped the egg. Now, we didn't drop the neg. People have said we did.

We did not drop the neg. We quite specifically said it was government policy, but we were not going to put it into the house this week where we could not be confident that we would get it passed. So it was no more than a tactical retreat. Okay, all right. Look, he wrote an incredibly long book, I think the bigger picture, whatever it's called,

presumably also arguing in thousands of pages of detail. that he didn't chicken out on the knee. And he just postponed it and then never un-posed it. Yeah, and to be fair to his colleagues, I think everyone understands that the main reason they dumped him was because he wanted to do stuff on climate.

But there you go, Malcolm, you were dumped for the right reason in your colleagues. So it turned out being on the moderate side of the Liberal Party and beating out Tony Abbott using the conservative vote from the little party sort of meant that his main, supporter base, weren't agreeing with him on a lot of issues.

No one could have predicted that happening. Well, that was the bizarre thing about the second Turnbull kind of leadership, right? Like the first one, he gets rid of Nelson, and he tries to use his popularity, and he was very popular at various points. He tries to use his popularity to get up all these moderate things, and then he gets knifed by the Conservatives, and they put in Tony Abbott. And the second time round, he's like, okay, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to make the same mistake as I did last time.

I'm going to do a deal with all the conservatives, and I'm going to sign the coalition agreement with the nationals and agree not to do all these things and not to do same-sex marriage and tread carefully and climate, all these things and basically cut out the very reasons of his popularity with the electorate, why they put him in the first place. So he basically sealed his own doom by trying

not to be doomed like last time. So you have to hand it to Malcolm Temple. He found a completely different way to be doomed from the beginning of his leadership the second time around. Yeah, he was an innovator in that field of completely screwing up your own politics. Oh gosh. Now, the other big focus of

the Malcolm Turnbull episode is the allegation from many in the party that Malcolm Turnbull is a two-faced bully. Now, I don't know if this sounds like the Malcolm Turnbull we all know, but also just completely side-note, here's a clip of his reaction to finding out that three people are changing away from him which caused the spill that led to his demise. God, Matthias has put on a lot of weight, you know, since 2018. Ouch! Does that sound like someone who would throw random jabs at people and just try to constantly take shots at them when are necessary. Gosh, why wasn't Malcolm Turnbull in the new Mean Girls sequel?

That's quite one from The Burn Book. I mean, we can't all drink slimming tea all the time, Malcolm. It is weird because Malcolm Turnbull really tries to paint himself as the victim and everything. But also, like, the ABC didn't try to edit him in a way that makes him look bad because there's a lot of the stuff where it was like, the things will be later proven, like, an hour later in the episode. But I was just like, they're like, oh, he's a bully. And he'd be like, no, I'm not.

And then whaling, he'd be like, oh, he's gotten fat. At one point, he got mad about the politician who ran the same-sex marriage stuff within the Liberal Party and said he was ungrateful because Malcolm Temple took away the final speech of acknowledging who won. So he was like, he was like, oh, wow, so ungrateful that he didn't like me taking all the credit for his work. Malcolm Turnbull's been running the line that he's the father of same-sex marriage in Australia. For many, many years now, kind of glossing over the issue that actually he did. He wasn't. He was the father of getting the Australian voters to be the ones who chose Sam's Examination.

Well, anyway. Now, before we go into the Scott Morrison years, I want to do a fun quiz with you. Okay. Because obviously all these politicians on Nemesis are perfect sources for information. So I want to see whether you know the truth of what really happened. So I'll ask you a question and then give you the source and you need to tell me what they said. So the first question, according to Malcolm Turnbull, who came up with the idea and orchestrated the plan for Malcolm Turnbull? to knife Tony Abbott.

Oh, I'll assume he's not going to take credit for it himself. Scott Morrison? Correct. Really? It was all Scott Morrison. No part of it was Malcolm Turnbull. I can just imagine Malcolm sitting back going, gee shucks, do you think I've got leadership qualities?

Are you sure? You think I'm the obvious man for the job? Really? He did say they had a meeting. So Scott Morrison described it as a meeting and going, oh I think the budget calls a bad call from Tony Abbott and Malcolm was like

oh he was basically pushing me to be the next leader and it was basically forcing it and then he did all of it and Scott Ross was like no and it's weird because it's weird to believe Scott Morrison on something well this is this is the man who constantly

went during the period on Q&A with his leather jacket right this is the guy was basically branding himself as much as he could and the feud between Abbott and Turnbull is just it goes back to university, it's hilarious. The fact that Abbott gave, and presumably Credlin, gave Turnbull the job of slowly dismantling the NBN when he was the guy who, you know, was involved in

Aussie mail and getting the internet there in the first place in Australia. What an amazingly slow burn shit sandwich that was. Yeah. And so from there, next slow burn shit sandwich, Question two, what was the downfall of Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership, according to Barnaby Joyce? According to Barnaby Joyce. Oh, well, Barnaby Joyce is a massive narcissist. I'm going to assume that it was the bonk ban. Very, very close. Specifically, he said that it was because he criticised Joyce publicly for the affair with the staffer.

