The Chaser Report - Who Protests the Protesters?

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Furious at the sound of helicopters ruining the podcast, Charles vents about the police presence at the protests across the city. Meanwhile, Dom recovers from a near-death run-in with sushi. Plus, is the solution to all problems more police?---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. Charles, I'm so impressed that we're recording today. I'm just recovered from terrible food poisoning. I think the deep state got me. Yes. Charles, that's my working hypothesis.

They want to shut you down. They want to silence this podcast. It's barely returned. We speak truth to power, and that's why they want to shut you down. And also I think I had some sushi that was not quite right yesterday. One of the two things, but I like to think it's a conspiracy. So I once wrote a stupid sketch, which was you wouldn't, you know those piracy sketches. Oh, yes.

You wouldn't steal a car. So why would you steal a VHS video? Yeah. But it was like you wouldn't eat half-priced sushi from the supermarket. Like, you wouldn't eat discounted sushi from the sushi bar. But you would. You did. Is that what you happened?

I paid for some, you wouldn't waste money on very expensive sushi, which I did. Oh, you did. I don't know if it was that. I can't blame the sushi, but it's probably the leading candidate given that the rest of my family did not get sick. Right. So the rest of my family is vegetarian. Anyway, let's just take a little break in a sec. But before we do, we should just focus what we're talking about this time.

You want to talk about the helicopters. I want to talk about it. The reason why we're having. I don't know whether you can hear the soundscape, you probably can't, but we're actually outside. Yeah, birds are singing. It's actually lovely. Birds are doing something.

Maybe birds are protesting. And because we're recording this on Monday afternoon, and the helicopters around Sydney have been going crazy in the last couple of hours. And I originally thought it was because apparently there had been reports of an alleged war criminal who goes around and signs bombs and things like that who was wandering around the city. But actually it turns out that the helicopters were there to monitor the people who are protesting against that person. So it was a very strange thing, but they seem to have gone now. So we probably don't even have to.

All right. Let's have some ads and we'll get into this. So helicopters, there have been lots of helicopters around over the summer, if it's fair to say. That's become a... Because they're cracking down on protesting. You're not allowed to protest anymore. Well, we talked last year about when the Harbour Bridge protests were on, there were all the helicopters sort of making announcements.

Oh, yeah. No, they're loving their new toys. Like, the police have a whole lot of new toys, including long arms. What? Long arms. The police are now loud. They took them around on New Year's Eve. And you can just see the joy in their face.

So you put a pin in this. Have you heard of the discombobulator? Oh, what's the discombobulet? It's another new toy. Oh, wow. Gosh, we're a bit scattered. brain in 2026 Steelers? Anyway, what are the long arms?

So the long arms? No, well, the long arms was apparently the police have for years wanted to take around rifles. Sorry, sorry, long arms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I did see that. And because they go, oh, well, to make things more peaceful in Sydney, we need more guns, right? And they've been pushing for years for this. Like, apparently, like literally a decade or more, the police have wanted this. They keep on requesting it.

The police minister and the cabinet keep on saying, um, No, no, you don't really need that. There's no real evidence-based that and everything like that. But in the wake of all the terrible tragedies that happened last year, the police realised that they had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get all the toys that they wanted. And one of them was the government agreed to give them long-arms. So New Year's Eve, which had nothing to do with anything,

the police were wandering around with long-arms. Every time you say that word, I think if it's one... And this is how mush my brain is. I think it's one word. I'm imagining some sort of robotic extended arm No, but like rifles, like rifles to shoot you in the face with. And snipers. And yeah, I mean, this is the thing.

I always find it a bit weird anyway when I'm out with armed police. We just with regular pistols. Yes. And I'm just always, I can't stop looking at the pistols because I just find it so confronting to be anywhere near someone who's got a weapon. And I mean, the cops now carry about 500 other things. I don't know how they even walk around anymore, the police.

Well, I saw a police car. So the police today, I was in the city, they were just loving the fact that they'd been brought in to deal with all the scum who were trying to protest for peace. And they were all, like every single police car I saw did an illegal Ui or, you know, or, you know, had parked in an illegal place or whatever. Like they just loved the fact that they could break any road rules.

Can you imagine? In a law and order crackdown, they could break as many laws as they liked. The parking range. would have been enjoying that. I'm assuming they don't get special treatment. They're still getting tickets, right? So then the thing is, no, but this is what I'm saying.

