The Chaser Report - We Spammed Clive Palmer! | Alice Workman

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Charles and Dom are joined by Alice Workman, the hilarious political writer for The Australian, to chat about her favourite observations from this campaign. Meanwhile Dom and Charles seem to have been thrown off their rhythm by last night's debate, and have forgotten how civil conversations work. Plus Lachlan talks behind the scenes of his stunt on Clive Palmer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In an election that will determine the fate of the entire universe, there's only one podcast holding politicians accountable. Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese, who will boom? Find out on The Chaser Report, election edition. Hello and welcome to the election edition of The Chaser Report. It is Monday the 9th of May. How many days to go until the election? I believe we've got 12 days of hell ahead of us, Domi. Oh, God.

All right, I'm Dom Knight. Now, Charles, I want to start by talking about the debate. No, actually, I want to start talking about the debate because... No, no, no. The thing about the debate is there was full of questions and substance, but the problem was, there was some issues with talk over. What they kept doing was talking over each other? What did you do about that? What did you do about that?

Many years, Charles, have been accommodating, being part of the chase of the decades. I think that this is a disgrace that you would just talk over me. You guys, sorry, you agreed that you'd come on and there were certain agreements. What are you doing? Shut up, Loughland. Now, the whole thing is, the Dominic night has just been, it's a low blow. It's a low blow. It's just a ridiculous person who just doesn't even deserve to be heard.

Well, if we're talking about records, what about your record in being heard? What's going on here? This is not at all as formal as the podcast is usually. We're just having a serious political discussion, Lockland. This is what debates are like. Don't you understand, Loughlin, this is what you do to reach the public. I think the audience has got the idea. Coming up on the rest of the show, we're going to have a look at what happened over the weekend,

excluding the debate. We're also going to talk to Lachlan because he caught up with Clive Palmer. I did, yeah. I just wanted to meet him and get a few messages across, but I don't think you wanted to hear me out. Yeah, for some really nice to see some ridiculous props and big suits coming back into the chaser. Loughlin, well done on that. And we'll chat to Alice Workman, who's always one of the funniest people

when it comes to writing about Australian politics. But first of all, no, we're not having your daily wrap. I'm tired of your daily wrap. We're going to go to a raps every episode so far. We can't do it. It's a terrible idea. All right, let's do it.

This is the wrap for Monday, the 9th of May. And the only thing anyone's talking about today is yesterday's leaders' debate. Unfortunately, I fell asleep during it, so we'll have to go off the commentary of what others are saying about it. Catherine Murphy, in The Guardian, said it was a terrible debate, a shit lizard. Debates on anything in the Parliament, let alone debates on opposition legislation.

Do you have draft legislation for your commission? As you know. The Herald was more measured, describing it as shouty and messy. No, you draft legislation. You can draft legislation anything you want. Straight up, political brawl with no clear winner. They've been hiding in the bushes. Small target.

Okay, we might risk. We will have it this year. Criticised both leaders for not focusing nearly enough on Sydney's property prices. And the Independent Integrity Commission. And the Daily Mail also covered the debate saying the clear winner was Prince Harry, who was spotted topless at a polo match in California over the weekend. Meanwhile, Labor has pulled ahead in the polls, increasing its lead over the coalition in both the Ipsos and news polls out today. Vote polls were consistently wrong in the last two elections, but hey, third time's a charm.

Meanwhile, Bono and the Edge have played for troops in the war-torn capital of Keeve. The highly dangerous concert was held in a metro station and lasted just 40 minutes. Unfortunately, everyone survived. That's the wrap for Monday, the 9th of May. The Chaser Report. Election edition. Now, it's time to catch up on everything that happened over the weekend, and this is, of course, an election podcast,

but I thought that we should probably have a look at other elections around the world that are a lot more interesting than the current Australian election, and in particular, the Philippine election. Oh, thank goodness. This is much better than our election. Yes, yes, because that's actually happening today. They're going to the polls our time Monday. And yesterday, Bongbong Marcos, who's the frontrunner,

held a rock concert in the rain, and people, like hundreds of thousands of people turned up to this rock concert. They danced and sang for eight hours. hours before Bongbong Marcos came out on stage to rapturous applause. Yeah, it's just nothing like Australian politics at all. Hang on a set, Charles. I mean, firstly, the fact that people are excited to see a political leader, that's fairly extraordinary.