Oh, wow. So it was that part. So it wasn't the ban. It was a bit where he said Barnaby shouldn't have impregnated his staffer. I mean, it's kind of, you know, office. Oh, H and S 101, isn't it? Generally, the boss doesn't approve of you knocking up one of your staff when you hadn't disclosed the relationship at all.

Well, Joyce did admit at one point that he was approached about it, and he just lied. Of course. It's like it was none of that. I remember him being all self-righteous about it now. Yeah, it was none of your business. None of your business who I have babies with who's in my office. Yeah, absolutely. So speaking of the bonk ban, according to Barnaby Joyce,

who came up with the bonk ban and why? Oh, I reckon, well, it's a highly kind of religious. It was really grounded. I remember Turnbull quite uncharacteristically seemed very kind of moralistic about it. And you've got to remember that, I mean, part of this is just the whole affair and all that, which is, you know, in his private life. But then it's also, but it's his employee, right? This is the thing. It's someone who works for him as a public servant.

And generally, that's not a sort of pimping role, right? Generally, public servants aren't hired for the sexual convenience of the boss. I reckon it's Morrison. I reckon Morrison's the one who went, you can't have an affair. Okay, and why? Because Hill Song. Okay, you're one for two there. According to him, it was Scott Morrison.

Yes. But the reason was to sabotage Malcolm Turnbull. Really? Yeah. So Malcolm Turnbull claims that he created the Bonk band, and Scott Morrison claims that Malcolm Terple created the Bonk band, and he just loved it because of the Hill Song Star. How funny.

But no, Barnaby Joyce knows the truth. It was a secret plot to oust Barnaby Joyce so that Scott Morrison could become Prime Minister. You know what? At this point, I believe anything of these guys. Yeah. And so, well, like, there was a whole thing as well during the Malcolm Turn... Like, Malcolm Turnbull stuff where Turnbull claimed that, like, Scott Morrison rigged the first spill that Malcolm Turnbull called. So that Turnbull would win, so that Scott Morrison could then come in a couple days later and win it all. Despite the fact that no one in the party room, according to everyone else in the party, knew that Malcolm Turnbull was going to call that spill.

brought it on very quickly, didn't he, to try and nip it in the butt. He's very brave about it. So clearly, Scott Morrison has psychic powers and knew that Malcolm Turnbull is going to do that and then organise the giant plot so that Pete Turnbull would win the spill so that Turnbull would then lose a spill later on. This is the thing I'm most curious to know about, John, after you've watched all the episodes. All this Machiavellian shit and knifing and backstabbing and all that, are any of them actually good at it?

We learnt during the Labour version during the killing season that, no, they're absolutely shit at it, right? They're all the terrible jobs with it. They knife a leader to try and win an election and it massively backfires almost immediately as she says, moving forwards 30 times the one press conference and barely wins the election. This is the thing, and I get it

from the Labour riot as well, with this whole kind of Machiavellian, whatever it takes thing. It's one thing if it works, but basically, isn't it, aren't they just all incredibly bad at plotting coups? Like, the CIA wouldn't hire any of them. Well, apparently, like for one of the plans, they went out and bought a projector

I started projecting it on a wall, which then meant that everyone found out what the plan was, also because they did it in the office across from Malcolm Tamble's main person, Chris Pine. Wow. But so, um, the last question, according to Scott Morrison, who is not to blame for him going to Hawaii during the bushfires? Scott Morrison.

Okay, play the clip. His prime minister, you don't blame your staff. Well, that's generous. I mean, didn't he ended up pinning the whole thing on Jen and the girls, actually? right inside. Well, yeah, and that's not blaming the staff. Okay, fair enough. Good on your, Scott. And to be fair to Scott, he did admit at that point

that he could have handled the media part better. Sure, it was the optics. He was a bit clumsy with the media, was his phrasing of it. So, you know, no regret for going to Hawaii, just he could have hit it better from the media. Sure. So now we should move into the Scott

years. Yes. And so, obviously, one of the main focuses was the Hawaii trip. And we found out that fucking off to Hawaii during bushfire is not the only problem with what he did. There was one other thing as well. Ted says, yeah, well, he's hopped on a jet star. And I said, right are you two? Enough.

Number one, half of Australia is on fire. He wouldn't be going to Hawaii. Two, no prime minister of this country flies jet star. That actually, you know what? That's probably the best thing. That's the thing I most admire about Scott Morrison. about his whole Prime Minister'ship is that he didn't use the official jet. He just travelled on a Jet Star flight to Hawaii like every other Bogan from the Shire.