Like in Haymarket, which is like Chinatown, this poor couple who were clearly off to get some noodles or something like that, they'd parked their car. And I think the police officer had mistaken them for terrorists or possibly tourists or whatever. But, and so flashing lights had come up behind them. Oh, really? And was trying to explain that they'd parked illegally.

But actually, if you look at it, Look, you know how in the city, you know, it's like two hours on Monday to Thursday between 2 a.m and 3 a.m. Sydney, Tentorese, if you don't know Sydney, if you don't know, the Toronto to cipher what the parking rules are, there's usually about 10 different contradictory instructions at any one point in time. Yes. And so it was this literally this middle-aged Asian couple who got out of there, it must have been like a, I don't know, Kea Nitro or something. Like this little small car. and the police officer jumped out and gone, you know, you're parking.

But she'd taken the taser out of her... Really? Out of her pocket, right, as she approached them. It was so funny. Because they were going, oh, right, no, I think the sign does actually say it's the right thing. And I was just watching this, because I'd already started realizing how amazingly jeed up and full of adrenaline all the police were. Like, there's so many police.

And I wasn't even anywhere near where the protesters were going to be. But there was like, you know, like every single corner had at least one police car parked on it. And then you could see the police officer sort of sheepishly just pocketing the taser. It is pretty full on. I mean, I went early in January. I went to a Sydney festival event. It's quite a joyous one at the town hall, right? And I was up there.

It was a roller derby. So it was all these people The Roller Derby show Right I saw that That was brilliant They turned the town hall Into a roller derby ring

He got one star in the Herald The Herald did not like it Anyway so all these people came along And obviously LGBTIA Plus very much leaning into the Roller Derby 5 So all these people wearing weird Wonderful costumes

Is Roller Derby a LGBTIQI plus thing? Yeah Absolutely I don't know that Did you not see the show? Well I know there were lesbians But I didn't realize that was a sort of

Oh, I thought it was just feminism. I think it's for people who don't. It was a feminist test. It's just as long as you don't identify as male. I think there's a lot of diversity. It wasn't hugely positive about the male condition or men in general. The male characters were, they served defunctions. Anyway, this is Mama Loves Derby's name of the show, by the way.

I think it's coming to Adelaide soon. Anyway, the point being, I don't know what it was like when you were there, but there was this protest against the protest laws, on at the time. And I have never seen so many police in my whole life as we're outside the town hall. There must have been at least 50. And they had a line of police in between the town halls in the middle of the city and the light rail. I don't know what they thought was going to happen. But were they at risk of being caught under their own laws? Because they were assembling as a group. It was a very large assembly. To protest in favour of the protest laws.

And it, I see what you're going. See what you mean? But it dwarfed, like, you really wouldn't have tried it on. I just thought the overtime bill for the past few months. Oh, they're loving it. It's going to be quiet something. Because, I mean, they really were. They're in a line.

I don't know, what they're imagining, like, a phalanx of protesters were going to try and rush the light rail or something? Oh, and look, look, it's predominantly that the sort of trotty left who are on about that, you know, like who are organising the protests against the protest. Do they not like trans? Charles, you know the far left. You know what I mean. Were they going to lie down in front of the tram?

These are sort of just... They're just people who turn up to every protest. Like, they're not going to do anything surprised. The whole point is they don't ever do anything surprising. That's the whole disappointment. I can just imagine back in the day of the chaser having some sort of protest in favour of protest. Oh, that would be good. We would have protested against the protest.

Yeah, we would have... The chaser would have had a protest against the protest laws. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, against protests. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, in favour of the protest. Oh, yes, saying, you know, no more placards. Blackards say no more placards.

Yes, we should totally do that. And the great thing about that is that every single part of spending the process would have hated us. You should not have a placard. You should not be allowed to have a placard that says the word genocide. No more chance. No more chance. Exactly. But no, and it's really confronting.

And when you say the long arms, I mean, this is the thing. What do we want? Less call and response. When do we want it? Right now. All right, we've unleashed the beast here, clearly. The Chaser Report, news you can't trust. But it is confronting seeing people with, you know, going to overseas airports

where people have semi-automatic weapons and stuff and the cops are all there. I don't feel safer when there are more guns around. I'm sure some people do, but I certainly don't. You just worry about what can go wrong. Well, I think the cops feel safer. I think this is the whole thing that people don't, like, Or people underestimate just how undertrained cops are. Like, I don't actually blame cops for being violent and aggressive and mostly corrupt.