Marcos. Marcos. The name rings up. Might there have been a Marcos in the past history of the Philippines, Charles? So Bongbong Marcos is in fact the son of Ferdinand Marcos. Now, you might remember him. was in power for 20 years. Under his government, 34,000 people were tortured, 3,000 were assassinated as political enemies, basically. They ended up stealing, at the end of their reign in

1986, they ended up stealing $14 billion out of the Filipino treasury. Much of it ensues, I recall. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Milder Marcos was the wife, who had a penchant for shoes, shall we say. But actually the Marcos's, there's real echoes to Australian politics because they're facing a national crisis. Guess where the Marcos has fled to. Oh, was it Hawaii? Please tell me it was, oh my goodness, really.

They've been camped out, including Bongbong, has been camped out there for like the last 20 years. And just recently, they've returned from Hawaii to sort of come and handshake with everyone in the Philippines. Marcos is just this son of a dictator. He's 64 years old, but he's still seen as this sort of young playboy-style character, although he actually did go to Oxford University. He went to Oxford University. He sort of claims to be this urbane, sophisticated choice, much more urban.

He tortures you in Latin rather than in Tagalog like his dad used to do. Yes, exactly. Although no one has been able to find his transcript from. Oxford. Like, it appears that he didn't actually ever graduate from Oxford University. Well, Charles, I went to Oxford for a weekend once. It was great. I enjoyed it. I want to play you a clip from a senator who is also running in the election. And this is her character assessment of what Bongbong Marcos was like before he started running for president. Remember Mr. Marcos, as candidate today, before?

It never worked All they did was go to the disco And they were always high on drugs So that's Bongbong Marcos for you He was always high on drugs and at the disco It's very relatable Yeah I know

I mean imagine if we had a candidate like that In the Australian elections The other thing is I'm a big fan of Philippine politics It's really fascinating And one of the interesting things about it Is that every politician has a nickname So his name is not actually Bongbon

Oh, isn't it? That's his nickname. You know what his real name is? What's his real name? Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Oh, nice. He's got the same name as the guy that stole billions of dollars, torture everyone, declared martial law, shut down democracy.

Basically, there's a guy, the former leader of the Philippines, came back. Corey Aquino's husband, like this great opposition leader, came back to Manila and was killed at the airport. This is Ninoi Akino. No, it was a monstrous regime. How on earth are they going to elect Marcos' son? Oh, he goes to the disco and it's fun. So anyway, so that's what happened overseas in election coverage.

We should probably sort of talk a little bit about what happened here on the weekend. During the debate, Morrison actually claimed that there was no corruption in the Liberal Party. Crow, you have the next question. Mr Morrison, have you seen any corruption on your side of politics in your time? And if so, what did you do about it? No, I haven't. Never. No wrongdoing?

No. Never happened in the Liberal Party at all. That must be why he doesn't want the Federal IACC because there's no need. There's no need. There's never been corruption on his side of politics. But it's one of those wonderful things of hear no evil, see no evil. All you've got to do is just cover your ears and shut your eyes. because there was a follow-up question.

This was from David Crow of the City Morning Herald. This is his follow-up question. What about that time where there was money from property developers in New South Wales that was routed down to the Free Enterprise Foundation and then back through federal offices back to New South Wales? New South Wales ICAC didn't like the look of that. Wouldn't you call that wrongdoing? You're assuming that I have some knowledge or involvement or awareness

or involvement in any of those issues, which I clearly do not. That was in 2016. It was in the New South Wales Liberal Party in 2016. I think he has an awareness. No, he was busy being the federal treasurer at the time, wasn't he? Yeah, yeah. But Charles, this is good.

