The Chaser Report - The Bellwether State

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

As the results of the South Australian election continue to trickle through, Charles and Dom dote on the landslide. Meanwhile, Dom has his eye on a new mansion in an unusual postcode. Plus, Charles identifies who he thinks is the most interesting politician to keep an eye on in Australia.---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] 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 Dom and Charles. The podcast that the nation turns to to explain political megatrends, moments in history, and the problem with Bluetooth. That's the main focus. But we also cover incredibly important news. And we also cover the South Australian state election, Charles.

Okay. Now, so, Dom, I'm on the ground here in Adelaide and I kind of feel like it's a little bit like being a war reporter in Adelaide. You know, like I'm in the front lines. And isn't it true, Charles, that, I mean, people would probably think you were there for Wankanomics at the Adelaide fringe. But actually, you're only there with economics at the fringe because you're a serious political reporter and you had to be there for this historic night in Australia. Yes, that's right. So let's get into it straight after this. The thing is, Dom. One of those ads for, One Nation, by the way. Let's know. Podcast at chaser.com.com. You have One Nation advertising our podcast now because they're so successful.

So you know how we sort of have a running joke of how Adelaide's a bit backward, right? I, unfortunately, Dom, are going to have to abandon you in that jape. Really? Is that because everyone in Adelaide has gotten across with you or were you wrong? I've got Stockholm syndrome. Oh, really? The Adelaide syndrome. No, no, I'll tell you what's happened, which is this time around,

like every coffee I've had in Adelaide has just been sensational. There's so many good restaurants now. That's all we needed to know. Yeah, there's so many. I'm just trying to make it relatable. But wasn't that always the strong suit? Like, as long as he didn't leave Heinley Street, the one street. Oh, no, no.

I'm talking about like the East End and just even in the city. Okay, that's a whole other thing. But even like, I went out to Unley. And it's beautiful coffee. Like, Norwood. Like, they're just amazing little suburbs with, you know, everything. Anyway. Are there suburbs in Adelaide?

Sorry, wait a minute. If you go outside the Colonel Light Grid thing, there's all those parks. Yes. Are you saying that there's suburbs out there? Yes. It's plentiful. It's so, and the weather's been so nice and everything like that. And then I was talking to this friend of mine whose son is just about to graduate mechanical engineering.

All right, so he's about to move to Melbourne. They live in Melbourne. No, he's going to have to move to Adelaide because that's where all the jobs are. In Adelaide? Yes, our whole joke against Adelaide is sort of decades old now. And actually what's going on is Adelaide's the place to be, Dom. It's the thriving Wonderland. I think maybe the choices should move its headquarters to Adelaide, frankly.

Oh, my goodness. How expensive is property down there? Because if you can earn much the same. money and it's cheaper to get a place there. Yes. I think I'm bored. I've kind of done with Sydney expense. You can get an absolute mansion in Adelaide.

Like, I went to this house the other day and there was like, I don't know, I couldn't, I couldn't even count the number of, it was that higher number. I could not count the number of bedrooms. And it was one person living there and it was like, why do you have so many bedrooms? It's like, well, it was cheap. So I just bought a house with lots of bedrooms. Okay. All right.

Well, look, I'm certainly interested. I'm interested I'm listening and they also potentially attractive to many people. One Nation is very popular there now. Yes, there is that. Although, I mean, let's just put it a little bit into perspective. So far, this is Sunday afternoon, they haven't actually won a single seed. It looks like they're likely to get maybe two or three seats. This is in a parliament of 47.

I was just going to ask, are there 10 seats? How many seats are there? Okay. All right. To win government, you've got to win, I think, 23 seats or 24 seats. So it's not a, I mean, it's a little bit like a local council election. But, no, like, no, Adelaide is a very important and worthwhile place to be reporting. I'm just looking at property prices.

You can get a house in this. This is the Labor Premier. He's ended up, I think at the moment he's on about 31 or 32. But he's likely to get sort of more like 34, 35. At a 47. Almost all. Right. Oh, sorry.