I just think it's one of those things where they're in the unfortunate situation where they've probably been bullied in school. Bullies in school. They've probably been bullies their whole life. They probably can't really get any other job. They've joined this thing. They get undertrained. And then they get unleashed with all these arms. of course they want strength in numbers.

That's what anyone who does who's scared. Like, I mean, you see the way police are trained to respond to even just sort of interactions on the street with drunk people and stuff of that, or mentally ill people, and they're so aggressive and they're taught, oh, the way you've just got to exert your power and everything like that. But the way it comes across is that they're just terribly scared human beings. And why are bullies scared? because they're, why bullies, bullies, because they're scared underneath. So of course they want more numbers

because they're strength in numbers. If you have a group of bullies, you can actually, you know, it's less scary. Well, if the police had chosen to protest on that day, nobody would have stopped them. They certainly had the balance of numbers out there. But look, I don't know much about the training of police here, but you're certainly seeing in ice, in the US.

I mean, this is the whole, you told me, extreme example of basically anyone, any goober who wants to just put on a mask. Didn't you tell me the fact that ICE recruits are now trained for 47 days? Do you know why they're trained for 47 days? No, I'm not across the same. I think it was me. You're thinking of another barbecue conversation in summer.

This is the best fact ever, right? So ice recruits, you know, the people who shoot people in the face in Minneapolis, those sorts of people, they now get trained for 47 days. The reason why they're trained for 47 days is because Donald J. Trump is the 47th president. Are you serious? Right? So they originally were being trained for like six weeks or something. I'm honestly very surprised that there's much training at all that's going into events in place in Minneapolis.

And that is, I mean, you are seeing overreacting based on a lack of experience and based on people being given. And this is the thing in the US is there are so many police forces with so many different powers. It's quite bizarre. Well, even the postmasters are their own law enforcement agency. Is there's postal police? Well, yeah, like the Postmaster General is its own force, right? So they actually are officers in the same way that cops are in the US. I mean, that was one of the weird things about January the 6th, noting, of course,

that all people involved in that have been pardoned. So I presume no crimes were committed. But had they been committed, Charles, the Capitol Police is, again, its own police force. that they've recruited. You'd imagine if you're recruiting for the Capitol Police, you're probably not getting the absolute cream with the crop, right? They're probably up there with the postmark because they would never do any. They're just security guards.

And they're kind of like tour guides. Yeah. And the one time they were really needed. And so, yeah, at least in Australia we don't have every little organisation having it. So like, can you imagine the sort of state library police or the, oh, we should. That's, instead of resisting this increase in police, we should just get specific police for specific things.

So we could get, like, police in schools who are also well-educated and can teach students, things like advanced maths. Relief teachers. Yeah. But call them police relief teachers. You know what I mean? Like, nurse, doctors. Oh, you think having... We just, we just call them police.

A surge in police. Because no one's going to oppose a... No one's going to oppose police. That's interesting. And the government could announce, like, now, 100% of our employees are police officers. You could actually use... You could get some more police. And then, you know, if you go to the doctor and you have a cold or something,

or food poisoning. I arrest the person who sold you sushi today. Yes, very helpful, very helpful. All right. So, I mean, the helicopters, is this the end of the helicopters? I mean, the helicopter fuel bill must be off the charts too. This is happening all the time. Yeah, imagine if, why don't we get police for fires?

Because you know how the Westpac helicopter got defunded a few years ago? because it's very expensive to run and Westbrook didn't want to pay for it anymore. Is that true? Really? Yeah. And, but what we should do is we should instead fund police helicopters to monitor fires.

Right. Call them police helicopters. But actually they'd just be for bushfires. Is that what I was saying? I think we've solved the world's problems, or at least Australia's problems here. Well, I mean, particularly work in America. Yeah.

Yeah, we'd totally work in America. Yeah. I mean, looking at that situation, some people, not as well informed as this podcast, might say that the problem was too many police. No. I mean, particularly in America, if you imagine how, if everyone's a cop, there will be no crime. That's a very good point. All right.

That's a world's problem. Do we need satirical police? Oh, definitely. Definitely. To parody. I have a feeling we might be in breach of the line across the thin blue line. I think we've crossed the thin blue line a few times. Oh, we better stop this potentially illegal podcast here then.

All right, we're part of the Icon Class Network, and we'll see you in uniform, presumably. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to get a badge right now.