The Chaser Report - The Mine Aquatic With Scott Morrison

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Scott Morrison has scored himself yet another job, this time it's mining the ocean. Listen and find out why Dom and Charles are surprisingly unworried about it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal 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. Hello, Charles, some fantastic news from the careers front. It's so hard to find your next chapter in life, isn't it? When you leave a job, you might even have been, I don't know, the Prime Minister of Australia, but it's hard to get a gig. Unless apparently you're Scott Morrison, who's got a wonderful new job

that leverages his greatest accomplishment during his time as Prime Minister. Oh, right. So he's got a job handing out wads of cash to Harvey Norman? That would be great if he was on the board of Harvey Norman. No, no, no, it's even better than that. We'll get into that in just a moment. So let's begin with Scott Morrison. Now, regular listeners will know that it hasn't been an easy thing for him to try and find a gig.

In fact, he stayed on as member for Cook. Quite a long time. We heard that even PWC didn't want to give him a job due to, Apparently, reputational concerns. Yes. But then he seems to have struck lucky, not so much from selling books about God, but in terms of parlaying orcus into gigs in the US involving lots of money and the military. And this one goes even further to one of his most famous moments in the House of Representatives

when he brought in that lump of coal. Do you remember? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't be scared of the coal. Yes, that's right. Don't fear it. Well, that set him up perfectly for a job in deep sea mining, Charles. Right. So, because remember at the time that he announced Orcas, there was a conspiracy theory going around that he was basically spending $360 billion a year in order to ensure that he'd get some sort of post-prime ministerial job, right?

Like, there was a conspiracy theory that he knew he was so on the nose, he was so disliked by essentially everyone on the planet that he'd have to shell out a metric fuck ton of cash just to ensure that somebody, you know, picked him up. Somebody like a new, I don't know, venture capital firm called Dyn, D-Y-N-E, with a fund set up to support explicitly, Charles, the strategic goals of Orcas. So this is, and so it's actually just true. So it's just totally true. So the satire just came true. It's not a conspiracy, Charles. It's an alignment of interests and a leveraging of experience.

And so the great thing about Dine is it's not just about hypothetical submarines. It's about deep sea mining. And so this is what's going on. So they're going to find coal. on the ocean floor. Sea coal. Sea coal. So, look, it's not just sea coal.

I don't know whether they can actually find coal at sea, but one of the things that they want to do is get high-yield rare metals. So apparently, according to the Herald, the seafloor is estimated to hold trillions of dollars in rare metals needed in everything from renewable energy batteries to guess what, weapons. This is true. So you know how Scott Morrison lives in the Shire? Yes.

Just down near Cronola beach. Near the Cronola beach. You and I go to the beach and we see, what, waves. Waves or maybe beautiful whales. Bit of fun, you know, let's go and dig a hole with the kids. Bodyboarding. Yeah, yeah, shuddering at the image of our bodies in swimsuit. It's always that just me.

Anyway, yes. What smart, innovative thinkers like Scott Morrison see the Cs is money. They just look at it and they go, that's a trillion dollars worth. It's a vision. Let's strip mine it. It's the ability to look at an understanding. touch chunk of ocean and go, how do we mine that? Yes.

And that's the difference between the way you and I think. Yes. And people who make lots of money on the boards of venture capital firms. That's why they're achievers. That's why they're strivers. Because they can see, they can look at pristine, the only pristine wilderness left on earth and go, let's mine it. Exactly.

And I think the term, Charles, if you remember, is it's being a lifter, not a leaner. Yes. And the great thing is that they're mining it, correct me if I'm wrong, but they're mining it as I understand it to create bombs. Yeah, it's a weapon. Yes, so let's mine it because the two things that we don't have in this world are, you know, a strip-mined ocean and enough bombs. And also, it's a great business model, isn't it?

Because then you need more, like, what do you do with bombs? You blow them up. Yeah, they're... They're disposable. They're single-use. That's right. Single-use armaments. Yeah.

You can't stockpile them really. Well, you can, but that's no fun. You got actually... What do environmentalists think of this? A lot. But, Charles, I just want to pick you up on the strip mining. You're not thinking because to you, it's a strip mine. To you, it's a hole in the ground.

Yes. But to oceanographers like James Cameron, it's a new Marianas Trench. Can you imagine James Cameron being the first person to shoot a new movie in the mine that's about to be done? So, look, I don't know how long this will take. But the problem is, Charles, that on land, let me just explain what they're mining the ocean. On land, reserves of precious metals are dominated by China. Russia and Africa, places you can't really get into. And mining, it says here in the Herald article,

tears through rainforest. Charles, why don't you think of the rainforest that's being saved by this? Exactly. And look, I challenge any environmentalists to go down to the bottom of the ocean and lie in front of the underwater equivalent of a bulldozer. They won't do it. They won't do it. They won't do it. In fact, I imagine you could use a bomb to blow up a bit of the undersea to get the precious metals out. In that sense, it's a sort of cloistered chain, isn't it?

