Thank you, welcome to Good News Week and the big news, budget 98.
According to Peter Costello, the first step on the road to an exciting destination of
lower debt and taxes.
Wow, that does sound exciting.
That must be the special magical place where our dollar is still actually worth something.
The happy peaceful place where every little breeze seems to whisper GST and nasty unemployed
people locked in the attic.
And what about that surplus 2.7 billion dollars?
That's good isn't it?
That would be the 2.7 billion Pete took away from education, aged care, welfare and the
environment last year.
I was wondering what happened to that.
Sure the current account deficit is expected to blow out to 31 billion dollars.
But never fear, the government has a plan.
Put the MUA back on the docks and stop all those pesky imports coming in quick smart.
The government has also decided to spend much more on old people.
Health cuts over the last couple of years have culled their numbers to a more affordable
group.
To protect against the millennium bug, the government has promised small business extra
funds deferred to January 2000.
They also plan to raise an extra 5 billion a year and make the country debt free just
by kicking New Zealanders off the doll.
It's that easy.
The treasurer also claimed that thanks to his way with sums Australia is now well defended
against any fallout from the Asian crisis.
Oh yeah?
Sheep fares to barley at the only consequence from South East Asia's problems.
Let's just say for the sake of wild speculation there's another uprising in say Indonesia.
And they end up with a government thirsting for revenge against say Australia for the
lousy economic advice they got from say Paul Keating.
What are you going to do?
Stand on the beach shouting you don't frighten us our current account deficit is five and
a quarter percent of GDP.
Five and a quarter percent.
India attracted worldwide condemnation this week for detonating five nuclear devices.
Nobody minds them using nuclear bombs against Pakistan.
They just terrified the weapons who fall into the hands of Indian cricket umpires.
In good news for Australia, Rolf Harris has survived a head on car accident in Britain.
That isn't funny people.
Just for a moment he really was Jake the pig with an extra leg in his lap from the other
car.
Oh we're not laughing now are we?
The Australian Broadcasting Authority is investigating a complaint that the nine network has been
running too many ads. A complaint made by the seven network.
This from the station which screens an extra 30 minutes of commercials by sticking world's
funniest in front of it.
But how compelling must seven's nightly line up be?
Their staff not only prefers to watch nine they don't even switch back during the ads.
Maybe they're watching nine because they've already seen everything on seven when it was
on the ABC.
Thank you.
And we have liftoff.
Mikey Margo.
Robert what's the story here?
Okay that's the funnest place in the world.
That's the funnest man in the world and his date.
It'd be much better to have the demonstrations inside the parliament.
Much better.
I'd pay to see that.
Yeah that's right.
This is about Sinkers deciding that he wants the parliament to sort of be more friendly.
So what he's done is he's brought down all these chairs into the parliament.
So if you know Sinkers and he likes you, you can come down and be in the parliament.
So on budget night John Howard's family and wife are there and you know.
Hang on is this Sinkers way of meeting women?
Hey I can get you a seat in parliament.
Parliament Sinkers?
Whoa!
Take me now big fella!
He ordered some big flags.
He got them for budget night.
He said they're not big enough.
So he got them specially made, couriered up, missed the boats, they debuted on Wednesday.
But you've now got in each corner of the parliament four of the hugest Australian flags I've
ever seen fluttering down the strangers chairs.
We all.
It's a sprout.
You're doing it up.
I tell you what a couple of cushions, a bit of a throw rug over the back there.
It's party time!
The really good thing about those big flags is if Kim Beasley gets tired he's got a blankie.
Five points!
Changes being filed to the House of Representatives by Speaker Ian Sinclair mean that 30 seats
on the floor of the House will be available to the public.
Question time will now be dominated by the question, who the hell are you?
Of course you have to be invited.
But invited or not, why would you want to go?
Except on the off chance someone might accidentally slip you a travel voucher in the confusion.
And guests won't just sit there for hours and hours.
They'll be up all the time to get more choc tops and Beasley sized popcorn.
I think it's nothing but a ploy to save a government minister from looking isolated.
The more people there are in the House, the more likely it is that someone will have to
sit next to Peter Stinch of Death Reef.
Peter Corrigan?
Thanks James, I promise I'll laugh at your next bad game.
It's getting nasty fairly early on in the proceedings here.
Julie James, Joanna, some stuff for you.
Indonesia?
Yeah, I think it was one of those anti-crime rallies across the country.
I think it was one of them just got out of hand and the cops had to come in and just
subdue it.
Now come on fellas.
This is clearly the Perth story, but I actually think it's a little bit of PR envy.
Over there in Western Australia, don't get enough attention.
They look at the LA police, Rodney King, international coverage.
They look at New South Wales with little hidden cameras and look at the leg of his hand.
They think this is fantastic, what we need is a few action shots.
That's all young people in Perth being given jobs by the caring cop government.
Just because cops behave a little differently from most of us at a party, there's no need
to throw them in the cannon.