This is actually a good thing. Yeah, right. For the establishment of a federal ICAC, because the way the New South Wales ICAC happened, it was set up by the Liberals to try and catch out Labor. Because they thought, look, Labor's really corrupt. It will never catch us. So Nick Griner said,

up this ICAC to basically ensure they couldn't get power for 10 years and expose all the skeletons in their closet. The only problem was it ended his career instead, or probably as well. So maybe if Morrison thinks there's no corruption, he'll set it up after all. He'll set it up. He will set it up. Talking of corruption, though, the voting machine that Channel 9 ran on their website, did you see the videos of that over the weekend, Dom?

I didn't see the videos, but I saw the reports. And even the Herald's own Latica Burke was pretty keen to use the word unscientific about their polling. So they offered three options. So the question was, who won the debate? And there were three options. You could vote coalition, Labor, or coalition. I thought the third option was going to be just stab me in the eye because that was my reaction on watching the debate. And then the only problem was that if you tried to click Labor, it wouldn't respond.

It was actually, somebody, a coder actually decoded the website and worked out that it had actually been written in, that it would have a null response if you, if you voted Labor. So you could only click on... Trump was right. Trump was right. There was election fraud. At last we found genuine election fraud. Yes, that's right. But somehow, and this is the thing where I go, is something going on dodgy with Labor, which is that they still somehow ended up with 50% of the vote. Wow That is fraud

Is that how news poll Got bigger for them I was surprised What is it like News poll is now Something like 5446 or something Yeah so it's an eight point margin

On news poll Surely they've hacked that as well Yeah Yeah Because if news polls If news polls right They'll barely be a liberal party After the election

And then finally This is the last thing In the weekend wrap Is that A Liberal Democrat Running in the seat of Brisbane His name's Anthony Bull, and he deeply regrets his white supremacist Facebook posts from a few years ago. He wrote that victory over the enemy, which was Indigenous Australians, should be celebrated.

And he also told a fellow Facebook friend that, to look up the terms, 14 words and the 88 precept, which is a code for, we must secure the existence. of our people and a future for white children. The 88 precepts is, of course, a code word for Heil Hitler. Charles, I'm really sick of this gotcha journalism. Point is, no, and also, in fairness to Anthony Bull, he has said, you know, these were statements that I made in my early 20s. They were immature, and they were wrong.

And guess when he made them? Oh, no. He made them in 2017. Five years ago. So if he was in his early 20s now, he's now in his mid-20s. Now, Charles, I've got to say, I can't agree with you on this. I'm tired of this gotcha journalism. Yeah.

Where just because someone says a whole bunch of pro-Hitler things on Facebook, that's just somehow brought up as though he's got to take responsibility for it. Why can't we have free speech and express our admiration of Hitler without anyone asking us about it when we run for office? Oh, it's just cancel culture gone mad. Isn't it? Election News You Can't Trust

The Chaser Report Now Charles, can I confess something to you? When I do those mini-wraps of amusing things that have happened on the campaign trail, I usually steal them from Alice Workman's Twitter. Oh, right. Yeah, I don't really do my own research. Because you're incredibly lazy, usually.

And you turn up with all these interesting clips. Yeah, look, obscure little press conferences that no one's noticed, it's because Alice knows everything that's going on in Australian politics. She covers federal politics for the Australian. So I had to do even less research. Why don't just get her on to tell us the best things that have been happening on the trail?

Hi, Alice. Thank you, thank you. I call it the burden of knowledge, having to, like I'm a researcher for the weekly, having to watch hours and hours of press conferences and press club speeches and door stops and walking through shopping centres. Yes, yes.

