The Chaser Report - What Is The Point Of Anthony Albanese?

Episode Date: September 29, 2024

Dom Knight and Charles Firth dive back into the world of Australian politics, given that an election will happen here soon. And what better topic to finely dissect than the inner workings of Australia's most overwhelmingly underwhelming PM? 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. We have to start by clarifying something that I think listeners on Friday may have felt that Charles and I were getting on board the Sydney Swans bandwagon. No. Head of the Grand Final?

No. That was not true. That's not true at all. I've never heard of the Swans. I certainly didn't go to their last two games. wearing swans merchandise. I've always been a Brisbane Lions fan. Well, they're an embarrassment, aren't they?

The Swans. Yeah. I mean, not that I've heard of them, but if I had. Yeah, I've watched some of the game yesterday. It was essentially over. I didn't get to it till, I think, halfway through the first quarter because of family, little kids and all. At which point it was over, and I didn't really watch much of the rest of it.

So, yeah, look, I think the Brisbane Lions, I've always had a deep spiritual connection with Brisbane. Yes. I'm kind of a Queenslander in exile. Yes, we all are. You know what I mean? We all are. Yes, we all are.

Life is better north of that border. Yeah. So enough of that bandwagon. Today we're going to ask a question that I think is increasingly relevant as we get near some sort of election in the next year. There's going to be an election in the next year. I just want to know, Charles. And I know you have family connections with Labor. You know Alba personally.

I once interviewed him very briefly, but I don't know if he knows who I am. He certainly knows who you are. What's he thinking? What is the point of our boat? What does he want to do? That's the title of the episode. What is the point of our boat? Like, does he wake up in the morning and know what the point of himself is?

We're going to find out. And I think you'll be surprised by the result, though. All right. What happens after this? So, look, it's hard to lose an election after the first term of a new government. It hasn't happened in a very, very long time. I can't remember. Just watch him.

It's been a very, very long time. And Peter Dutton has certainly... I think Julia Gillard came close. She came very close, yeah, but she kept the record going. Once we've made the decision to change governments, we tend not to want to kick them out again after one term, although goodness knows, you're Labor in minority and then losing, certainly did badly last time.

And so, with all the advantages of incumbency, Albo can choose the timing of the election. He can bring a suite of policies. Yep. The economy seems to be improving somewhat, kind of a little bit. Certainly in the US. Interest rates are down in the US. Inflation's down a little bit, isn't it?

Isn't the economy spluttering to a halt? We're in a per capita recession and have been since the beginning of last year. Oh, if you want to look at it per capita. And as a result, it's actually the worst it's been in a generation, basically. Also, on top of that, the strategy to get us out of that recession is... Sorry, there's a strategy? Well, the strategy is to make it splutter more to a halt so that interest rates can be lowered. Well, isn't that the RBAs, ain't?

is to get inflation under control by basically killing the economy. Yeah, yeah, that's right. And the government going, oh, well, we don't have any other powers available to us, have gone, well, we'll just have to put up with that strategy. I mean, in the past week, it's... So you're right, the economy is improving in that it is progressing along... Oh, the plan to crash the economy. To help him in the same way that, you know, it is plummeting towards, you know,

a crash. We know. And if that's your plan to crash something, then... Yeah. To be part of a single car accident. So it's very clear, and Charles, it's been clear even to us. So we're not exactly... We don't know exactly about years at the ground of the nation here on the Taster Report.

We're more set trends and respond to them, I feel. Well, I feel like that's true. Yeah, that's true. But it's clear to everybody that cost of living, and in particular, housing, is just... It's the whole ballgame. Yes. Right? Cost of living, no one below the age of...

45 has any hope of ever owning a house and he's just feeling absolutely incredibly frustrated about this. Peter Dutton knows this. He has been relentlessly focusing on demonising migrants as the source of housing, talking about, I think he described international students as the new boat. The new boat people in the past week.