Yes. It's like a, it's almost renewable, really, to run out of the metals. Now, apparently some countries have been arguing, Charles, for a global moratorium on deep-sea mining until Moor is not sort of about the risks. That sounds like a wet idea. That sounds like a Canberra bubble idea, to me. Wet Liberals. Skomo wouldn't go for that. No.

Absolutely not. So how hands-on is Scott Morrison going to be in this job? He doesn't hold a hose, mate. But does he hold a mining? A pickax? A trick-ax? A drill? A drill?

He doesn't hold a drill. Oh, look, I'm sure he's in the management role. I imagine he's got a lot of roles, though, in this company. Because I got a little idea. Oh, yeah. I reckon, you know that Titan submersible that went down last year? You love the Titan submersible. Your favorite, well, I know.

Maybe he needs to go and have a bit of a, I'm just saying, maybe we just build another one of those submersibles so that he could go down and inspect some of the areas to mine. Well, they've actually been doing this sort of thing. They invested in a treasure hunting firm called Odyssey, which is suing Mexico for billions over a failed attempt to mine in Mexico's waters. So you would need a submersible to go down and get the precious metals out, wouldn't Yeah, I think, and look, I think Scott Morrison, I mean, with the Titan,

you didn't have to hold a hose. It was all automatic. So it wouldn't have to do anything, just as to sit there, I think he'd be good at that. Well, also the relationships in the Pacific is where it's going to happen. So a lot of these places they want to mine are in the usual place this week's. Boy, like you might recall that Nauru got stripmine. Yes. It's basically a giant wasteland.

If you think of the territorial waters though around Nauru, Charles, it's the opportunity to do the exact same thing there. And presumably, actually, you know, a lot of these islands will eventually sink due to climate change caused by the sort of extractive mining. Yes. And the burning of fossil fuels. Yeah. The fuels that Scott Morrison was so proud of.

And therefore, the countries themselves won't, like, that's the only thing that they'll have is the rights to mine underwater. The Herald actually investigated last year, and you know that they're real environmentalists and lefties at the Herald, chaired by Peter Costello, if I recall. Yeah, yes. They revealed last year. He was a wet lib. That's right.

Yeah. That Australians are behind the key firms, I'm quoting here, pushing to open the deep sea to mining via private deals with Pacific Islands that will see the lion's share of profits go to, guess who? Who? Private companies and not countries. And I'll get this. Now, who's already going on a loophole to try and be there.

the first place mined. They learned nothing, did they, from what happened on the soil? No, well, they got very rich for a while. Nowry used to be the richest place on Earth, the capita, yeah. Because it was 11,000 people. Not so much anymore. And they had a phosphate mite. They used to own lots of skyscrapers in Sydney and Melbourne.

What happened to that? Well, they didn't really do much maintenance. And what one Pacific expert I talked to said was that actually they got sort of sold dard skyscrapers. Like, so if Australia wanted to get rid of a skyscraper because it was, you know, a bit Dodgefest or, you know, had concrete cancer or something like that, they'd know that they could always sell it to the Nauruan government. Aren't just the loveliest?

Awful people. So the one thing I will say, Charles, is that Greenpeace is David Ritter does say that we do need these metals for batteries, right? We need the precious metals. Oh, so he's supportive of blowing up the ocean. But he also makes the point that what will. probably happen is that they'll talk about the clean energy transition and that will then greenwash the weapons manufacturing tied in together. So they'll talk about renewable energy, but then make

weapons. That doesn't seem like any big companies we know, Charles, doesn't it? So the thing is, this is why I think you've just got to say we should just stop. Oh, really? Just stop everything. Just stop. The match of technology, no, yeah, just that's it. It's over. Like, just go, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we could go get EVs happening and things like that. But, you know, yeah, it'll be linked to the arms industry and blah, blah, blah. It's just all terrible. In order to have eco-friendly cars, which I have nice things. We have to mine the ocean.

You have to have horrible things. Yeah. So I think the argument that I would like to run is let's just stop. It's just not do anything anymore. But Charles, what's being proposed here in this article? And I'm going to scare you right after this brief ad break. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. Okay, well, speaking proposed, Charles, and I know this will worry you.

I am. Is that if we don't do this quickly enough, I am. You know, who's going to get there first? Oh, New Zealand. Is it? No. Who who? China.

Oh, no, China! Don't say it out loud. It's too scary. China. No. China's going to mine, and you know, they've got all those artificial islands in the South China Sea. Yeah, and they've got much better factories that actually are able to efficiently make things. Yeah, and they're already better at electric cars.

They've already, I think, leaped over Tesla. So, I mean, they might just want to sell the cars to us. Yes. No, but that would be a terrible threat. Terrifying. It'd be so threatening. So we've got to give Scott Morrison and his mates the rights to do this, even holding our noses so that China can't get their first, Charles. Yes, I love it.

