The Chaser Report - The Flowering Of Democracy

Episode Date: July 26, 2026

Shipping standards in Adelaide, the life of Galileo, the plandemic, the ALP conference, and the legacy of Julia Gillard. Today's Chaser Report covers everything. ---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, this very special edition of The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Now, Dom, ALP conference. Must we? Oh, you don't want to talk about it either. Well, it's the big news story at the weekend, and we've gotten together, you know, to look back on all the things that have happened. Joyce is writing a book.

I'm looking forward to that. Is it the big story of the weekend? It's a story of the weekend. But wasn't it just chairman albo holding forth? I mean, the thing that I got out of it was that a lot of other people backed up the thing you've been saying about the supremely tight control that the PM has of the party. It's all about unity, Dom. If you want to hear more about this.

Don't listen to this. We definitely not going to. Let's not talk about that. Let's not talk about it. We're not talking about it. Other political news before we get to that, Angus Taylor's killed talk of a merger with One Nation in South Australia. Do you think that means it's off, though?

Well, for the duration of Angus Taylor's term. Interesting to note. And meanwhile, One Nation's Malcolm Roberts. You remember the Senator? I remember him. He claims that images of deaths in Italy and China early in the pandemic. were fake, says the Sydney morning. Unless this article's fake, who knows what you can even believe anymore?

What was fake? The images of deaths, you know all the images of deaths from COVID of people in Italy? Italy had a very early wave and then obviously China was fake. What? Says Malcolm Roberts. Oh, it was the planemic. Planemic. Yeah, yeah, apparently.

And what was the plan exactly? To scare everybody there might be a pandemic. and that people might get COVID-19. Was it, but was it like, was it? To close the borders? Glove and mask manufacturers. Like, what were, who was, who was behind? Big N95.

A planemic suggests that there was a plan. Like, and somebody's got to come up with that plan. I mean, the thing that gets me about that, Charles, is yes, okay, if you're talking about China, about a government manufacturing and narrative and controlling the details, okay, I can see that they might have been able to do that. But Italy? When you're looking at efficiently run high state capacity, I mean, maybe that's what makes it all the more sinister. That's what they want you to believe. Because if it, if you can have a pandemic in Italy. Yes. That was why they used Italy as the perfect place. Genius. To sort of make it clear. They. They did. Yeah, they did.

They. I wish you'd mention it at the time. Wasn't he a. Senator back? He hasn't been a senator for a very long time. How does he keep getting elected? I just think One Nation has a very good ability to get the final Senator in a particular state. In a particular state. Here we are both Googling Malcolm Roberts. I remember talking about him quite a lot back when I used to do my other podcast a million years ago. He had a lot of, he was the kind of most high profile one nation figure at the time. Yeah. So he got re-elected in 2025. So he's been now a senator for what? seven years. Well, he was on, he was in the Senate during COVID. So, sir, why didn't you? Where was all this then?

No, this is. Was he juped? It runs very deep. He's part of the conspiracy dom. Oh my goodness. He's just saying that it was a pandemic to take people off the scent that actually he was at the center. Is there a broader plan?

Yes. A broader planemic. That's what they, yes. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that's right. He got kicked out of the parliament because he had British citizenship. Yes. He's one of those ones.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Oh, I'm just looking back on all the highlights of Malcolm Robert. It's the Galileo movement. Remember that? No, what was the Galileo movie? Yeah, it was anti-carbon pricing. Galileo apparently wouldn't have been a failure of carbon pricing.

Galileo was the guy who worked out that instead of orbits, the planets orbiting the sun, as circles, he worked out that they were ellipsuses. Oh, is that? You know, like... Wasn't either one who worked out just before that point, then, wasn't he the one with the earth rotating around the sun rather than the sun rotating around the earth? Well, that was Copernicus.

Oh, was it? Heliotocetriism. So Copernicus... But he proved it. Worked that out, and then I think maybe got burned at the stake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Galileo... I mean, reasonably enough.

