The Chaser Report - Thinking Super with Pauline

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Pauline Hanson has introduced an original new One Nation policy that the Coalition used five years ago, and Charles' theory for solving productivity received some valid scrutiny. Plus, Dom needs help locking a door.---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. Hello, Charles. What manner of audio delight do we have in store for our listeners today? Well, we've got some feedback from yesterday's episode. Oh, very good. Which I do want to run through with you.

I've got some nice feedback. Oh, that's good. I've also got this feedback. I've just finished, so just to remind listeners who perhaps aren't caught up. For shame. Yesterday, we had a very weird episode where we talked about Andrew Dendon for the first half and then we pivoted to talking about the Australian economy. It was comprehensive really.

And, well, I'd post a solution to solve the productivity crisis. Also hot dogs, let's not forget. We haven't heard from you. I'm very surprised that mentioning him yesterday, like shining a bat signal the sky didn't yield an immediate response. But should we get into the feedback in a moment? I have some news on McDonald's as well. Oh, okay.

Are you a member of McDonald's, by the way? Did you ever sign up for the app or whatever? I think my son is, yeah. I think he probably. But I don't think he ever uses it because you've got to log in. I used it a little bit during COVID or something. I think I did drive through back then. Oh, dear.

A journalist signed up and requested the information that McDonald's has on him. Oh, yeah. 515 pages arrived in the mail. So we'll talk about that as well on today's equally eclectic episode of the Chaser Report. Okay, so first of all, let's just go to the bad feedback. Oh, no, this is, I think this has a point, but it's not necessarily done in the spirit

of... You look a bit peaked, Charles. No, it's good. It's a little bit bothered, let's see. I've just finished listening to your episode where you're discussing the problem in the building industry, being like... largely that they have to rely on subcontractors. That is very true.

But the one thing I don't think you'd talk into consideration is the fact that us tradies don't like you non-tradies. In fact, we fucking hate you. That does gel with my experience of trading, broadly speaking. If we can screw you in any way, shape or fucking form, we will fuck you. We all get physically hurt for a living and you don't. So fuck you and pay your invoice, thank you. Did you irritate a trainee?

I feel like, yes, long-time listener and short-time sort of, pirate listener. This is why I live with at least five separate, incredibly annoying problems at my house that I could easily get fixed by a trady. Because I live in fear of them. Partly because it's so basic. You live in fear of the quote. There's such basic problems that I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't been able to fix.

Like there's a broken door lock on the bathroom doors. We've been living lockless for a year. I'm sure it's simple to fix if I went to Bunnings or something, but I've no idea. No. And plus, like, I even, I've caught myself having been broadening my accent when a trade he comes over. Oh, yeah, thanks, mate. Oh, mate, yeah, yeah, good one, mate. Yeah, I'm a bit busy.

You haven't had the chance to fix that door lock yet, mate. Sorry, I'm just working off a workplace injury that I just got. Oh, my back. Yeah. Oh, H&S. From lifting all these heavy exam papers on marking. Can someone please, if you know how to fix door locks, please let me know. I was tired of it.

And then we did actually get other commentary about, you know, raising the way. But that was all complementary. There was someone who made an interesting point who said that, and I don't know if this is true, somebody said in an email that this was why at one point there had been heaps of machines. Yes. That's why we don't have as many automatic car washes. anymore. Like machines that washed your car.

They were built when wages were high, but they stopped building them when wages got so low, it was cheaper to hire a team to wash hand-washed cars in the car park of a shopping center. And that is absolutely true. Every big mall has a team of people who wash your car for you by hand. And I think, again, I just say to Jim Chalmers,

if you want to fix productivity in this country, the first thing you need to do is double wages. Like, just literally double the wages. I saw a modeling which showed that if the minimum wage had the same amount of buying power relative to capital as it did 30 years ago, the minimum wage would be well over $130,000. Really? Yep. That's so interesting.

Well, the other thing is, I mean, those car washes, though, here's the curious thing about it. The price, like, it's one of those premiumness things, too, because automatic car washers, is you don't want to pay more than, I don't know, 15, 20 bucks. Because a machine does it, it's very rough. Yeah. It wax the thing with, you know, it's not a very gentle and delicate operation. But it's fucking fun. I loved going through when I was in my 20s.

We used to, oh, well, when my kid was in his, like, when he was four or five, we used to go there. Like, that was an afternoon activity. Yes, it's on blue. Hairy monster attack. Spend a whole lot of time vacuuming. Like, you could spend hours vacuuming our car. I love those tube vacuum. With the little tube vacuum.

I should go to do that. Yeah, yeah. And then you go through the machine. And the whole afternoon would be building up to going through the machine. Yeah, that's true. It's a great activity. And for a while there, we would, like, my four-year-old would actually not be in the car. Like, he was too scared to go in the car.