Sorry, go on. No, no, go ahead. So he's going to mean almost all the seats, you're saying. No, no, I want to hear about the property. I think it's very funny that you don't really care about the political analysis. I'm going to get to the politics. I've just been looking at the property prices because I'm a Sydney cider. Yeah.

You can get a house that is in Adelaide, by which I mean, it is postcode 5,000. Yeah. Somehow there's a house. Yeah. Hang on, just to check is the whole of South Australia postcode 5,000, or if they got some more bits. Because this is a three-bedroom house in Adelaide CBD for a million dollars. My God.

A house. We should just all move here. It's quite nice. Let's not tell anyone. Don't tell anyone because that'll drive up property prices. You can get a huge house for $2 million in the city of Adelaide. South Australians have sort of kept to be quiet about how good it is down here. Oh my goodness.

With the idea that maybe, you know, like no one will notice. and they can just keep getting away with it. That's my theory. Oh, my word. Yeah. I mean, they say you got what you pay for, but I'm looking at a giant five-bedroom penthouse in the CBD of Adelaide, like a huge place,

a sort of place that it's $3 million, it's less than $3 million, which is what you get basically a shoeboxy terrace in the inner city of Sydney for. Yes, yes. No, it's. Oh, my God. All right. Well, I think I'm interested.

Are there jobs in Adelaide? Could I be an MP in Adelaide? You can be in the parliament. Well, there's only 47 of those. But there is, there's a space agency here. That's where the space agency is. They're building all the submarines here, if they ever get around to building them here. Like, there's a whole lot of, I think there's a whole lot of renewables projects on.

Like, we keep on bumping into people who are working on energy projects down here. So I think, I think this is the place to be. I think essentially the East Coast is old newsdom. Really? The Adelaide's sorted out its coffee problems, which frankly, I know that you sort of think that maybe it was good. I've had good coffee in Adelaide before. Adelaide, when I first started coming here seven years ago, Adelaide would close on Sundays. Like, literally, you could not buy anything on Sundays.

Are you saying, oh, I don't know that I don't want to move there if they're so disrespectful to God is to open on Sundays. No, no, but they do. It's supposed to be the city of churches. I literally, I went into the Rundle Mall just then. And there are shops open on Sunday. So, you know, it's really come up the ranks. It's sort of like where Sydney was in 1983. I like to 983 in Sydney.

I know. I really enjoyed it. It was a good year. Okay, Charles, some more numbers for you. Some more numbers for you. So, I mean, this is really fascinating. One Nation is, as we speak, as we record on Sunday afternoon, God's afternoon. They've got 22.1% of the primary votes statewide, which is ahead of.

of the Liberals on 18.9, Labor's on 38.4. So they're sitting at a little bit under two-thirds of Labor's vote, but above half, well above half Labor's vote. The Liberals are at half. The Electoral Commission got this all wrong, apparently. And the two-party preferred split on the night was generally between one nation and... What is happening is, so the Libs, fair and square won two seats out of 47, right? It was sort of like, yep, got enough votes to sort of, yep.

The other two seats that they have currently won were seats that they won off the back of Labor preferences, right? So Labor in their commitment to sort of trying to squeeze One Nation out of the political spectrum has gone, no, no, no, it's better to actually preference the opposition above One Nation. The libs, on the other hand, have not done that, right? The libs have actually preferenced One Nation in a number of seats here. And the consequence of that is that the Libs are going to be third in a lot of seats. We're talking like 20 of the seats that – Wow. Where there are still sort of counting going on.

One Nation looks like they're going to be coming second, which means that the Libs will be getting a whole lot of One Nation people up. So probably at least two or three. Yeah, potentially four to one nation off the back of the... Could be four. Yeah. So and yeah, you're right. Like in that scenario, I think there'll be a question mark.