The amazing thing is we would never have known about it if they hadn't sent it into Australia's
funniest home video.
It shows you what influence we have in Asia.
I mean that happens a week ago and then this week the Indonesians are all obviously watching
Kelly going, gee that looks like a top idea.
You alright five points?
In Perth this week, a 17 year old's birthday party ended in a violent riot after the tactical
response group turned up.
Some officers have been accused of overly aggressive behaviour towards the teenagers
including kicking, strangle holds, Chinese burns, nipple cripples and applying a wedgie
with extreme prejudice.
It's normally accompanied by the silent whistle.
Here you go, whistle.
If only the kids had decided to have their party on a container wall, the cops would
never have got involved.
But police only send in the TRG because they have an interstate agreement.
They dumped the kids in Western Australia so trigger happy Victorian cops don't look
so bad.
And the vixx only started shooting to draw attention away from corrupt police in New
South Wales who took bribes to distract people from black deaths in custody in Western Australia.
Australian police aren't nasty, they're just a caring sharing circle of friends.
Anyway if you are going to go to a party in Perth, take note RSVP actually stands for
Riot Squad Violence Predicted.
The good news is the WA cops do admit it was a mistake on their part.
In the dark everyone looks black.
Yes and we've split the audience right down the middle with that one.
Before the show...
I'm so sorry.
The weird thing is that guy doesn't actually work here.
Before the show as we slipped into our steel capped dancing boots both teams received
three clues to a tale of the strange but true.
Robbins, Kingston and Gottliebson.
Name tags.
A needle.
That was a beautiful piece of work.
And a sick bag.
And Macrossan, O'Loughlin and Sweet got a second hand car ad.
A calendar.
And a wrench.
Blood stains.
To get round two into gear the usual suspects.
Three dodgy characters with something in common.
Find the link and complete the line up.
Margot your suspects are Greg Matthews, Tony Lockett and Graham Gooch.
Well they all worked on the budget.
They're all sort of at the end of their careers.
I know Lockett scores you goals.
I mean you know they've all been...
Ten and he limped every time he caught it.
He hit it hard and he still kicked it.
Well John Howe will be hoping for a comeback like that.
Hair?
I think it's got something to do with what I haven't got you know.
And what do you want though?
Well they've all got hair now and they've all shown what you can do if you haven't stitched
up it.
Oh they've all had transplants.
Well why does that bloke only get half of it?
What Gucci was going to do is apparently that side of the mustache's bald says growing this
one is going to comb it over the other side.
I wonder if it could be cork heating.
Remember when he didn't like it when you shot his bald spot?
Well Hannah's also, while you're there, the bloke that replaced him's got the same problem.
Oh yeah but he doesn't care about looks.
How would?
I suppose he did do his eyebrows.
He doesn't get wrong about that, he's very very careful about his looks.
I think Howard's been complaining about being filmed from behind while he's on the radio
talking.
Help them as much as you want.
Remember it's a game.
I think my answer is John Howard.
Thank you very much Julie.
That's great.
Hey, you get it?
Let's just see if Miss Kingston is right.
That is John Howard ladies and gentlemen.
That is Kit.
Is he Ace Freely there?
He is Ace Freely there.
He looks very sexy in that shot.
Yes it is our noble Prime Minister and it's a yeah yeah thing.
Advanced hair studios have offered John Howard a free head refurbishment.
Following reports the Prime Minister is becoming more and more sensitive about his bald spot.
The Advanced Hair offer was so polite.
Why don't they just declare his skull, you know, terra nullius and put the hair in without
asking.
Looking at Howard, Tim Fisher and Peter Reath, it's hard to believe that baldness is actually
caused by an excess of testosterone.
I'm pleased to know that's the trouble.
Thank you very much for that.
Sorry about that.
I was a bit sensitive for that, you know.
A little bit of kindness.
Oh sorry about that.
Dazzled by the light coming off your skulls there.
Apologise to both of you.
Thank you very much.
Nice set of hair you got there Mikey.
The Prime Minister says his bald patch was actually caused by the previous Labour government.
And there are no quick fixes.
But new coalition policies should lead to growth.
James, your line up looks like this.
The renowned pigeon fancier, Bill Laurie.
The other guy in Titanic, actor Billy Zane.
Short fat rich bastard, Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Bill Laurie is a pigeon trainer and Andrew Lloyd Webber trains musicals and Billy Zane
went down on the Titanic.
So bloody obvious.
Bill Laurie, his nickname was the Phantom, right?
Because he watched the movie that Billy Zane was in.
No, no, no.
No.
But his nickname is the Phantom.
Why?
Because when he played way, way, way, way, way back for the Victorian team, he was renowned
for reading Phantom comics before he'd go out.
No, he actually went out on the pitch with his underpants over his screens.
Way to go Fanny.
It shows you what an interesting game cricket is.
You know, you've psyched up Bill.