Yeah. He'd like to just watch from the outside. I had a kid. One of my kids are scared too. That's so true. So that's a good point. But the things where people do it by hand, like, they cost. least triple, don't they? I mean, there's just no, like...

Yeah, but no, what you've got to do is you've got to find underemployed, you know, under the table illegal immigrants to do it for you. I don't... I don't find out of wrong. I'm not sure all those workers being paid minimum wage. I think that's true. Yeah. I suspect a lot of them are new issues and stuff with the work and cash in hand. Exactly. But we do pay six times more, like I reckon, for that. So I don't know how, I don't know how that analysis comes into it, except maybe we should strap people in the economics advisory to the top of the car and go through a car wash

until they put up minimum wage, that'd convince you. If the big machine was bearing down on you, you'd put up minimum wages, wouldn't you? Maybe one of the other problems is people in the Treasury doing the modelling aren't paid enough either. So they're doing it all by hand rather than getting machines to do it. Or maybe they're all, you know, com car driving fat cats. You don't have to wash their own limos. So what we do is we double the wages of tradies in this country.

Well, that's what we should do. But they work so pretty hard. Yeah. And they get injured all the time. And cut the fat cats in Canberra. Oh my God, it starts sounding like Pauline Hanson. This is... It makes a lot of sense.

It's so easy to do, isn't it? She just says the things Charles is thinking. You just solve problems. They're going, I reckon. I... You know what I hate? What? Bubble.

Not just the Canberra bubble All the bubbles Oh the whole bubble Yeah the city bubbles And no the Australian bubble Yeah You can't say that What's not going to win you the One Nation vote

No no no no The One Nation vote is all about talking down Australia We hate Australia If you're one nation you hate Australia Everything about Australia is terrible That's the whole That's the driving idea behind One Nation Is that actually deep down

You fucking resent Australia Because you hate Australia How so? Talk me through that No, that is, that's their, everything. Like, oh, the superannuation system in Australia, what is that? You know, just in the last 24 hours, what have Paul and Hans? It's terrible. It's terrible.

You know why? Because Australia has it. You know, like, everything about this country, our immigration system, the fact that we've got multiculturalism, the fact that you can go down the street and buy something that's not fish and chips for once. That's terrible. We don't want that. That's what this all comes back to.

Yes. But if you go back to the history of Ipswich. Yes. It used to be. Was there a fish and chips operator? Yeah, milk bar. But a monopoly on that kind of food. And then a Chinese takeaway opens next door,

an Indian takeaway opens next to that. Yeah. And everything else. Yeah. And suddenly the fish and chips sales go through the floor. Yeah. It was like, oh, I think I'd rather have butter chicken and sweet and south pork. Thanks very much.

Is that where this whole thing started? That's totally where it started. And so Paul and Hansen started hating Australia. And thereafter, her whole, like everything that they seek to do, seeks to undermine the system that we've currently got. That's what they want to do. Why don't you share this insight with a certain Angus Taylor who might want to know how to oppose this argument,

but also a certain Anthony... I don't think this is what... No one in Canberra is taking this line that Paul Hanson's unpatriotic. Are they? Well, they should. Maybe they should tune into this fucking podcast. I think I have heard some lab people saying that she talks down Australia,

actually. I have heard that line. Yeah, yeah. I think Jim Chalmers may have used that on the super, the super thing. Oh shit, so I'm now just spouting Jim Chalmers. Because they want, this is the thing that's so fascinating. They want everyone to be able to dip into their super to buy a house. That's the, that's the whole argument.

Yeah, yeah, they want to prop up the housing maker. Oh, wonder who that will benefit. All the housing investors. It's sort of. But didn't we do that during COVID and didn't the housing price go up? It was a complete catastrophe. And you look at the long run of that policy and you know that what's going to happen is. all it's going to do is increase inequality in Australia.

Like, you know that what's going to happen is people who are struggling at the moment are going to take out this super and then they'll have no savings when it comes time to retirement and they will be poorer for it. And it's such a brilliant way of channeling that resentment and it gets everyone whipped up. And Paul and Hansen's knowing going into this debate that the people who want to defend super are going to get into the, the details. Because to get into the details about why super works as it is, you've got to start

talking about things like, well, the whole point about your super is it's massively tax concessional. If you actually abolish the super system as it is and let people just take it out willy-nealy, then you're basically abolishing tax. Like, unless you, unless you, unless you then tax it, in which case it's not super. The flat tax, don't forget. Yeah, right. Yeah. So you're just completely undermining our entire tax system. But that's too complicated. Like, people just hear, oh, it's my money. I should just get it.