If it's tied for all between the Libs and One Nation, who gets to be the official opposition? Who knows? Very interesting question. But the thing that I'd like to point out is Peter Melanouskas, like, whatever you think of him, he is a class act. Like, I actually watched his acceptance speech last night on South Australia votes, which I'm sure, I mean, I'm sure gripped the whole nation that. Yeah, I mean, the amazing thing was, as I was watching the Matildas, it was incredible how often they just kept like popping a South Australian seat map.

Sorry, the type of Sam Kerr's head. That has had to, you know, the most important news has to come first. So what, so Petermal-Nauscus made a very, I mean, he's so articulate, really. It did make you go, why is this guy not in federal politics? But then the other thing is... Wouldn't you rather be the king of a state than a backbencher or something or a minor minister in Canberra? I think he'd be a major minister.

I think he'd be prime minister if he went to Canberra. Oh, you heard it here first. I think the reason why Alba, you know, was so supportive of Petimelanouskas is keep your enemies close. He's only 45, so he's got time. He's got time. Yeah. And I'm just looking at his bio.

He went to a place called Mercedes College. So I reckon he could pick up liberal votes, to be honest. He's got the backing of the SDAs. He's Catholic. So he's got, in terms of his union politics, he actually has a very nice big block that he can. Yeah, he could be, New South Wales Premier probably simultaneously. Yeah.

But in his speech, he references, he reads this quote from a Henry Lawson poem. And it's, it's all about, it doesn't matter where you come from, you know, how you got here. And then the whole end of Peter Melanowsk's speech is, you know, I'm here to represent all South Australians, no matter how you got here or where you're from. Yeah, right. You're all part of the thing. And I thought it was a really good and very clear enunciation and repudiation of one nation. Like, it was essentially going, and he was very gracious. Like he said, oh, thanks to Cory Bernardi, the head of One Nation down in South Australia, for calling me.

You know, like we should recognise that One Nation got a whole lot of votes. But then he made the substance of his speech, actually, that, well, you know, we should be accepting of all walks of life rather than horrible to them. And he's being accepting of Cory Bernardi. He's actually being generous to a one nation leader, which from a later perspective. But I think that that is the way to win. against xenophobia is to rise above it and actually just role model what actually being a sort of decent human being can be. And that's what he did. And it was like maybe I'm just sort of, I've drunk too much of the wonderful and famous Adelaide water.

But I thought I'm going to say wine. All right. But no, look, this is a lot more generous than he word Anthony Albanesey after the one. Yes. Oh, but yes, no, exactly. Like Albo was just, I mean, Elbow can't put a sentence together anyway. But then, can you imagine Albo getting up and actually prosecuting a genuine argument against, you know, like making himself a fairly large target in sort of literally taking on the genuine core belief of One Nation on the night that One Nation actually historically did the best it's ever done.

Do you need to go beyond, can you imagine Anthony Albuttys you're making himself a large target? Because I think that's been something he's strenuously avoided since he took the leadership. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. You know, Peter Melanouskas, I think he was the source of the social media ban, you know, love it or hate it. You know, like he's actually coming up with ideas that are then transmitting

not just across Australia, but across the world. He's a politician to watch. I think he's the most interesting politician in Australia. Well, I mean, admittedly, fairly low bar. But no, look, I mean, he's clearly been very successful. And the thing is, as well, Labor doesn't seem to be on the nose just yet anywhere, really. And part of the reason for this is we seem to be heading into the DLP era of conservative politics in Australia. And a lot of commentators have looked at this today that basically the massive internal fractions,

not only between one nation and the coalition, but within the coalition, of course, as well, our system is pretty ruthless about that sort of thing. I mean, even though you can, in theory, you can preference one nation, liberals, nationals, you can keep your bloc on that side. You can keep your vote on that side of politics. That isn't really what happens. No. Because the aim voters vote tactically, they'll vote one nation, then Labor, to send a message

to the coalition. And that seems to be what's happened. But also, they'll vote one nation, even if they voted, like, apparently, like, Labor lost two points. one nation in this election. So even though they did very well on a seat by seat basis, one nation is having a bit of an impact on

certain thing. And I think that that's something that's happening across the world. And is something worth actually taking note of? If you have people, like there was really fascinating piece. I think it was in the Atlantic over the weekend, which was all about how, if you actually look at who the

