The Chaser Report - Tin Foil Hard Hats | Nick Lutsko

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

Aleksa discusses the protests in Melbourne and tries to understand if there's a bigger conspiracy behind the conspiracy, and Gabbi and Dom celebrate the new buddy bubble system for NSW children and its practical shortcomings. Plus, a promo for our extended interview with American musical comedian Nick Lutsko. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is sponsored by Sucking Up to Personal Heroes. Why not watch Rosehaven's grand finale at 9 p.m. tonight on ABC. I love you, Luke McGregor. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Wednesday, the 22nd of September. I'm Dom Knight. Hello, Gabby Bolt. Hello, how are you, Dom? I am very, very well, having recovered from the surgery I didn't have yesterday.

When you and Loughlin I started off the Eap. Yeah, look, it was a cheap joke. It's beautiful work on that, but I'm afraid that I am back. And there's so much to talk about today because from out of nowhere, Gladys made things kind of nice for parents, which is not what she normally does these days. Yeah, that's not really her vibe. What did she do?

She made it so that school kids could have buddy bubbles, which is the most cringe-inducing term possible. Basically, if you've got a kid in school or anyone below the age of 18, they can nominate three other friends. and play with them during the holidays, which potentially is awesome for the kids. But imagine the social pressure of having to choose your three best friends and hope that it all overlaps.

God, that's going to cause some friendship distraction, isn't it? I can imagine. I had one best friend when I was growing up, but there's no way. There's no way I could have worked out a group of three. That would not have happened. No, see, that's why you always limit your friend groups to four. The really awkward thing is once you've picked, you can't change.

It's got to be permanent for the whole holidays. Oh, gosh. Oh, what if they had a falling out over the holidays and then you're stuck? Because they do. Like, kids have huge fights. This is like the hunger games. Yeah, we're going to see another world war over this. I think so. But the other thing is, imagine the awkwardness of the parents. Unfortunately, my daughter's too young for this, but I'm imagining Charles. The awkwardness of negotiating with the parents, not only over who the best friends is, because you can so imagine little Timmy wants to hang out with little Jess.

And Jess' parents are like, oh, Jess just isn't that into you, little Timmy. But then they've got to be double. vaxed as well. So you've got to have that conversation as well. And we're all heading to this point. Like every time you go into a shop, the poor shop owner is going to have to ask, are you vaccinated? This is just going to become a thing we have to talk about. Yeah, look, and I also think it would be pretty awful for any kids that are best friends, but one of the families just happen to be anti-vaxed. Like, why can't I hang out with rain anymore, Dad? Oh, well, rain believes that Ivermectin will cure all once. Yeah, rain's on ivermectin. You don't want to get in there. Yeah. Yeah. And then also,

So I've heard already about conversations where people are like, oh, I'm not vaccinated yet, but I'm not an anti-vaxxer. It's just that I haven't been able to get the right one and all this kind of stuff. Everyone's got to give their full medical history whenever you just want to have a play at the park. Yeah. But you know what? As an extrovert myself, I'm glad that I'm living through the era of oversharing, finally. Like, finally, I'm not going to leave a gathering feeling like I said too much.

Because now we're all sharing our blood types and our vax records. It'll be great. You can just say whatever you want. So yes, that's true. If you are socially awkward, this is going to be hell the next few months. Like, just get vaccinated inside home anyway, I reckon. But if you're an overtalker like me, you're about to thrive. Let me tell you.

We've been shut out too long. Let's roll play it. It's okay, Gabby, I think of having a picnic with you, but what's your status? Oh, okay, so I was single for a while, then I was in a relationship, it got a little bit complicated. And then I went to the doctor because I had like this weird freckle that I thought might be melanoma, but it turns out, not melanoma. I'm just not supposed to have freckles on the bottom of my feet.

And then he said, oh, well, look, we can do a bite. I went, you know what? If I am cancerous, I'd rather just live my life knowing that I'm not going to die. So I left and never went back. And then I had a stomach bug for a while. And I also had food poisoning for around 48 hours. It was pretty rough. But it was okay because the paramedic gave me the green whistle and then called my work for me and said, you can't go in. And it was great. This was like four years ago, by the way. So it'll take me a second to catch up. Yeah, I don't think we need to catch up anymore. I think we just did. Coming up on the show today, we have a quite special guest actually. American musical comedian Nick Lutsko talks to Zander and I about his political

satire of American politics, which is a playground to my ears. I love his Donald Trump Jr. song. Also, Alexa takes a look at the big protests that have been going on in Melbourne. But first, we're going to head to Rebecca Deen and Muno in the Chase and Newsroom. But actually, Doc, that's a really good opportunity. While these breaks are playing, I can tell you more about that mole on the bottom of my foot that I thought was... Where's the Encore button?