I don't even four weeks, Scotch, it feels like two years. Do you have to watch the debate for work then, Alice? Because I sat through, I don't know, about a quarter of it, and the number of times when the two men were literally just shouting over each other while no moderator could get a word in edgeways was quite extraordinary. It was actually quite like question time. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I personally, one, think they should bring back the worm.

I just want to put that out there very quickly at the front. I think quiet Australians agree with me. If we did a news poll on the worm, the worm would win. It was a very unusual format because they used to set up like question time where they heckle each other but they're off microphone so it doesn't distract from proceedings or from people watching as much and they have a very stern moderator in the speaker whereas this format was unusual because not only were they only given 60 seconds from the questions they were asked from the panel which is just enough for a stump speech

you're not getting much further than the surface from 60 seconds. Then for some reason, they had an ad break, which kudos to Labor, where I live, a Labor ad ran. And then we came back and they were allowed to ask questions of each other. And then it just descended into them shouting over the top of each other. And then they started ignoring the moderator. And I just found it extremely unwatchable. And that's as someone that watches a lot of politics. And so therefore has a very, you know, a very high threshold of what I'll put up.

with. I don't understand why a normal person would be at 10 o'clock on Sunday, let alone Mother's Day. And I left my hotly contested family game of trivial pursuit to watch this debate. I don't think they would be impressed by it. And I don't know whether it would sway anyone's votes. What was going through their brains thinking that this would look appealing? Like, do you think that they both just got swept up in the moment and thought they were back in Parliament House or something. What I can't understand is why, you know, one of them didn't just pull back and go, to look better.

These other guys being a cock, I'm just a normal person here, but for me. Yeah, I think it's definitely possible they got swept up in the debate. And I think, you know, when you're talking about illuminating moments of any election campaign, election campaigns are incredibly media managed, more so than they ever used to. be. You know, politicians, they control who you get access to, what questions they will or won't answer, very limited interactions with the public. This debate format was very controlled until it wasn't. And then that's when things just went completely in the other direction off the hook. And the Labor Party for a very long time, for at least the last year and a half,

maybe even two years, have really focused a lot of their messaging on Scott Morrison being a bully, people accusing him of being a liar, people not liking him, him being incredibly not answering questions and being dissuasive, and they've always tried to push this negative image of him. So what surprised me more was that Anthony Albanese engaged him so much. much and didn't take that step back in order to provide the point of difference. Having two men shouted each other doesn't make either of them look very appealing or like someone you'd want to run a country.

And just staying on the debate for one more question, which is, is it true that somebody asked Scott Morrison about being a psychopath? Or was that just a meme that went around? because I saw this clip of Scott Morrison smirking and the question that I just could not believe was actually true. It was about him being accused of being a psychopath. He was asked about the text messages. So obviously there's been a lot of text messages sent by some helpful people such as Gladys Periglian and his very good friend Barnaby Joyce accusing him of all sorts of things.

and not to mention the newly re-elected French president, Emmanuel Macron, saying he didn't think he knew that Scott lied to him about the submarine deal. He was asked point blank about those texts and those issues, and it was put point blank to him that people don't really like you. And then it was also raised about the, I mean, people flippantly call it the issue with women. I also call it the problem with men, which. is more to do with the Britney Higgins rape allegations that came up in the last year in Parliament and his tendency to, shall I say, outsource empathy to his wife. Those things were flagged with him and I think that he really stumbled in answering them. It has felt that we normally in the chaser, you know, hang stunts or jokes, whatever,

it is off those moments where things go out of control, the things everyone's talking about the fun moments, the ups and downs of the campaign trial. And it feels like there have been fewer than usual. It feels as though they've somehow gotten a lot of the mistakes out of the piece, which is why everyone's been jumping on, fairly minor gaffs, slips of memory by Albo, for instance. What are some of the things that you've actually enjoyed? And I know they've been few and far between. But were there any moments of delight for you when something ridiculous happened during the past few weeks? Because I feel like we've had a smaller diet of these than usual. Absolutely. And it's unscripted moments. They're the moments that I look out for and tend to enjoy more than anything. And that does include, you know, when Anthony Albanese stuck his tongue out when he didn't know what the unemployment rate was. Whenever you see them uncomfortable or go off book, I think is what I look for because everything is so scripted and polished and tried and controlled. Everyone's trying to control every message, every narrative, every announcement, every front page, every soundbite.