Trump MAGA supporters are, they're not necessarily the poorest people in America or, you know, the people who have the least amount of social organization around them. That's interesting. You know, if you are a member of a, you know, a union or some sort of, you know, like civic group that actually allows you to sort of chat issues through, you're far less likely to be mager than somebody who feels isolated and alone and therefore very scared about the economic

disruption. That is really interesting. And this is something that, yeah, there's a lot of research on this I've heard of mentioned elsewhere, that the people who feel left out and left behind by whatever it is, and they're looking around for an explanation for why things aren't the way they used to be. And I mean, obviously immigrants are low-hanging rhetorical fruit in a sense. That's really, it's easy to pick on that particular constituency. But yeah, I mean, even if, and this is the ironic thing about it being in the right, is even if you go to a church or whatever, if you're plugged in socially, it changes your view at the world and at the possibilities of life and of the kindness you get on a daily basis, presumably.

Yes, although I must say, it doesn't quite work because there's a lot of Christian maggots, aren't there? There are. Yeah, yeah. In America. But the other thing that I just sort of observe is that I do think that one of the reasons why the right is so on the nose and split in Australia in a way that it really, you know, like actually, even in the UK and definitely in the US, there's been a sort of almost the flick of a switch and it's gone in the UK to reform, which is Nigel Farage sort of thing, and in America to Trump, obviously.

And you can sort of say from an electoral perspective of, you know, preferential voting means that it's not quite like a, you know, it isn't flick in the same way. Can I just jump in briefly, Charles, before you continue, because just as we speak here, the news is broken that One Nation's just won its first seat, its first ever lower house seat anywhere outside of Queensland, and it's, um, Najuri is what it's called, and a guy called David Payton is there. And in that seat, the Coalition preferenceed One Nation over Labor, interestingly enough. So it beat Labor overall.

It looks like it's about, it got about a 5% lead in the overall count, and that's enough for it to be called at least by the ABC. So, as we speak, Labor is on 32 out of 47. The Liberals are on four, nine remain in doubt. So there you go. That's a major moment. Who will be the opposition? Probably the Liberals at this stage.

But I think what will be interesting is, you know, last time there was, remember there was that sort of landslide in Queensland where I think they got 11 low house seats in one of the elections. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And over the course of the next three of all. years, almost all of them left the party for one reason or another. They do. There was one guy who breached an AVO by poisoning the lawn of his former lover.

Remember that? And he wrote some sort of obscene word on the lawn of his former lover. I mean, I don't want to cast aspersions on the candidate recruitment processes of One Nation. But there have been some fairly random inclusion. I mean, not to the extent of the one Australia party, you know, sorry, not to the extent of Clive Palmer's United Australia Party. That really was just getting anyone who answered the phone at one point, I think. But no, it's certainly true that the vetting process that the major parties go through.

Look, if One Nation's a major party now, that might be what they need to do. But I do think that there is a sort of misinterpretation going on that has meant that it's failed to latch on in Australia in the same way that it's latched on in other, English-speaking countries. And I think part of it is, there's a lot of money coming in that I would guess is being washed through advance and stuff like that from essentially billionaires. You know, we're talking Gina Reinhart. And a lot of Liberal Party donors have apparently started, switched over to a fan.