Scott Morrison's week-long vacation in America has been given an essential two-day extension so that Scott is able to take part in crucial sightseeing and photo ops. After finalising details for the Orcus Treaty, Scott plans on visiting some family gravestones for his second cousin's roommate's great-granddad, as well as doing a cheeky pub crawl for old time's sake. As of today, children have been allowed to visit their peers with the government legislating for new friendship bubbles.

The decision has been met with strong support from parents, so long as it's their kids going to another family, instead of having some other selfish bastard trying to palm off their little brats. The lucrative Everest horse race will go ahead next month as long as all attendees meet vaccination requirements, including the horses. Race horse owners have agreed to allow their horses to receive shots on the race course in front of the crowd and weren't fussed whether it's done by injection or by bullet. Those are the latest headlines from The Chaser Report.

I'm Rebecca de Unumuno. This episode is sponsored by sucking up to personal heroes. Luke McGregor is genuinely one of the most authentic, hilarious, and amazing people that I've ever had the pleasure over wanting to meet. So if you're Luke or a friend of Luke's, why not reach out so we can be pals? I will be waiting by the phone. The paradigm of absolute control. That's why we're just out here doing simple things pointing out that we're meant to be in nature and be natural.

And this is where we find the source that God made to transcend the new world order. And that's why they want to try to keep us out of it. Right now we're giving you a quick short clip from our interview with Nick Lutsko in today's bonus episode. Nick is a musical comedian from the United States and has done everything from turning Trump's tweets into an emo rock song to adapting the rants of crazy conspiracy theorist Alex Jones into a folk song. He really shot to prominence last year with his songs during the US election. Nick, thank you so much for coming on the show. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm a new father.

I'm somewhat sleep-deprived, but I'm enjoying life. Congratulations. Thank you very much. I know you're known for your musical comedy, obviously, but I just want people to understand any of our listeners understanding that the production quality on the songs you make is absolutely insanely professionals. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I got into music for, like, I never even, like, envision that I would be doing anything related to comedy. And in some ways, I guess you could say I'm a. bit of a failed musician who pivoted into comp piece. Your songs have had a lot of different targets over the last year from wanting to play at Joe Biden's inauguration to hosting Saturday Night Live. What's the process in finding a topic for a song? It's almost like I have to wake up and be inspired by whatever people are talking about

that day. Like with Joe Biden's inauguration, first of all, the insurrection of January 6th, but I feel like every American was kind of dealing with the trauma of that. And although the song has its own like subtext of like why I'm in a neck brace and have a black guy, I feel like all Americans felt like they'd just been beaten up after four years of Trump. You know, like without getting into the weeds of all the background and the lore of everything, but it was like, okay, how can I use the current event that a lot of people are talking about to tell my own stupid story around this strange character that I've kind of created.

If you want to hear more of that interview, you can check out the bonus episode in your podcast feed right now. And if you want to hear more of Nick's work, you can check him out. Nick Lutsko on Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. There's a huge protest that's been going on in Melbourne over the past few days. Crowds have been marching on the CBD, rubber bullets, smashed windows, things like that. Not the kind of thing you would imagine would happen in a lockdown. Alex has been taking a look at this.

Hey, Alexa. Hey, hey, yeah, yeah. It's very uncomfortable stuff, a little bit spooky. But it all seems to centre around, at least for now, around the CFMEU, which is a construction union. Essentially, I mean, they're one of the most militant unions in Australia. They're not afraid to arc up for their rights. They've got a lot of enemies.

And generally known for putting in windows rather than taking them out with rights. Exactly. That's called renewable work. Yeah. Break windows, then you have to rebuild them. It's a cycle. It's a cycle of life. life in the CFMU. But this week they kind of became the focal point of COVID protests.

I think one of the main issues is that during COVID construction has continued. But the CFMU is in a bit of a bind and it's trying really hard to stall between vaccinations and anti-vax sentiment. It's really tricky, right? As a union, I guess they've got a duty to keep their workers safe, which means making sure everyone's vaccinated and people aren't exposed to COVID it at the workplace. But they're also in a bind because they can't be seen as allowing employees to kind of arbitrarily discriminate between and fireworkers because they're not vaxed. That is an awkward dimer. So what they've been doing essentially is just stalling nonstop. They've tried really, really hard to not alienate any segment of the union.

