The Chaser Report - The Pandora Paupers | Sami Shah

Episode Date: October 6, 2021

Aleksa delves through the latest pile of billionaires’ tax evasion schemes, while Sami is so sick of Melbourne’s lockdown that he’d rather visit a South Korean dystopia. Also, Gabbi gets a long-overdue tyre change, and she and Charles announce that they’re doing some strange archaic thing called ‘performing live’. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode, The Chase Report, is brought you by Gina Reinhardt School of Climate Anxiety Meditation, mindfully mining out the horrible deaths of future generations. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Thursday the 7th of October 2021. I'm Dom Knight. Hello, Charles Firth. Hello, Gabby Bolt. Hello, hello. And it's exciting. I mean, look, apart from my, you know, imminent fear of what's going to happen with the new Premier and I don't trust anybody in the government, but things are opening up.

Yeah, I just went to look at Hamilton because I'm kind of want to see it again before Melbourne steals it from Sydney and guess what? You can book any night you want from the 19th. If you're brave enough to go to the theatre, the moment that they reopen, you can see Hamilton. And I got to sell tickets to an actual show where I will play an actual piano in a real venue and see real people. You've unc cancelled your show Gabby. I've uncensored my show. I'll be playing in the terminal at the factory theatre on the 16th to the 18th of December. So it's Christmassy.

I'll play a little Christmas tune as well. Very subtle. And it's called, I hope my piano doesn't break. Is that? I hope my keyboard doesn't break. Yeah, no, piano purists would be pissed at me if I called my keyboard a piano. I think it's pronounced piano. Piano.

Oh, righto. Yeah, righto, Mozart. Shipping container. Keyboard. That sounds fantastic. Oh, there you go. Go, book that. And while you're online, booking tickets to hell.

Hamilton and Gabby Bolt, you could also buy tickets to the war on 2021, which is also uncanceled itself as of today. We did it. Yay. We have an income again. Yay. You may have suffered lockdowns again. But Charles, you've been doing that war on year thing so long that probably a small proportion of the audience didn't even know that you stole it from the Chase of TV show. Oh, well, Craig, no, I always say Craig stole it first.

So, you know. Actually, that's true. Because he had war on waste. And then I just thought, well, if he's allowed to say war, I'm allowed to say war too. Why don't I just do a solo show called War on the Chaser about how I hate you all? Actually, that's happening. I'll jump on that. I'm booking it.

But you know what's interesting? Because, like, I've never had a comedy career before. So I'm just excited to get to see if I'm actually any good at it. This is your debut? Yeah, it's my debut solo show. But it did get me thinking to like pre-COVID times. And I now, I've become so much of a wanker now working in comedy that I too often forget that I've got some war stories from my pub gig days. Like the other day I was thinking about it was thinking about.

the time I played this gig in Mudgee and if anybody listening is from Mudgee just know I will always hold your town in the highest regard of all of the regional centres because I played this gig in this pub that looked like it would murder me if I walked in. It was kind of like that scene in Priscilla where they walk into the bar and it looks like a whole sea of uninviting faces and then they kind of win the crowd over. So I was playing and playing and playing and then a whole team of footballers walked in. I was a bit worried because all of a sudden this pub was swimming with not only footballers but football fans and I just thought I'm here with my piano like this isn't going to go well they're going to want KSan they're going to want horses and they're just

going to want those two songs on a loop I was worried I was worried and I'd played my KSan I played cold chisel and whatever else and then the burliest footballer comes up to me with a sloppily with like six schooners under his belt and he like talks to me and I'm like oh god oh god oh god oh god and he goes I've got a request and I go yeah what is it and he goes Ed Sheeran, perfect. Me, Mrs. and I love that song. And all the boys, we all sing it before the games. And I just went, yeah?

Yeah. Okay, yeah, I can play per. Yeah, sure. And then he said, while you're out of any other Ed Sheeran songs, just keep him coming. Just keep Ed Sheeran, all the ballads. I love the ballads. And I was like, what is going on? I am in the most country pub, in the most country town.