Well, you think she'd be backing team Barnaby, wouldn't you? Yeah. And, well, exactly. And so the thing is there's this sort of push to sort of get Trumpism or at least Farageism going in Australia. But I think there's a misinterpretation going on, which is the problem with having a preferential voting system where you can't just be disenfranchised for voting in the wrong direction. You know, there's not that light flip switch, is that actually there's enough moderate liberals

who are so appalled by that sort of Trumpist one nation style tilt. to the right, that they will hold their nose and vote Labor second or whatever. Yeah. And it splits it enough that actually there's a, you know, the right side of politics just has a real problem. Actually, the intrusion of American politics and American money and the predator class and all those people coming over and actually trying to advise the right in Australia to sort of reorganise, they're all, they're actually just fucking it up for them.

Yeah. And it is a very moderate society here. at least at the moment and for many, many years. And, I mean, the face of the review of Peter Dutton's election performance, as we now know, was entered into the parliamentary record. I was kept being leaked, I think the Prime Minister enjoyed that moment a lot. But one of the things that I pointed to, which was hardly controversial, it's pretty obvious during the course of the campaign,

that links with Trump did not do Peter Dutton's party any favours during the campaign. And, you know, when, you know, But when, since the damage of a price said, you know, make Australia great again, that made massive headlines around the country and didn't help them there either. So, yeah. And that's it, you know, like it clearly requires the federal government at least to step up and start actually doing things about housing. The things that are causing this disposition, there's a reason why, oh, let's blame it all

and immigrants rings true to some people, which is that actually, you know, like our GDP per capita is actually going down. Like actually, we are not thriving as a country. And really since COVID, we have not thrived as a country. Like, there are actual structural problems that are within the power of the government to change. And, yeah, they've got to do it. I know. I read a piece about this recently, that this is, yeah, if they are actually going to tackle any of these big problems, Part of the issue is that the post-COVID, you know, the government still been spending a vast amount of money. So the overall kind of financial position is just not improving.

But sorry, I don't, I just don't accept that. I'm half remembering an op-in. I should find which one of us. We give away our natural resources to the world. You know, the mining companies run these advertising campaigns about how much tax they think. Their numbers are not taxed. Their numbers are royalties. Their numbers are the fucking money that we should be making.

And the royalties are fucking pathetic. Oh, and that's why they've got all these ads on at the moment. Australia, yeah, exactly, because they know that they're fucking ripping us off. Like, it's sort of, and we have one of the least diversified economies in the world. We're like, we're now like 103, behind something Gambon or something in terms of the sophistication of our economy. I should find that actually. There is so much we could do. Yeah.

I should find the thing rather than baddorizing. I'm not saying that we should cut spending. I'm saying that essentially that the economy hasn't transitioned into whatever the next phase. Like the big reform decisions haven't been made really. No, exactly. Which is why, as we've always said, it's all about microeconomic reform. It's all about that. Do we sell a T-shirt that says that?

Yes. But I mean, there are rumours. I'm looking at this here. The Herald's reporting that, yeah, they are actually in this budget. they are going to be tightening the belts apparently. Yeah, I know, because that's the prescription. It's like, oh, well, we can't get any money out of the billionaires. So let's get it out of the fucking one-nation voters.

Like, what a fucking joke. Like, well, possibly the NDIS as well, which is, um. Yeah, let's get it out of the people who can't even defend themselves because they need speech therapy. Great. You know, like, oh, let's cut that. Well, look, this is all, this is all, you know, little, little trails and putting a, putting a toe in the water kind of thing. And the mining companies have already, whenever I go to the shopping center and see ads from the mining lobby arguing against reforming the tax there,

kind of going, well, you have enough money to put an ad in my shopping centre. Yeah. So I think you're doing, you know, you've got some money coming through the doors, guys. Anyway. Is South Australia, though, as goes South Australia, so goes the nation. Is that the saying? Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. It was pioneering.

From now on, it is the bill with a state. The women's vote. All kinds of things started there in South Australia. It's the progressive paradigm. for the likes of you, Charles. No, exactly. And you're moving there. Well, I think we should all move here.

Wouldn't that be amazing if South Australia suddenly became the biggest state? There you go. You heard of here first. It's going to happen. I'm off to get another latte. We're part of the Iconicless network. Catch you tomorrow.