And then you go, and it's very hard to go into the realities of, well, the whole reason you've got all that money is because it hasn't been taxed. Well, the thing about superannuation, though, is when I get my, because I, for years, you know, didn't have enough because I was a contractor and it wasn't sensible about it. But as an employee now, when I look at the statement and I see the amount of money that's on out into super. I just think, this is the government saying that it knows better how to provide for my financial future than I do. The government's saying, I know better than you how to prepare for your old age. And the reality is that that's true. I'm terrible at saving.

And so it's forcing you to be better than you actually are. It's basically a policy for financial idiots. Yes. I think that's why I like it so much as well. Because I know myself. I know that I would be terrible at saving if it wasn't the law. Like, I would definitely just spend it all. So, yeah, I mean, I must say, I'm somewhat, I actually change my life to become an employee quite deliberately to force myself to actually have some super. I've actually come up with the policy of a solution for people who are on Struggle Street

and need money now, right? Let's have some ads and then we can tell us what it is. I don't know if we're going to get to the McDonald's thing, but it is a great story too. Okay. None of the medical advice contained in the Chaser Report should legally be considered medical advice. The Chaser Report. It is my solution, Dom. Battlers who are battling in the battle...

It is a battle out there. That is 2026 Australia should be allowed to gain access early to Pauline Hanson's super. Because it would be good. You think she probably got quite a lot? Was she on the old parliamentary super? Well, she must be. She's been in Parliament for about 100 million years. years.

Remember how Latham got rid of all the MPs super? Yeah. Because Pauline Hanson was in jail for a little while, so I don't think she was always... No, there was a period when she was out of. Parliament. That's true. But she would have had a bit of the old super and then it would have been... That was Tony Abbott.

But they're paid above the odds. They're not paid on the 12. They're on like 17 or something. Yeah, yeah. She'd be on a good clip. And then I'm sure Gina Reinhart just tips a bit extreme. Did Gina Ryanhart have decent super? What's her super like?

I bet you she has maxed out super. She'd be one of those... No, those people with the huge accounts? Yeah, the huge accounts. Because it's a shrewd tax strategy. See, that's ironic, isn't it? The idea that the people who... I suppose that's why they want early access to their super.

I wish I had more money to put it to put it up to the super. Because you're supposed to put it as much as you legally can. That's what everyone says you should do. Not that this is financial. Don't take a financial advice for me. This podcast is never financial advice. The only financial advice that I have, that I can actually speak to with any veracity.

You don't start a podcast. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Okay, so I want to know about Maccas. So this is an amazing story. So I'm the kind of person who, and it is a personal flaw. Signs up to it.

I sign it to every single thing. Whenever there's a loyalty membership or whatever, I'll do it. And so this is a journal called Reese Rogers from Wired. And in California, there's a legal right to access the data that a company stores about you. It sounds to me like not a bad right to have. have. Anyway. So.

It sounds like one of those annoying, like that's a nerd right. It's a nerd right. Like who, who except for nerds is going to access? It's only there. It's like freedom of nerd information. Yeah. So this person,

Reese, visited the McDonald's Privacy Rights Center site and received a 515 page file sent electronically. And what's in it? What are they? Is it a sort of Palantir-style, you know, assassination plan? What McDonald says is McDonald's take data privacy and security seriously.

We take robust steps to safeguard customer information. We use information such as past purchases to provide a more engaging personal customer experience like deals, offers and messages. And so this dossier, it's every offer that they've received, every transaction, every loyalty point, every time they open up the app. I'm not sure if Reese's mail or email. Is this why I'd report a fatty? But just saying, if it's 515, like every point that they receive, maybe it's just 515 pages of hash brown purchases. Good problem.

But it goes even further. So the company's data actually has predictive algorithms. How many times, actually, this is my answer your question. How many times will this person visit in the next six weeks, 2.16 times? What will they spend in average? $13.49 and a total of $29.15. The large diet Coke is their favourite transaction, and it's even generalized about the sorts of food that this reporter likes. Like the food-led afternoon snack, on the go lunch in a rush, and there's an attrition score, which is what is the risk of this person never purchasing McDonald's again?

Oh, wow. Which it estimated as zero. So I think it is also probably a dossier of personal failure. Let's be honest. But extrapolate this out. Like every single type, and so every time you do your flybyes, presumably, I don't know how good the software is that Coles might have. Oh, the flybys would have. I imagine there's a massive amount of stuff in there.

I'm just amazed because I do flybys and they just send me emails that are like exactly what I would buy at the shop. Like, it's extraordinary. It's pretty amazing given that isn't the famous thing about flybys that it's very, it's close to impossible to actually get any free flights out of it? Like when it started, everyone thought they were going to be getting free for some places. So here's the second thing, Charles. The point is that, yes, okay, it's a lot of data, but all these privacy experts who the journalist interviewed said it's really creepy about how it predicts when you're going to be there and there's the sort of future.