That is worthy of kudos, Como. Well done. Yeah, that guy makes a great point as well. What's a Prime Minister doing on a jet star flight? You'd want to go with a slot, like one of the least reliable airlines. That's true. And I mean, obviously a massive security risk as well. With the AFP traveling next to him, what the hell happened with that? Also, I wonder how it got leaked.

I wonder how it got leaked before he made it to Hawaii. that he was on a plane to Hawaii. Well, presumably every other person on the Jet Star flight was like, Skomo, mate, what are you doing? You got a selfie with the guy? What a perfect plan. Do you reckon he paid for meals? I reckon he didn't.

No, I reckon he snuck on a bag of chips from Maccas. We know he loves his Macas. There was a part as well where Malcolm Temble was like, you start, like, it was like, why did no one tell him no? Because he was like, because he made the point that Peter Creadlin and his chief staff, both would have been like, what the fuck are you doing? Do not get on that flight? But clearly Scott Morrison's team was like,

I reckon you can do it. I mean, Scott Morrison reckon he could do a lot of things when he was prime minister, including everybody's job for them. So they barely touched Robo Dad at all. They had one throwaway line during the Tony Abbott episode, and that was here. So the other big Scott Morrison thing was obviously his issue with women, which all the women in the little party denied it happened, but clearly at least a bit there was a perception that he had a problem with women.

Well, this is good for Turnbull, isn't it? He had the least problem of women of those three prime ministers. I guess that's something. The absolute low bar being less sexist than Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. Congratulations, Malcolm. Put that in your next book. During this part, Scott Morrison did admit that he made one mistake during his entire prime minister's ship. Just the one.

What do you reckon that mistake was? Oh, gosh, that's really hard. I reckon it was the time he didn't cook the chicken in the curry. No, I think he'll never admit that. Well, it's something that involves women. I don't I'm absolutely baffled by this It was something he said He's as a father's speech

Oh yes yes yes Okay Now clearly Dom what's wrong with that speech He didn't have the two girls standing next to him At the podium You're honestly not You're on the right track of it Not being what's wrong with the speech

So here's the clip You understand why many women found that statement a little concerning I didn't at the time I was quite puzzled by it and I actually regret saying it because frankly probably I should never have disclosed what Jenny and I talk about

and I didn't want to bring Jenny into that I was just, it was a very vulnerable and raw moment The problem with that speech is bringing up Jenny I mean it wasn't a good bit but that yeah it was the private part of the bring up the private conversation part

is the only floor with that with saying that the problem with covering up an alleged sexual assault is that you might upset the person's dad Yeah. No, there wasn't much good about that. But it's certainly, look, I think if what he takes from all of this is that he shouldn't constantly bring his wife and daughters as a justification for all the things that he did,

yeah, fair point. And to be fair, he's never used them to defend Engadene. I think we've all learned some very valuable lessons about politicians here that you just wouldn't get without watching, like, over four and a half hours of politicians talking to the ABC. And clearly, the problem, I think, with politics is us. You know, Scott Morrison kept talking about how, like, the shooting, we didn't shoot the women, and the Malcolm's a great guy, a heavy support, was all just the public misinterpreting things. I see.

And obviously, we misinterpreted Peter Credlin's role in running the party. We misinterpreted Malcolm Turnbull with him taking credit for everything and taking pot shots of people. Where the problem? Well, in way, John, there's something to that. I was reading this morning, this is the fourth time the ABC's done this, right? It started with Labor in power and they got Hawken Keating absolutely just smashing each other.

The Howard years, that was the one moment of stability in my entire life, right? I'm 47, the only time this country's ever had a moment when there wasn't just massive knifeings going on was during the Howard period. But then during the killing season and this, yeah, we keep electing people

who are sociopaths, who backstab each other all the time. What are we doing, John? Why can't we vote for people who actually have some sort of loyal in kindness to each other, or do those people does not become politicians? Those are the ones who get backstabbed. You don't get anywhere by helping people.

You know what, this reminds me? The most insightful thing that you've brought to us for the whole of Nemesis is the little moment on a ballot paper when somebody said, for Brendan. Nice guys, finished last. Also, if anyone else says want to read an actual, like, review of the

entire series, not the clips, but also just like actually thought out stuff. We'll be, um, but while you're listening to this right now, there will be a review up on the Chaser website that you can read a full-on breakdown of the series. Thank you, John, for your service. In many ways, it exceeds several of those prime ministers at this point. I was hoping that me watching terrible stuff would stop when I became editor. Nope, it's the sort of promotion where you have to do this shit work. I'm sorry, John. John Delmanicoe, their editor of the Chaser, you can read his review of

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