Galileo went, but the maths didn't work. This is the reason... So, Copernicus, idiot, just came up with the general vibe. But, you know, like, actually, I quite like Copernicus, because he had the general idea right, but he had the details slightly wrong. And I often get accused to that, but I still feel like I'm in modern-day Copernicus. Do, do you? You know, and I think Malcolm Roberts feels the same way.

I think you're the modern-day Galileo, which is you then add to the details. Oh, actually, Charles, it's not that they go around, you know, in. in a circle, they go around in a sort of oblong. Because he was saying it's square, weren't you? Yeah, I watched a whole play once called The Life of Galileo, and the details have almost entirely alluded me. But yes. But in Galileo was also excommunicated.

Yeah, yeah, he was. Yeah, yeah, absolutely right. Anyway, so, yes, so Malcolm Roberts apparently is his intellectual descendant. And so it's interesting, I mean, oh my goodness, and it's Italy. Oh, it all, hang on. Wow, wow. Okay. So just, do you want to just feel our listeners?

Obviously, I get the conspiracy completely. But Don, why don't you just outline for the listeners the exact details of this conspiracy and how the pandemic worked? Two words. American Pope. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying.

I can't, I can't spell it out in too much detail. Because you don't want to get murdered. Because, yeah, that's right. I don't want to be another martyr. Yes. Like all the Photoshopped bodies in him. Italy in the early days of the pandemic. Right.

Yeah. I just think the Illuminati, the World Bank. Yes. And strangely KFC are involved. Like the Colonel, the Colonel's still alive and he's masterminded the whole thing. Wow. Yeah. It goes deep.

Deep pride. Finger look at deep. It goes. That's right. Okay. Let's park. That's the other big story in Australian politics today. We'll take a quick break.

then review the ALP conference. If we can bring ourselves to... No. No? You prefer this? The Chaser Report. News a few days after it happens. I want to do anything other than...

Should we do the ALP conference? Well, it's the only one in three years. So if you do it now, that'll... Oh, right. Okay. That'll do it for the... I mean, that's... I mean, the big question is...

So it happened in Adelaide. Yeah. Which is already... Which I think says a lot, doesn't it? Well, I think they... They've set money aside for the shipyards in Adelaide, so perhaps that's part of it. Yeah. Well, that's Albo's core base is the AMW, which is the Australian Metalworkers Union.

So this is a sort of thing you know. Yeah, this is my home turf, right? And I have you? You're a metalworker of sorts, aren't you? Haven't you ever been, have you ever been out to the shipbuilding yards in Adelaide? No. Oh, they're fucking incredible. They're unbelievable.

They're unbelievable. No. No. No, if you want to see a real thing of beauty in Adelaide. Go to the shipyards. Yeah, right. They are absolutely massive. Like, like, in a way that your brain really quite can't compute.

I'm going to look this up on Google Maps. Because Adelaide's quite small. No, no, it won't work on it. But, like, looking at a photo does not, like, it's one of those things. It's like when you go to the Grand Canyon. Which I either could either. All right. But when you.

When you go to a really large place, I don't know, like, I don't know, Broadway shopping center? Yeah, yeah. Is that, what's the largest place you've ever been geographically? Is it? A broadway shop. A big Westfield, say. And you look up and your brain can't quite compute what it's saying because, you know, you walk and obviously the stuff in front of you moves,

but it's almost like the stuff in the distance, which should be moving, doesn't move because it's so monumentally huge. I'm looking at an aerial view, my goodness. Yes. Yeah, look at this, look at this enormous, enormous thing. Well, that'll be useful for the listeners. Yeah, there's an enormous white.

Yeah. Yeah, and so, yeah, they're like airport, aircraft hangers, but about a billion times larger. And they have these boats, or ships or whatever they're called, up on the, on, like in the dry dock area. But they're huge. They're like as big as cruise ships.

So we've done quite a few episodes hanging shit on Adelaide. You've gone along with that. How did you not tell me about this? Because not only have we misrepresented Adelaide, but apparently they've got the military capability to fight back. It could be very worrying. Okay. All right.