What, builders stalling? I was going to say, a true tradey fashion putting work off. That's not like them. Yeah, well, look, I mean, they were well practiced, but it all kind of fucked up on. on Monday. What happened? Well, there was a big, big old protest. There was a mandate that came out. I think by September 23rd, all construction workers had to have at least one vaccine dose to be allowed on site. A lot of these anti-vaxxas were furious. They showed up at the CFMU headquarters and yeah, the union boss shows up. John Setka tries to talk to them and he was essentially overwhelmed, had bottles thrown at him. So he retreated back inside. And yeah, violence broke out. They were rubber bullets.

police came and suppressed it. But the weird part here is that after that, everyone in the union movement started making claims about this protest, that it was organised by non-union far-right agitators. Really? Yeah, so the leader, John Setka, called them drunken, fascist, un-Australian morons. Bill Shorten called them man-baby Nazis. There are a lot of idiots where if they thought it was an anti-vaccination protest would just come out and get on board.

Like, I mean, TikTok guy, if he was not in hospital with COVID, he'd be there. Oh, you'd put on the high viz, yeah, for sure. Can I just point out, sorry, Atradey is actually leaf blowing on my roof. They've just started, and it might, I don't know if you can hear it, but it might be a baby fascist wanting to interrupt our conversation. I think it is. I think it is. They're very well organized.

You mentioned the CFMU, and within a moment, a tradee just starts fucking up your conversation, like Beetlejuice. They're on to us. I mean, I don't think it's, it's not such an absurd claim, right? There's a lot of weird stuff about this protest. I mean, the first one I noticed is their branding. I don't know if you guys have spent much time hanging out with CFMEU members. Oh, yeah.

Hide of my party life, Alexa. Yeah, union members. Oh, mate. They're super keen on branding. They've like constantly, they've got so much merch and they love it. But at this protest, there's not much CFMU merch. People were just wearing high viz. And then you had like the telegram channels, which are, you know, I guess like right-wing social media that had all these protest pamphlets distributed on there that said protests at the CFMU, bring high viz.

Right. So it might actually have been infiltrated rather than just a bullshit claim. Well, from what I understand, there are obviously a lot of unions who are anti-vaxxers, but the idea is that a lot of people were there that weren't part of it. Normally the kind of people who pretend to be like far-left genuine trade union people, a middle-class labourer. MPs, but this is a nice change, at least. No, everyone's getting involved on the fake tradie stuff. Now, if you look through the crowd, you'll find the who's who of anti-vax, right-wing, grifters and influencers who obviously aren't tradies.

But the most exciting person you could see in the crowd was Lizzie Rose. Does that name ring a bell? Not at all. Well, maybe if you listen to her talking. It is in breach of the 1948 Charter of Human Rights to discriminate against men and Women. Bunnings Karen. I was just going to say it was going to be Bunnings Karen.

But yeah, I mean, she's definitely not a CFMU member, but she was out in Ivy's at the protest on Monday. Amazing. I'm happy that she's moved on from buying tools to becoming one, you know? Like, good for her. But yeah, I mean, it just gets weir and weirder. Even their chance were a bit off. It's one of the weirdest bits.

One of the dudes from this protest comes up and grabs the megaphone and starts, you know, jeeing everyone up with these chants that are like suspiciously opposed. to any general CFMU chance. We play one here. I don't believe that gentleman has a union member's card on him, Alex? I mean, it's so wild because he's standing there next to John Setka, who's the leader of the CFMU. And this guy, you know, came to prominence as a heavyweight in the Builders, Laborist Federation. which was a Maoist union.

Like, they were, like, not even communists. They were the most extreme of the extreme. So it's just like... The kind of people who go, look, communism's a bit soft. We're Maoists. Yeah, exactly. It's like a great leap forward and go to long march. That's exactly.

So it's just really, really bizarre to see. But I think out of all those things, the biggest clincher of all for me that made it clear that these weren't unionists was the fact that they all showed up to the event at the correct time. That makes no sense. I'm sorry, I worked as a casual labour

throughout my uni days. Absolutely no one's ever done that before. That's, I just don't buy it. I don't buy it at all. Surely actual union members would have been like, we'll arrive sometime between 7 and 12 and then turn up at 2, right? Yeah, it's just incredibly suspicious,

but this protest got quite out of hand. There was a lot of violence and essentially the Victorian government comes out and says, now we're shutting down all construction sites for the next two weeks. Woo! Good protest, guys. Yeah, great work. You crushed it. That just, I mean, invigorated a lot of people, pissed a lot of people off.