that when, you know, Scott Morrison walks into a pub, that's a, okay, this is a good one. When Scott Morrison went to Newcastle before the election had actually been called, I don't know if you remember, but he had an interesting encounter with a pensioner called Ray. Now, what I enjoyed about that whole exchange was, A, the Prime Minister's Office didn't tell the pub that they were going. So they didn't send anyone to advance or to organise. To clear out the shouty pensioners. Well, I mean, what you would normally do if you're going somewhere like that, you'd at least have one table of people or one person that you could put in front

of the camera with you that would give you a bit of praise or would help you bring up a topic such as child care or age care or something that you wanted to talk about. They plant ordinary people, you're saying. That's extraordinary. Oh, did you don't know this? Okay, so there are people within each campaign who are called advances who tend to be underpaid, overworked, junior staffers who are sent. ahead of the campaign, a day or two ahead, to go to the places in public or factories, for

example, where the politician will appear the next day. You do a walk around and look for any signs. There was a great sign at a factory that Scott Morrison went to that said, if you mess up, Fess up, that they forgot to cover up, which I thought was quite funny. And, you know, for example, if you go to a factory in the seat of Gilmore, which is a marginal seat that former New South Wales Transport Minister Andrew Constance is trying to win back from Labor Party for the Liberals, maybe you'd check if the factory were going to outsource

the third of their workforce before you announce a job package. Well, they'd probably outsourced the advances and they're not taking a very good job. So that's what happened during the first campaign way. But when they went to this pub in Newcastle, no one was sent ahead. So normally what you would do if you were going to a cafe, you would have a table full of sympathetic people there,

not necessarily Labor members or Labor, like affiliated people, but people that you knew were sympathetic from the local community, someone maybe who was a teacher or ran a childcare centre or a small business owner especially love to get on camera and talk about their issues. You find someone who would, you could sort of guarantee wouldn't attack your person, your politician, and you'd have them organised ready to go.

You wouldn't tell them what to say. you'd just say, hi, you know, Scott Morrison or Anthony Albanese, he's going to come over, we'll buy you a coffee, we'll buy you lunch, it'll be fine, right? So when they went to this Newcastle pub, they, A, didn't advance. So they didn't go there and tell the pub they were coming, and they didn't set up a safety line of people for the Prime Minister to talk to. He was confronted by a quite justifiably angry pensioner, who had a lot of problems with Scott Morrison.

the Prime Minister handled it well to a certain extent but you'll never come off looking good in a situation like that where someone uses your lines like have a go to get a go back at you which is what the pensioner did and then obviously they tried to kind of shuffle him away and push him to the side and get around and then I mean the other strange the other two strange things about that Newcastle visit was we sent our reporter to the pub the next day and the manager told our reporter that Scott Morrison went behind the bar

and poured a bunch of beers that he or his team did not pay for. Oh, no. I was surprised that's not a big campaign issue. Cost of living. Yeah, exactly. And then the locals were not impressed by his schooner pouring skills. He can't hold a beer tap. Well, I mean, literally can't pass the pub test, right?