If not for the environment, if not for war. Let's at least do it for racism. Do it out of xenophobia. Yeah, okay. And the thing is we know we can trust people like Scott Morrison. And his business partner in this, as has been for a long time, he's working alongside former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. And you know anyone from the Trump regime, you know you can trust them in their

stewardship of the planet. Oh, yeah. He's mixing with the right people. I mean, I think there is one sort of thing where you just go, I just have this slight suspicion that it's all a bit fanciful and that it may actually just be a deeply corrupt enterprise that never actually does anything because it's actually mostly about getting defence dollars from the US. What?

You think they're not going to build this stuff? They're not actually doing any of the mining. They're just going to take public funds and spend it on, I don't know. Their own salaries. I know that that would not be characteristic of Scott Morrison's legacy, but I'm just saying I think we can comfort ourselves with, you know, just the possibility that that could happen. You know, they're just actually grifting off the... This isn't a submarine.

This is an entirely different underwater hypothetical that may happen someday. Because my cynicism is merely based on the fact, and I think I've actually reported this on the podcast before, which is, if you go to Lyndon Crosby, Crosby, what's a Crosby Texer. You had a great conspiracy theory about a website. It's all about how. How do you profit off Orcas? Like, Orcus is not there to defend Australia. Orcus is there to create money opportunities for large private military contractors.

And what you're saying is Scott Morrison has just come up with an idea that sounds Orkissie. And there happens to be $360 million lying around for Orkiss-style projects at the moment. Right. And you don't really, I mean, nothing's ever going to be delivered in our lifetimes. So you don't really need to do anything for the money. You just need to sort of come up with a project that sounds blue sky and distant enough that your deliverables are sort of well after the time that you've retired. I mean, you say that, Charles, but debt, we could have debt in our lifetime, didn't we?

What? We could have debt for the $368 billion if we don't have it lying around. Well, I don't think anyone who's involved in getting augurs money is going to be in debt. They're going to have lots of profits. This is the thing, is that, I mean, I know that the Albanese governments are delivered two balanced budgets now. But doesn't that just mean there's enormous potential to go

like it's like we've paid off our credit card? Can't we go further into... Oh, no, no, no, I've still got national debt. Can't we go further international debt to do this sort of stuff? Well, we can. But we're talking about... The Australian government can on behalf of all of us.

Yeah. Can't we just get a credit card extension and put it... So you're saying that's the achievement. It's like when you read the bank and get your credit card double and then go to the races. What I want to understand is

why would we buy submarines when we could buy... I mean, imagine how much shit we could buy from Shine or T-Mu with $368 billion. That's true. Like, every item on that website is like $2. Like, you know, dresses are $10 or, you know, t-shirts are $4. Charles, you make a very good point here. Has anyone checked the price of submarines on T-Mu?

Can imagine how cheap that. Oh, we should have got them from T-Mu! It would be more than a hundred bucks. There's not a chance. This could be the solution we've been watching. Ah, all right. You're right. All right.

Forget Orcas. We're heading to the bright Tmu future challenge. Do we have to use union pay to buy it? Like, is it some sort of... Yeah, you've got to hand your credit card over to China. Yeah, right. Okay. But, I mean, look, earlier today, I got a notification that someone based in Ching-Du was trying to break into my email account.

Oh, really? So, yeah, hello, Ching-Doo. So, I mean, if that's going to happen anyway, we most of will get some cheap shit out of it. Yeah. Okay. Look, I'm actually quite pleased. with this episode because I think we've actually solved. I think we've comforted ourselves that actually nothing's going to happen from all this

horrible deep seed mining. So actually that is genuinely reassuring, Charles. I haven't quite twigged that. Is that they won't actually get to do the mining. They'll just take the money. Yeah, they'll just take the money. Which is less bad than taking the money and then doing the money. Yeah, I mean, it is our money that they're taking.

So it's a little, it's a bit disappointing. But yes, exactly. Like, it's sort of like you've already lost our wallet. You know, it might as well go to. not killing the environment rather than killing the environment. Some people might say that the best thing you could do for the ocean is put Scott Morrison in charge of mining it. Because then the one thing that we know that will happen is it won't end up being mined.

How many jobs do you think he's got at this company? I'd love to say. We've got to get on the website and check it out. Head of finance. All right. So we're getting us up from Timu and we're putting Scott Morrison in charge of protecting the planet. I think we've made progress today, Charles. I feel we have.

I think this is, this is just, have a good weekend, everyone, because... Yeah, just relax on your T-Mu-5 feed bag, full of microplastics. I'm going to check it out. I think that that's how we solved the Orcas thing. No, it's all, it's just good as done. Just more than I can say for these mining. Our gears from road, we are part of the iconoclast industrial complex. Get you tomorrow.

See ya.