And everyone is just going feral for ballads. The next thing that came up, somebody was like, oh, you're taking requests now. Do you know how to play Shaka Khan? I was like, what? This is like my dream gig. I don't understand what's going on in Mudgee, but I'll tell you this, they've got taste. I'm very glad that this is going to happen again. People in country pubs are going to sing along to covers of the same songs over and over again.

It does mean that there'll be more instances of Darrow Braithwaite's the horses, but I'm willing to put up with that to get back to normal life. Coming up in today's episode, Sammy Sharr is going to, and take a look at the Victorian outbreak. That'll be cheery. And Alexa is delving into the Pandora papers, which sounds like a children's book, but I assure you it's not. The good news is it's going to help us make more money for The Chaser. That's all coming up right after. Rebecca Daynam, you know, in the Chaser newsroom in a moment. Defence Minister Peter Dutton today shocked courts during a defamation hearing where he said he was

deeply offended. The revelation that a minister could have emotions while overseeing the military and previously a harsh immigration program has shocked both the public and scientific community. A CSIRO representative said this is a big breakthrough in the evolution of root vegetables. Queensland has declared every one of its citizens Australian of the Year for 2022 after the state managed to beat another COVID outbreak.

In the presentation, Queensland Premier Anastasia Palishe said I can think of nothing more worthy of Australian of the Year than everyone who stayed home and did fuck all when asked. Save Australia protests have erupted in New York. The protesters were horrified to hear that Prime Minister Scout Morrison might turn down a holiday and not travel overseas. One event organiser said

their Prime Minister must have truly gone mad, not even post-Alzheimer's Reagan would have done something so out of character. That's the latest from the TV. Chasers quickly depleting wine cellar. I'm Rebecca Dianam. That sounds like a cow. Earlier in the podcast, Gabby and Charles, we were congratulating ourselves on being from New South Wales

and being about to reopen. But turns out, did you know this? Part of the country is not in the same position that we are. I don't think that's... Victoria still has high numbers. I know, so I think we'd better talk about it. Sammy Shara is here once again. Hey, Sammy.

Hey. You guys must be so excited. You got so much to look forward to. You can now leave your high. How soon and go to Gladys's ex-office and leave flowers outside it? Like, it's a fucking memorial, you goddamn crazy assholes. What the hell is wrong with Sydney? How dare you?

You should stay locked down in solidarity with us at the very fucking news. Sammy, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. You completely misinterpreted what happened with Gladys last week. Like, if you watched the news or the mainstream media, you would have thought, oh, Gladys, oh, she was so good to us, you know. But nobody, I think, in the entire state. of New South Wales, outside of a sort of small set of journalists who live around Macquarie Street actually thought that she was any good at all. It was the same thing as, you know, when Peter Van Onsoulin said, oh, you know, but Christian Porter,

like, he's a friend of mine, so it's really hard to, you know, he may have done something terrible. The way she was being eulogized, I literally thought that she died in a car crash with her Egyptian lover, Dodie Alphi. Yes. She lost her job in a car car car car. crashed caused by her ex-boyfriend, admittedly. I'll tell you who did think about that. It's all of Victoria, who's still in lockdown

because Gladys fucking, if no one remembers, gave us COVID. And now, we're over a thousand-something cases, which, by the way, I also want to point out, I love Melbourne. You know I love Melbourne. Everyone knows I love Melbourne. But Melbourne needs to get over footy. Footy is for fucking losers, all right? It is a stupid sport

where men in shorts chase a ball that isn't even round. You couldn't get the shape of the goddamn ball right and because of footy we have now over 1500 cases like every day because all these fucking footy lovers were dry humping each other when the doggies or whoever lost to the demons or where the fuck they are it is quite amazing after we like given that we've actually shown you can vaccinate your way out of this Melbourne has screwed it a bit haven't they like okay hang on so we have as of today more people got vaccinated in Melbourne yesterday than the entire rest of the