So he's focusing it on this. And he's threatening to do things like, you know, pick on coals and woollies and jet star and contests. And Photoshop. International students throwing their kids into the ocean. That sort of thing. Like all the sort of standard techniques So he knows that this is the message

You know the crazy thing About the Alvo strategy Is he's listened to Peter Dutton and gone Fuck yeah right okay International students Yeah they're immigrants right okay We've got to do something about them And the whole point is

Unbeknownst it would seem To both Alvo and Dutton International students And education as a sector Is the second biggest Export industry in the country It is literally That and my

digging stuff out of the ground that props up the Australian economy It is an absolutely massive part of our economy And so what Albo's strategy has been And maybe because he sort of looked at the RBA's strategy And gone, okay, they wouldn't have to crash the economy Why don't I specifically also Individually crash the tertiary education sector as well

So by stopping international students Like there's going to be massive cuts to international students I don't need to tell you, Dom this I'm involved in higher education Yeah, I've seen it But also just And as a result He's going to actually plunge the entire economy into recession

As a result of doing a little bit of You know like you look at the numbers and you go Well that's that's a lot to the education sector But it's also not a lot to fix out Like it's not going to fix any housing Well particularly because a lot of them tend to live in Student accommodation that's you know Escape

And all these very overpriced places They're keeping, you know, what international students are doing? What are they doing? They're keeping families of four from getting share accommodation in Chippendale. Yeah, sorry, near a university with a shared bathroom and a tiny little dorm. Yeah, yeah. So it's a huge market, but it's worth noting Charles that as big as the international student market is, and it is very big.

It's only 4% of the rental market overall, but they bring in 30 billion to the economy. It's the fourth largest industry of any sort. So I forget exports of any industry. It's the fourth largest one that we have. But it's also worth noting that it's not just the students and education. It's also cafes, restaurants, tourism, like anything where someone visiting Australia would spend money on it, right? Because they're not cooking at home. They don't have big enough houses.

Those industries will suffer as well. Like, we think the hospitality sector has been doing it hard before they cut in national student numbers dramatically. Get a sense of what's going to happen now. Because, I mean, you know, selling energy drinks that convenience stores are going to suffer. Anyone who sells anything to the 100,000 students who are going to be cut is also going to get out in the toilet as a result of this. Okay, so we need to come up with a ideally funny solution to this problem, right, Dom. I should say, about 53,000 fewer students in last year. So the question is, what is the point of elbow?

And I wonder whether, you know how under the coalition, you sort of would end up getting quite frustrated with the coalition? And I don't know about you, but especially under Scott Morrison, you sort of got angry about how shit he was all the time, right? I think that was certainly the mood of voters in the last federal election. Yeah, that's right. In 2022. Whereas I think what Albo is doing,

and I think there's a real upside in Albo, which is he makes you go, But, well, actually, maybe they weren't that bad after all. So you think he's a big gift to Scott Morrison? Well, no, I think he's sort of like going, well, clearly Labor is just incapable of doing anything. He's just so shit. Like, they're just definitely going to be voted out. But our specific role is to make everyone feel, well, you know, like, it's going to be shit, you know, with whatever we've got. And we were silly.

We were stupid for believing that you could have a well-governed country where, we're a Labor government actually does something for the people it represents. You know what I mean? That's strange too, is that where we're at. Just disavow us of that whole notion. You know, because what we had is we had this sense of false hope that something could be better.

I think, I think, Charles, we've been doing this podcast a while. I mean, I don't want to, you know, buy our own trumpments, but we were pretty quickly onto the notion that labor would underwhelmed. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I think the next day, we were saying, you know, we didn't quite know in exactly the ways that labor would underwhelmell. But we back them.

We backed them. I think they've over-delivered on underwhelming. They've over-underwhelmed. That's amazing. The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. In terms of what actually matters in my life, there are some things, childcare has gotten significantly cheaper under the Albanese government.

The cost of prescription drugs has gone considerably down. I think went from $44 to $30. And then some of the medications that I take, you can now get double. you get two months worth for that rather than one month. So it's actually massive reduction in that. So there are some things where they've actually made a tangible difference. Yes.

But they did that stuff quite early on. Yes. And in the past little while, nothing was very much has changed. It wasn't really enough to solve cost of living. No. And it just seems as though... But also, it's been three years. And clearly, like on day one, you could have said the main thing is just housing.

It's just housing, housing, housing. It has been for years. Yeah. John Howard, even John Howard had. all these ideas about first home onus grants and things. And then, you know, literally six months before the election,

suddenly Labor goes, oh, wait a minute, the Greens are blocking the idea that we had to fix housing. You're going, fucking have done it two years ago, you fuck with. Like, have that Barney two years ago.

But also, it's a tough sell to the electorate when the Greens clearly want to go a lot further than Labor towards solving the problems. I'm not saying for a moment, I'm not endorsing any particular side, I'm happy to hate them all equally. Yes.