So you work for news. I mean, news poll last time was miscellaneous. leading. It's usually very accurate. How is everyone feeling? Like, can we trust it? I guess you have to say, can you say that we should trust it or is just, are you going to hedge your bet? What do you reckon? I mean, like, all I'll say is news poll at the moment is indicating that the Labor Party will win, but there's two weeks to go. So there's still a possibility of a hung parliament or another miracle from the Messiah from a Shire. Oh, God help us. Well, Alice, I don't know how you survive doing the job that you do in a campaign like this, but thank you for keeping us up to

Speed, you can read Alice Workman's writing in the Australian. Rigging elections since before it was cool, the Chaser Report. So over the weekend, one of our interns, Loughlin, caught up with Clive Palmer. I did. I did indeed. I've actually been following the UAP for quite some time now. I've been undercover behind their ranks for the last month. But I've actually been following the UAP back when they were the Palmer United Party. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I notice you've got lots of yellow teeth. shirts lying around the others. I do indeed. I've certainly been utilising as much of the free merchandise that they give out as I can. Is that why they love freedom? Freedom to take whatever shirts you want, absolutely. But you guys remember how sort of towards the end of last year, Clive Palmer started sending those texts to everyone? Oh yes. Oh yes. That was so annoying. So annoying, right? So clearly annoying. Everyone hated it. So I thought, come on, I can't be the only person who was annoyed by this. I want to see if Clive Palmer would be as annoyed by these methods as we were. So I dressed myself up as a giant phone and I went

straight to a meet and greet that Mr Palmer was having in Waringa on Saturday. This is how it went. Five. Five. Five. Five. I've got a message. We started a case of that, right? And what happened to be a nasty? Why have I got a message from Facebook? With interest rates, what's interest rates goes to Six percent, 80 percent of the street. You know, I've got a message from five. Hey, Klein. I got a message.

You certainly were annoying. Look, I am a natural, but you heard that fellow at the end. It seemed like he was particularly annoyed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was sort of violently annoyed. Violently annoyed. And it was particularly weird to hear someone telling me to shut up while they were wearing a shirt that said freedom, freedom, freedom on the back.

So does the UAP have their own sort of thugs protecting their leader? Evidently, it's a whole posse of people. So instead of the brown shirts, they've got the yellow shirts. They do, they do have the yellow shirts. And I had about, so I'd get to the event in this phone costume, and I start saying my lines, about 10 seconds after, because Clive looks at me and he sort of palms me off. And then I've got about four, five people all just pushing at me,

shoving me out of the way and calling me every homophobic slur that there is under the sun, naturally. But yeah, who'd have thought that Clive couldn't handle the taste of his own horse medicine? To be fair, Loughlin, you were much less annoying than Craig Kelly's text messages, even in that clip. Well, no, I wasn't the only person who thought so, so it made a bit of news. I particularly liked Channel 7's coverage of the issue who told the other side of the story. It's hard to tell what's worse. comedian trying to steal the spotlight.

We've got a message, fly. Live, it's just a message. Or an overzealous supporter. I shut up. But Clive Palmer scored both. They get rid of these people. Will someone care for the poor billionaires? They're just trying to earn an honest wage and rig an election and all these pesky

comedians are stopping them from doing their job. I've got to ask, Lachlan, though, in this situation, what would Clive and Craig Kelly want you to do? You've annoyed them. What they would do is do it over and over and over again. Yes. Well, no, no, that's my plan. I emailed Clive.

I asked him if he wanted to come on the podcast. He said in his own words, in an interview right here, well, you just contact me. I'm available. I can answer questions. I'm happy to help you, right? So let's see if Clive makes true in his own words and comes and tells us if he found us as annoying as we find him.

Well, if he does come on the podcast, then you have to get dressed back up in that mobile phone thing and just speak over him. Look, I'm happy to say that despite the violence that was directed towards me, I am safe, but I admit I was pretty scared back there. I've never been closer to catching COVID again. You were very rude interrupting his rally, but compared to the debate, you were downright polite. Our gear is from road microphones. We are part of the ACASTCRED network. And if you know where Clive Palmer is, drop us an email, podcast at chaser.com.com.

Because Loughlin really needs to visit him at least six or seven more times during the campaign.