country combined. So Melbourneians, despite the fact that we have a massive cohort of anti-vaxxers, which anyone who lives in Brunswick could have told you will always be a problem. You know, we are still out there. We're getting waxed. We're getting jabbed. We're doing everything we can. Well, that's got to stop. It's easy to get Pfizer. I thought the whole thing that Scott Morrison did was divert all the vaccines away from Melbourne so that it would look like a bit of a disaster and dictator Dan would look bad. I mean, that was the one thing that I approved of that Scott Morrison did. Diverting all the vaccines up to New South Wales.

It was the closest that Scott Morrison has ever shown to a strategy as opposed to somehow falling on his face in a pie made of shit and somehow standing up and going, I'm still better than Albanesey and all of Australia going, yeah, he makes a good point. Hey, Sammy, do you want to just drive to the border of New South Wales and I'll give you some Pfizer? You know what? I've just got some here. I've got some here I can't use. I'll take Pfizer. I'll take Astro. I'll take Johnson and Johnson at this point. I don't even care. I don't even remember what life was like pre-lockdown. I don't even want life back to normal anymore because now I've been institutionalized.

I am Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption. I didn't get too busy living and now I'm just too busy dying. Like this is just what it is. Sammy, I think you've taken that metaphor way too far that hole that you've drilled in the wall behind you. Charles, that's a glory hole. I use my neighbors for sexual gratification. Don't worry about it. Don't look too closely. I watched Squid Game all of it last night. Me too. All of it. No, on one night. Nine episodes. One day.

I watched it only one day with my roommates. Do you know what happened? Gabby, you know what happens then to your brain when it's been subjected to South Korean dystopian, like, anti-capitalist fiction. I love it. I am literally now just looking for cookies to lick and people to throw off a bridge. Do you know it? Here's the test, Sammy. Here's the test, right?

If I could offer you today the chance to. To leave Melbourne lockdown after the world's longest lockdown stat. Yes. And sign up for Squid Game, would you be in? Oh, I would sign up for Squid Game way earlier. You didn't need to add in the Melbourne lockdown. Daddy's got debts that he needs to pay. You don't get married in Thailand and then have that marriage end three months later

without having to pay off an $80,000 wedding debt, all right? I would Squid Game the shit out of this. Do you know what's funny about shows like Squid Game and movies where it's like this dystopian nightmare and you'll have to kill each other to win? or like, you know, the zombies murdering. All it does for me, I feel like it has the opposite effect on me. I empathize to the point where I'm like, right, if I were in this competition, what would happen?

And most people would be like, I would grab this weapon and I would do, not me. My fight or flight doesn't exist. It's just flight. I would run in front of the red light, green light thing. And I'd be like, kill me. Kill me now. I was just jealous because they at least had plans of what to do every day. Like there was a system in place.

They knew every single day when they woke up in the morning what they'd be doing later. I don't even have that, right? It's just great lockdown day after great lockdown day. Melbourne is now nothing. Do you think maybe the Victorian government should introduce a squid game style thing just to lighten things up? I think the anti-vaxes have been taking it into their own hands, actually. The lives that people are living in Melbourne right now are so constrained, right? Everyone's life is basically living room to bedroom, bedroom back to living room, back to their bedroom, back to living room.

Any amount of money is life-changing for us right now because it's going down to Woolies, is a life-changing experience for which I will now have to meditate to come to terms of everything I saw and felt for the next two days. Don't worry about it. Give me a dollar and that's a life-changing amount of money. I'm telling you, we're at our wits end. And if I see fucking Sidney Siders on Instagram posting comedy club videos and hanging out and getting drunk in bars and shit, I am invading.

It's going to be a single-handed invasion, but it's coming. Sammy, I can't wait for your book deal, eat, pray, $10 chook. Honestly. I mean, we are technically under the same lockdown rules as you right now. Like, it hasn't started yet. We've hit 70% yesterday. So we've earned it. Earned, have you earned it?