But the second right you have in California is that you can request that everything be deleted, which the reporter then did. Oh, wow. as a kind of a point of liberty. And so this person went to talk to their boss to discuss the story in progress and the amazing headline, 515 pages. And the boss said you are now not allowed to eat at McDonald's anymore. So this whole process.

The boss is, what? The boss just said, please don't go any long. Okay. Yeah, right. This person's decided. You need help. This is an intervention. Yeah, this person has decided never to go there again just to prove the algorithm wrong.

So I want these rights in Australia. I want to be able to request what companies have about me and also to delete it. And so what happens when you turn up after it's been deleted? Like, do they, is there some sort of, or would they just start the file again? Well, I mean, to be honest, McDonald's surely isn't the creepiest version of this scenario, right? So you reckon what we need to do is, should be. Should be right to flybys and see whether they'll give us? Really, right to all it.

Yeah, it'd be very interesting to what they know. Because freedom of information only applies to government organizations. But you could argue that flybys is such a longstanding institution in Australian democracy that in some ways it is a sort of pseudo-government organization. Well, we know that the High Court's found. You've got the Treasury Department. You've got flybys. Yes.

You've got the High Court. It is up there, isn't it? They probably have an office next to the lake in Canberra, don't think? The separation of powers, it's a four-way split now. That's right. The executive, the judiciary, fly-bys. And loyalty, yeah, that's right. And it's the fourth tier of government in many ways.

But the thing about it, I mean, as long as it's clear that no one's getting any flights from it. That's right. That may not be true. I've only spent, I've only been a member for about five years. I think I know a group of people who work at flybys once came to a wankanomics show. Of course they did. I wonder whether, and in that show we actually had a gag where we went, oh, here's a 5,000 point flybys voucher.

And they made some comment about how there's literally worth nothing. It's like giving somebody five cents. He said that really you should drop that gag. Yeah. It doesn't work. Point to be funny. Very good. Well, no, I think, isn't it true that the High Court,

I mean, along with finding the implied right to, you know, freedom of political communication in the Constitution, the implied right. Yes. It's implied right to get meaningless loyalty points on every transaction in Australia. So, I mean, by listening to this podcast, you have earned one flyby point. Yeah. Oh, no, I reckon chaser points. Oh, sorry.

I think we definitely need to implement. I'm just redoing, I'm getting clawed to help me. Oh, that's good. Plug all the, you know how the chaser was, today, I've got to tell you, and then we'll go. But I have to tell you, today, one of the people who donates to the chaser, contacted us to cancel their donations, which is fine, that's good. I mean, good is it? Good is it?

Well, I found out that they were dipping into their super to give us $4 a month. But so anyway, I could not find, because they tried to log into the Chaser website, they couldn't find their donation. Oh, wow, it was so long ago. Oh, thank you. And then I looked in the other engine, it wasn't there. I then went through and looked in the credit card transactions, like literally the Stripe account, which we never actually go to, finally scrolled through all the transactions, found it. And what had happened is it had been set up by quite recently, like about a year ago, using an engine that we got rid of about three or four years ago.

So somewhere on the Chaser website, there's still an active version of our old subscription engine, which they somehow found and used. Is it autonomous? Wow. No, exactly. So you've got to, using Claude to track it down. Yeah, so I'm in the process of trying to actually join everything up so that it all works well. Have you managed to automate headline, snarky headline generation with Claude yet?

Because you really should. I think that's a great idea. Although, no, actually, I did ask it to do that. I said, you know, what's the upside? It's the final frontier. And it said, now, it said one pushback or something, you know, that I have for this plan. Right. And because it was just to propose, like just as a brainstorm generated type thing.

One pushback. People like the chaser because of its original human-generated content. Oh, really? And, you know, if you, you know, do a generic AI thing, it won't work, right? So, it did make, it made me ashamed that I even asked it there. There's not many cases where AI thinks AI is a bad idea. Yeah, I know, but, no, no. And I do take their point, like, nothing could beat the Whipsmart.

Oh, sure. Chase a headline. Razor, shut up. I can't do that. Oh, ouch, I've been burnt by the comedy. Charles, should we request a dossier for the information that the chaser has on us? Oh, my God. It's quite scary as a prospect.

All right, I think I better stop the episode here before that thought goes any further. I have no information on any of you, but Charles does. Better email them. Yeah, I do. Unless you want your subscription cancelled. Otherwise... It's mysteriously hard to contact me. That's right.

No, no. Okay, we're part of the Econocles Network. Farewell. See it.