So that's one thing we know is that the money is going, they're putting money into the shipyards, which I think you'd have to say is probably the most tangible thing of all the orcus options. Like actually going, he'll build shipyards in Australia. Well, if the choice is getting them built

in the UK or Australia. To an as yet unclear British design. I would be backing Australia. But isn't it also to help sort of service Labor's vote in South Australia? Yeah. You know, it's got on Google Maps. And again,

this is a level of research for bringing to the podcast. Nuclear submarine construction yard closed. Well, it's a Sunday. But it opens 7.30 on Monday. And so can you go, and just buy one? Like, is it like a 7-Eleven? It's on Archie Badnock Drive.

Is it like a 7-Eleven where you get, you know, one for $368 billion, but for two, it only costs $500 billion or something? Yeah, yeah. Was it like a 7-Eleven which it's largely closed? 7-Eleven is completely tanked in Australia in recent years? Have you seen that? Well, the Japanese bought out all the 7-Eleven. Yeah, yeah, which I'm excited about.

But anyway, okay. No, no, but what do you mean it's tanked? Well, that's the new format. But the ones in Sydney, CBD have almost all closed now. Anyway, that's fun for another time. But, okay, so that was probably the main headline. Is that still going? And they're going to change federal laws to allow voluntary assisted dying over telehealth.

Oh, nice. That's a big idea of all the ideas. Yes. They've strengthened their language on gambling regulation, rather than necessarily strengthening gambling regulation. I like the, yeah, that's good. Because, you know, they can go, they're very annoyed. They're very, very annoyed with the gambling ads.

And actually, if you want to, if you want it, I'm quoting ABC here. ABC News, if you want to look for some visionary policy that really changes things generationally. Oh, great, yes. Okay, I'm quoting here. They've committed, they have committed Charles. Yes. To developing a roadmap. Oh, yes.

A road map. Committed to developing a roadmap, yep. To including potential health and Medicare. Wow. Developed to, I mean, that is, that's everything the Greens asked for, except for the part about actually doing it. I think I thought that you just do it. I mean, the Greens.

I know, that's weird. In classic, no need to balance the budget. That's where you go, like, Greens are so naive, aren't they? Aren't they? The Greens don't understand. A naive thing that you need a development roadmap to come up with the idea. Yeah. But the Greens also don't understand that before you can go beyond committing to developing a roadmap too, so to pressure test PowerPoint slides vaguely related to the abstract

concept of Medicare dental. Yes. You need to give lots of money to shipbuilders in South Australia. Where are the Greens on that? They're not funding nuclear submarines in South Australia. Yes. And, I mean, priorities. Like first things first.

What use are good teeth if you can't? If you don't have a nuclear submarine to protect you. Yes, to defend your teeth. Actually, a little nuclear sub going around and zapping all the plaque. It could be very good, wouldn't it? Nano submarine. Wasn't there another detail? I did start reading the article, but then I fell asleep because it was about the

AOP National Conference. But something to do with Orcus and is going to be now highly yawning, dear listener. refined uranium caches in Australia? They're going to have to change in Adelaide. Well, that's going to be one of the

legacies of all because he's uranium in Australia. There'll be sort of, well, we've got uranium, we export it all. But we're going to have our own little cache of like weapons grade uranium, I think.

I'm not sure. I think there might be one of the. Now look, on another note, Charles, while you research that, very, very, very good news from Senator Farrell, Don Farrell, the trade minister. Oh, yeah. He called, and this is a job, I'm just summarizing the ABC blog headline here.

Just see what you think of this, Charles. Yeah. Farrell calls ALP Conference A, quote marks, flowering of democracy. What? Despite lack of flaw debate. That's the, that's the headline. Oh, right. So they've got rid of all the democratic elements, but that is itself a sort of flowering of

democracy, what, in the backrooms? He's very pleased. In the smoke-filled backrooms. Even though he personally opposes voluntary as to dying, he's glad that there's a conscience vote. And Patricia Carvella said this was literally the first vote at all, contested vote at all at the conference at all.

Right. And he said, no, no, it's a flaring of democracy. Carvella says you just can't see the flowers, probably because of the nuclear radiation from the submarines. But there you go. Farrell also says, is a good thing, that is one of the hallmarks about the Albanese's government. And you can't argue with that.