Someone paid the price of you earning it. The bill wasn't paid by you. We've earned it the same way a white man has earned stuff. By standing on my goddamn shoulders. You just chose the wrong cities, Sammy. You chose the city that doesn't picnic its way through a lockdown. That is true. This is entirely my fault.

I'm going back to Northam in W. That is apparently. where I, that's where I belong, it turns out, I chose very poorly. It's true, you wouldn't have had any lockdowns in, if you'd say, just stayed in northern and your ordinary life would have basically been a lockdown. Do you know how embarrassing it is to look at W.A. with envy? Like, no one in W.A. even knows what that expression is when it's directed at them. They think you're layering at them in like a creepy way, but it's not.

You know, you're just looking at them enviously. They don't know how to read that expression. It's like an ancient culture of seeing it. television for the first time. They don't know what it is. You know what the prime, the premier, I'm going to say the prime minister, but that's wishful thinking. The premier, Daniel Andrews has said that even though October 26th is when we are slated to or reopen, and he said that might be subject to change now because of all these people who were footy games holding each other while watching a stupid game on television. And so now we might end up having to say in lockdown even longer. I got, I got nothing to say. That is incredibly depressing. Just wrap up Melbourne.

My heart breaks for you, Sammy. It breaks from Melbourne and I can't possibly enjoy life while you're suffering like this because I just, I feel it with you. Hey, Gabby and Charles, want to go to the park and have beer. I was going to say, is that a mimosa you all there? I'm thinking when I go to the beach on Monday, I will make sure that I look very sad for you in all the Instagram picks that I'll be watching closely. Oh, I will be watching.

I might be sending you abuse. We'll go to the beach, all the interns and us will go to the beach and we'll spell out, we'll curve our bodies. to say sorry, Sammy, in the sand. Today's episode, The Chaser Report, is brought to by Gina Reinhardt's School of Climate Anxiety Meditation, because nothing calms like the sound of billions of dollars in government subsidies flowing in. Now, we need to make a bit of extra money here at the Chaser.

It's not an unusual situation for us. Fortunately, though, the Pandora papers have just leaked. They're terabytes of data on where, incredibly. rich people and companies and even countries stash their money. Alexa has been combing through the documents. Alexa, what have you got for us? Can you save us from our financial ruin? Definitely.

There is some amazing stuff in here. This is a super lucrative place to be. There's about $11.3 trillion held offshore, which is money that could be used to recover from COVID. But luckily for us, it can also just be hoarded by rich people like us at the Chaser. Amazing. So, I mean, it's the same as all the other leaks that have come out over the past 10 years. Essentially, if you've got money, none of the rules apply to you.

So you can access this secret world of accountants that can move your money offshore. Fantastic. Yeah. I've always just suspected that rich people had this secret, amazing world where they didn't have to have any consequences of paying taxes and could just live a life of wealth and luxury. But I just want to know how I can join. Well, I mean, I guess you guys know how The Chaser podcast is just like an elaborate ploy to steal credit card. details from our listeners.

Yeah, yeah. Obviously, yeah. Openly, yeah. If we use this system that's elaborated in the Pandora papers, we can steal that money from our listeners and then we can funnel it through a bunch of shady offshore companies and then spend it legally in Australia. Yeah, that's completely legitimate to me. And there are barely any downsides.

It's completely safe. Like, I think for me, the coolest part is that there's so many world leaders doing it. So, like, if they want to take us down, they're going to have to take down all those big guys too, right? Yeah. like UK politicians, King of Jordan, President of Azerbaijan, we can hide behind them. When you've got the President of Azerbaijan on your side, you know you're going to... Yeah, you're on the right side.