But it's very clear from the two policies that Labor's is vastly more conservative than the Greens. It's embarrassing. And they haven't, in any point, Mr. I grew up in a council house, hasn't any way come out and said why he thinks it's sensible to be less ambitious. Like, unless his view is to be a handbrake in all areas of policy, which perhaps that is. Perhaps he sat down with the RBA governor and gone, I want to be the RBA of everything. Maybe it's Albo the revolutionary, the Labour left, you know, socialist left. It's a sleeper cell that looks very much to sleep. He's making capitalism worse so that the revolution is quick.

So Charles, you're saying that Albo is unleashing the dictatorship of the proletarian by taking capitalism to its ultimate extreme conclusion. Yes, and the whole point is, like what better way to do that than to put in a supposedly progressive Social Democratic Party then completely over underwhelmed. Supposedly progressive is doing a lot of work for you in that sentence. But yeah. To disenchant the populace to the point where they realize that the only method is revolution.

Because that is, he's basically, he's setting up the preconditions. He's creating the Tinder for revolution. This is just classic socialist elbow. He hasn't changed at all. He hasn't changed his stripe. He's actually a communist. Like he's always been gone. So when he put on the fancy suits and looked a bit schmick and all that sort of stuff,

that's just a, that was all just underneath his hot elbow, the unionist. That was all part of the strategy. Oh my goodness. And the way that he doesn't really explain himself very well when he's talking because he doesn't believe in it. He doesn't really tell a story or, and he just gets angry at radio presenters. Because his heart's going, smash the state. Yes. And it's like, well, I am the state.

And his insights is like, give it a few more years. They'll rise up. No, but it's all part of a plan. Like, there's no, there's no underneath. It's just like, he could immediately change his tune and suddenly start being brilliant. I must say, Charles. But he knows that actually this is the way to get revolution.

I'm so impressed that you found out a way to look at Anthony Albanese's time as Prime Minister and go, clearly there's a plan. Clearly there's an overarching vision that we're working towards. Because, I don't know, I mean, I'm not really a revolutionary type. I'm not really this sort of person who goes and marches and smashes things and breaks windows. But anyone who's looking at Australia as it is now and going, just give us some fucking housing.

However you do it, we don't care how you do it. Just actually give us a house we can live in that is vaguely near where we want to be. That's not an unreasonable request. And yet no one at all seems to have any plan. Even the Greens don't have actually a proper plan to actually fix the problem in any meaningful way. by the standards of the countries that are good at this stuff. Right. Like, no one's actually providing a solution at any point, are they,

in the whole policy spectrum. Well, I think scrapping capital gains tax and negative gearing is half the solution, isn't it? And then the other part of the solution is for total revolution. And I'm pretty sure if you scratch the service, Max Chandler-Matha will be... Maybe Max Chandler-Matha is actually working in concert with our... elbow you think yes to stoke revolution they're part of it's actually a part of a little collective and then actually Peter Dutton is also probably part of that yeah right because actually he's he's the foil he's the sort of like oh my

god well we we can't possibly swing to the right because otherwise we'll get a adult in charge oh so you think he's the he's the patsy sort of false flag yeah he's the false flag sort of like oh shit the only thing we can do is communist revolution I mean I must say I think as much as Peter Dutton is talking a lot about cost of living and stuff the fact that he's also coupled that

with a plan for nuclear power just at the very point in history where renewables really seem to be actually working and getting to be cost effective and to the point where even our gore's kind of chilled out because it's quite clear that renewables are going to get there I think we've worked out what the point of elbow is

which is to hasten revolution hasten revolution and a via a coalition with the green Yeah. And I think the most likely scenario is, I know everyone's saying it's going to be a minority Labor government, but I think it's more likely to be just a Dutton government, which will definitely hasten revolution. So you think either way. So even if Dutton wins, that takes us to the next stage.

Yeah, it takes us to the next stage where all hope is lost in social democratic parliamentary democracy. Because you go, well, if we vote Labor back in, they'll be as shit as they were under elbow. So what we're going to have to do is just get rid of voting and instead implement a dictatorship of the proletariat. And when has a dictatorship of the proletariat and a socialist system ever gone wrong other than in 100% of historical examples. Great.

But maybe this time. Maybe this time. Well, they didn't have Aussie mateship and did they? And also, can I say, they probably had houses to live in. So they weren't. That's the beauty of the dictatorship of the politariat. You want a beautiful waterside apartment with a rich person in, you just take it. Isn't that what you do?

Yeah, I love it. So, Charles, listeners may have wondered why we haven't talked much about Australian politics recently. This is why. This is why. We're part of the Iconicalist network. Catch you tomorrow.