There have been no challenges, which for Labor is actually very strange. Like, what's going on there? Well, isn't the problem that Alba has just tied up the party? Because the left was always the sort of side that would, yeah, that would sort of have inconvenient things like Medicare for dentistry. And the problem is that all the leaders of the left are now in the inner cabinet. Like they're basically elbows in a circle. Not all of them, Charles.

No, no, there's tenie plebiscic as well. Not the former deputy leader. Yeah, that's right. But, yeah, I mean, maybe what Labor needed all this time for stability and didn't know it was someone from the left, get rid of the left. No, no, no, not. Someone from the left who ended up behaving kind of more like the right and just covering the whole field.

There's no, there's one thing you can say for this government, there's none of the Rud-Gillard internal tensions. Yes. Some might say that they've overcorrected to avoid more of... No, no, no, I would say, look, you could say that. But that less it has... Another way to put that is, it's a flowering of democracy. Yes, that's true.

I mean, they've certainly overcorrected. And I think part of it, too, is it in the case of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, you had Kevin Rudd, who clearly was, and this might seem hard to appreciate in 2026, was very, very popular. And won the election. People thought he was. actually a fresh start. I know, look, you'll have to go back and examine the records of the toilet.

Yeah, for people who... If you weren't around there, people really felt after all the years, 11 years of John Howard or whatever it was. Yeah. But it sort of shows more about the sort of state of mind that Australians were in. That's right. At that point, that they looked at Kevin Rudd and went, wow, that guy. This guy's a real reboot.

Yeah. It would be completely different. And then, so then he was popular, but then Julia Gillard seemed at the time to be kind of the competent one. And there are all these stories about whenever Kevin Rudd goes away, that's when, as he often did, that's when things get done. Yes, I remember. And then she became prime minister and that theory was somewhat challenged.

No, no, she passed a lot of things in the, yeah. She passed the most legislation of any parliament. She did, despite having a hung parliament. In Australia's history, yeah. I mean, she did. there were many issues, and same-sex marriage comes to mind, where they just kind of squibed it for a long time. Look, I agree, but you've got to hand it to Julia Gillard. She also did, and I know that she was sort of forced into this back against the wall,

go out with a baying type thing, but the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sex Abuse, which went up against the Don Farrell Brigade, i.e. the SDA. Is that another flaring of the Catholic Church? that was, I mean, that was politically, that was political suicide, basically. She did do it, she did get a lot of things done. But it was, it was a lasting legacy that actually she will be able to be proud of on her death bit. She did get a lot of things done, not all of which were, immediately undone by Tony Abbott,

although many were. Oh, yeah, well, actually most, yeah. Most, but she had a legacy, right? And Dom, pleased to announce that Albaid also has a legacy. Just before you do, the other legacy that she had. you must remember, was Kevin Rudd returning his prime minister? That's right. Yeah, but that brief flowery of democracy.

That was like, I'm just trying to think of an exam. The second, the second ride, in which, by the way, Albao was Deputy PM. I feel like it's. It was a little amuse bush before we had a tiny habit coming in. So she didn't lose to Tony Abbott, to be clear. No, she didn't. She lost to Kevin Rudd. No.

But Kevin Rudd. Yeah, he got his second election. He got a, yeah, like his biofurt. Bio now says twice elected. No, twice. So twice appointed, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, that was the thing that happened. But the legacy that Albo. Albo's legacy, that's good on Alba. Because he's thinking about it. So Gillard had the whole sort of go up against the Catholic Church. A lot of policies that she passed, yes. And Albo's is under Australia's proposed nuclear submarine fleet. You're reading this news.

This is from the Guardian yesterday. the nuclear submarine fleet will leave behind tons of weapons usable uranium 235 radioactive for hundreds of millions of years. Now that is a legacy, Dom. Hundreds of millions of years. People are going to look back in 100 million years and go, that was our though. We're part of the Iconiclass network. Catch you tomorrow.

Can we bury a copy with this podcast alongside the uranium, just so everyone knows why it's there? Yes, it's a good idea. That'll be our legacy.