Yeah, it's like, it's impossible to regulate. All the previous leagues came out and nothing's happened so far. You know, they just keep reshuffling the money and more leaks come out and they reshuffle it again. I feel like rich exclusive people live their life the way that I make my Sims live their life on Sims 3, where it's just like, if anybody runs out of money, I just type in Motherload in the cheat section and nobody, like nothing happens. It's just they just get really rich and no one in the neighborhood ever questions anything.

I would love to live my life like that. Can you go into our bank account and just try typing mother load? Maybe unlock some sort of mother load. You have injected $1 billion into an offshore bank. But this somehow seems right to me, not morally of course, but looking at the way that rich people live, it just seems so other, like they're clearly not paying, you know, 30 cent, even 30% tax. It's kind of kind of reassuring to know that your worst cynicism is completely justified about how abhorrent these people are and what they do.

And it's not just, it's not just your classic rich people and politicians. You've got all the big superstars out there. So this one, in this league, we've got Elton John, Ringo Starr, Shakira. Actually, it shouldn't be too surprising with Ringo Starr's tax avoidance. Because, I mean, if you've ever listened to a Beatles songs, it should be pretty clear their stance on tax. Because I'm the taxman. Yeah, I'm the taxman. Funny story about that is that, you know how it's got like one for you, 19 for me?

Yeah. I always thought that was like ridiculous. But the top margin rate in the UK at the time was actually 95%. Poor Beatles. I know. Poor Beatles, poor the queen. That greedy NHS. It was a Labour government.

But like there are. are, to be fair, there are a couple of downsides to laundering your money. One of them is that we'll be saving a lot of money. We'll be making stupid amounts of money illegally and we need to come up with ways to spend it. So you've got this guy, Graham Briggs, he's an Aussie accountant, founder of Asia City. That's one of the companies that does this money laundering. And here's what he does with his money. Graham Briggs amassed a $62 million fortune that includes more than $10 million in real estate, a $4 million rare pen collection and $400,000 worth a fine wine. A $4 million rare pen collection?

Who even uses pens? I don't even care about the wine or the real estate. I want to know what $4 million of pens looks like. It's insane. I implore our listeners to Google what luxury pens look like. They're insane. I'm absolutely filled with revulsion, but also that's hilarious. Pick a better collectible.

Surely there's a better thing to come. collect than pens. Oh, like something weirder, like baby doll heads or something. Yeah, syringes of dead celebrity junkies, I don't know. How vanilla, anyway. No, I think when you got this kind of money, you don't have to care what anyone thinks, and you can just follow your heart by every pen in the world. Another downside is that I guess you feel like a bit of a weasel, like not just because you're skulking around and like stealing money, but also because a lot of these tax havens are in tropical paradises and everyone there is fitter and healthier than you. And it's just, it's, it's, it's, It feels gross to be there.

I mean, here's what the Samoans had to say about Graham Briggs. He seems very personable. He's not very tall. Short, curly-haired grey, Aussie. It's not great for yourself esteem to be spending so much time in Samoa. Of course he's a short man, though. I think he's just Samoans are just bigger than him. No, not in my head.

In my head now he's four foot tall. It's not your height, Gabby. It's how big your rare pen collection is. At the end of the day, there aren't really that many downsides. Even if, like, tragedy hits, right? Our whole thing gets exposed and we go to prison. It's not the kind of prison you think it is, right? It's so, like, it's really good prison.

Like when your average murderer goes to prison, when they're about to get let out, they have to go to a parole board and kind of repent and be like, oh, you know what, guys, like I probably shouldn't have killed that guy, right? But it's not the case for financial crimes. Like one of the guys, Van der Gould, who's one of the accountants for. Asia City, which is one of these companies. He was jailed for only three years because technically the only crime they could convict him of was contempt of court. And this is him being interviewed by four corners from prison about his work.