So yesterday we had protests again, even bigger, and not just at the CFMU headquarters, but now they're marching all throughout town. Double whammy. Yeah, it was actually, it was pretty terrifying, to be honest. Here's a clip of one of the journalists being attacked yesterday. The crowd is certainly getting bigger, and they're very passionate. I've just been struck in the back of a back, back of a head by a can. I'm not sure whether you saw that, mate.

Are you okay, Paul? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Oh, that's not, that's not okay. Cairns are for drinking on a work site, not for throwing. I was kind of doubting their tradie credentials, but the can was a can of mother. So very possible that these are the real deal.

Did I have sickie butts at the bottom of it? Oh, man. Unfortunately, Paul Dowsley from Channel 7 did not inspect the can. Man, talk about investigative journalism. A couple months ago, I remember in Sydney, there was another protest featuring construction workers after the business was shut down here for a couple of weeks. And they just got on the Anzac Bridge

and were just tooting their horns in unison. I didn't see Bunnings Caron anywhere. How'd they get away with that? How did you know that was a protest? Isn't that just what the Anzac Bridge is like most of the time? Hang on, Alexa. If they've shut down the industry for the next two weeks, doesn't that mean that as well as all these weird baby fascists,

actual construction workers are going to be really angry and have time to march on the streets of Melbourne. Yeah, they've got nothing else to do, although I'd like to think they'd be following behind and fixing all the windows. And there's no work, make work for yourself. Send the bill to Dan Andrews. No, but before we go, I want to say,

it wasn't all doom and gloom and violence. It was actually a pretty cute moment at the pinnacle of the protest. Really? Oh, yeah. These people don't sound cute so far, Alexa. Oh, just wait and see. This is what they did. All these Hiver's boys were blocking off Westgate Bridge and singing.

I mean, I know people love that song all over the country for some strange reason, but that's bizarre. I mean, it's definitely not a union song, I don't think. No, it's not the international, is it? But, I mean, it's a pretty great anti-vax anthem, isn't it? How is, that's not fair to Daryl Braithway, isn't it just about riding horses and yeah, yeah? I thought it was a song about Ivermectin. I thought it was about taking horse to Wormer. I'm way off.

Oh, no. Actually, Daryl, if you're listening, just get those horses deworm, mate. This episode is sponsored by getting contacted by a personal hero's agent, requesting that you stop harassing them. And for legal reasons, Luke McGregor does not affiliate himself with any of the opinions voiced in The Chaser Report. Sorry, Luke. Dom, just before we go, I found what I think is my favourite sports news story ever.

And I don't even follow sports, so there's really not much competition, but nothing can top this. What happened? Well, the Bristol Half Marathon happened this weekend, but it was the first time that they put two different kinds of races on the same day. There was the 10 kilometre race and the Half Marathon race.

Anyway, the winner of the Half Marathon is a guy called Oma Ahmed, and he never ever expected to win at all because he thought he'd entered the 10-kilometer race. You're kidding. No. And what's crazy is he realized halfway through running the race after asking how much longer is there to go. And somebody had to tell him, you're in the half marathon, mate. And he won. That's insane.

So I'm just doing the mess. So 10K, but then half marathon must be 21K or so. Yeah. So this guy ran more than double what he was expecting and won anyway. He fully won. He was an accidental winner over half marathon. And the craziest part is they've stripped him of the title. No.

He got disqualified. Why? Because he technically didn't enter the right race. You've got to be kidding. That's ridiculous. But they have invited him to compete again next year. And they have said it was a great feat. But Justice Baroma, I'm sad.

Yeah. No, I'm not going on strike. I'm not running any marathons until this injustice is rectified. My favorite story I think, Gabi, is the revelation that in May this year, there was a giant burnout. done by a Ferrari in the Sydney CBD. And look, there's a whole thing where there were charges and the person, someone didn't disclose who was the driver

and all this kind of stuff. But I kind of like the fact that Sydney CBD is so empty that in the middle of the day, you can just do a burnout in a city street and not even finds out for months. Yeah, that's crazy. More importantly, why would you burn out in a Ferrari? They're not good for burnouts. That's a very good point.

Like, imagine how much the tyres cost in a Ferrari. Yeah, burnouts are only good in the shittest car possible. It's going to be like a 99 Nissan or something. Yeah, you're supposed to do, like in a Tarana or something. Yeah, like if the lights work, if the interior lights work, it's not good enough for a burnout. Please leave us to review on Apple Podcasts, we really appreciate it. Today's code word is... Burnout.

Burnout. Whether the work kind or the car kind. Yes, exactly. Please subscribe or follow us in your app of choice. How good is from Road Microphones. We're part of the AICAS. Create a network. Catch you tomorrow. See ya.