My job is to actually help taxpayers and get through the labyrinth of the Australian Tax Act in a most effective way. And if one of the most effective way means they reduce their taxes, well, so, so be it. You go to prison and you don't have to repent at all. You can just, and he's going out very soon. He's going to be a free man. I mean, it's hard to know what to say. I'm actually just completely, like, just every sense about how selfish and unreasonable

and contemptible rich people are has just been completely vindicated yet again by this latest massive leak of data. Nothing will be done about it. Nothing will change. They'll just keep having their private jets and their private yachts and whatever, and I just want to know how to become one of them.

Yeah, clearly they figured it out. They figured life out. What confuses me, though, is that you obviously have to be super rich to even afford these accountants. If you already have that much money, why are you so intent on getting more? That's true.

If the point where you're rich enough to get this sort of tax advice, just pay your freaking tax and build a hospital. I love that. You know that viral tweet that was like, no one needs to be a billionaire. At the point where you get $999 million, they should just say, oh, you won capitalism and name a dog park after you.

Yeah. I want that to happen and I want to bring my dog to urinate on your statue. Although we might need a change. Maybe they'll just get awarded a special. special U1 capitalism pen. I see this. Today's episode of The Chase Report is brought to by Gina Reinhardt School of Climate Anxiety Meditation.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Drill in. Dig out. Trill in. So guys, before we go, do you know what time of year it is? It's freedom time. You know, cases ago, we're landing outside.

No, no. It's my annual daylight robbery. It's rego time. Oh, no. Yeah, and I had to, and I sort of looked at my car the other day, and I thought, oh, this year might be the year it doesn't pass. Because every year is the year that I think it won't pass. And then some reason, it always does.

I just don't know what it is. It's like magic. It's like sisterhood of the traveling 99 Commodore. But I finally did the adult thing. I hope you're all proud of me. I went and got new tires. Wow. I've never put new tires on my car.

It's a secondhand car to begin with. It's from 99. It's almost as old as you, if my mask is correct. But I'd only ever gotten a tire replaced once when I blew a tire. And then they definitely told me about two years ago when that happened. You definitely need to replace the rest of your tires. And I did the classic 22-year-old thing and went, all right. And I never saw them again.

And so I went and replaced them. When I got my car back, the tire guy was like, do you know how old your tires are? And I went, oh, the last guy I think told me they were about eight years old. I know that they're pretty, they were getting pretty crap. And he went, no, they were the original tires. You have been driving on the original 99 tires this whole time. Did they have any tread at all? Yes, that's the crazy thing.

They actually, it was, they weren't bold enough for me to even justify confidently booking the tire thing. I only did it because I have a little bit of extra money this year. So I was like, I should probably do it. They're not that bad. I could probably go another year. No, I probably wouldn't have passed Rego. He said, I'm amazed that you've passed Rego for the last three or four years.

I'm also astonished that after you blew a tire, and the guy said, the other ones are on the verge of the same thing. You were like, oh, look, this is a several-year project. I have accidentally hit an echidna in my car. There are still echidna spores in the front right tire. What? Yeah. And I just figured that it was kind of like a puncture.

You know, you don't take the puncture thing out. It keeps the air in. So I never took them out. They're definitely there. No, but the question that I have is now that you've driven with the new tyres, are you finding that you don't slide around as much on the road? I thought sliding around a roundabout in rain was normal. They were slowly deflating as well, and I'd just build them up with air once a month.

It's really bad. Well, look, what do you want for me? If the car works, it works, all right? That engine's still got another 20 years in it. I'm driving it until I'm 50. That's what's happening. But the one thing I will say is, yes, driving home from the tire place today did feel like a thousand times safer.

I was like, oh, this is what this is supposed to feel like, not imminent death at every corner. It was nice. I think that story is worth a five-star if you got Apple Podcasts, go and give one. Or just out of pity, really, for Gabby's poor echidna, without spines. Probably didn't last much longer. I called him Jerry. Please subscribe or follow the podcast in your app of Joysidekees from Raid Microphones. We're part of the AICS.

Creator Network. Catch you tomorrow. See you. Bye.