Yeah, shut up mate.
Anyway, Billy Zane was the Phantom in the movie.
And he looked beautiful.
And he, he, he...
Remember that chest?
Oh, sorry.
I like that.
I'm confused.
Andrew Lloyd Webber, of course, wrote the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
He also wrote the musical The Phantom of the Opera.
And what he's doing is he's making a sequel to one of his musicals.
I don't know which one, but I'm guessing it's not Jesus Christ Superstar.
It is Phantom of the Opera.
And it's been written, I think, by...
By that bloke there, that blank bloke.
And that bloke would be...
Frederick Forsythe.
Let's have a look.
You are right.
That is Frederick Forsythe.
Three points, ladies and gentlemen.
I loved it how when you showed the photo, everyone in the audience just went, who?
This is Frederick Forsythe, author of The Day of the Jackal.
And he is reportedly teaming up with Andrew Lloyd Webber to plot a sequel to Phantom of
the Opera.
It sounds stupid to bring together musical theatre and political assassination, but then
that's what Abraham Lincoln thought.
And Fred already has the title.
The Jackal of the Opera.
It's about a sensitive assassin who seeks retribution for a bunch of crap musicals by
killing Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Bites will round off the round.
Robert, can you expand on this comment from political commentator, Barry Cassidy?
If he now goes on and sells a GST to the electorate, I don't know what's left, I guess they'll
have to call him a genius.
I tell you what, it's not going to be easy because the man who I think we're talking
about made a fundamental error.
He let out the budget surplus for the next two or three years and Kim Beasley read it.
So he's going to be able to offer tax cuts without a GST.
Well, I reckon Costello can win Beasley the election.
Costello is a genius.
It's going to be pretty tough selling GST.
We need it though.
We do need a GST.
Honestly, you don't believe that, do you?
I'd like you to convince me.
Thank you, young liberals.
By the year 2000, if you're earning, I think it's 1.2 times above the average weekly earnings,
you'll be taxed like Kerry Packer.
50% on your income.
Come on, Robert, do you really believe Kerry Packer's paying 50%?
That's the best one I've ever seen on this show.
It's what Kerry Packer should be paying.
Even though we've got off the topic, I'm going to give it to you.
Three points, congratulations.
Political pundits admitted Peter Costello was entitled to stick his fiscal chest out with
pride over the budget.
But Costello denied budget night had gone to his head as he pulled on his blue Lycra
bodysuit with the big red T on the front.
Keep that kryptonite away from me, he said.
I'm off to the fortress of solitude.
I've lost them, haven't I?
Don't do a poo joke.
Okay.
Peter did stop short of calling himself the Placido Domingo of Australian politics, but
he could be our Michael Flatley because within an hour of every performance...
He has to go off and have sex with himself.
You've come back!
Joanna, your bite from New South Wales Police Commissioner Peter Ryan.
If you do get through the customs barrier, we'll be looking for it on the streets.
I swear that guy's on the bill.
Peter Ryan was talking about the Cancer Council's new campaign.
It's this little thing, it's a little lighter, and you can actually just twist it a thing
on the end and it fires bullets because as opposed to just smoking yourself to death,
if you just light up, you can blow your head off.
You're not quite right there, actually.
I am, so it's those little lighters, they got through customs, they got them in person,
they'd actually gone through the X-ray machine.
Joanna, they're fake car alarms.
Yeah, that's true.
They're little key rings, they're a little thing, they fire bullets.
They look like a key ring, yeah, they look like a key ring, but you didn't know they
were lighters, Mikey, I'm enlightening you here now.
Joanna, if he says it's a lighter, it's a lighter, as far as I'm concerned.
Yeah, loud and clear, I'm totally wrong.
You're fantastic, I don't care if you're right or wrong.
I think they should have made them into lighters.
I think it was really stupid of them that they only made them into fake car alarm things.
I think, you know, Bulgaria really made a big boo-boo there.
But I'm going to give you five points.
Because it's not whether you're right or wrong, it's how you look.
Customs officers have been told to watch out for tiny guns which look like key rings, or
lighters, after one of them sees a poor man trying to enter the country.
The tiny guns are apparently popular with little criminals, who use them to rob small
businesses of minute amounts of money.
Because the device is so small, Customs is having a hard time detecting them.
As a result, they've taken to asking every male passenger, is that a gun in your pocket,
or are you just pleased to see me have a very small penis?
Well, so that that fake alarm thing is quite big, actually.
Having a.32 calibre weapon on your key ring does have its drawbacks, though.
You can come home drunk, you know, go to put the key in the door, and shoot your dog on
the other side.
Shit, did it again.
You'd have to have a very tall dog.
Or a light hand.
Or you'd be like this.
No, no, Vic, if you're drunk, I mean, I don't know, I'm not saying we would ever be drunk,
children.
I can often point the key.
I don't know.
Track down.
Can I just point out here, what is the dog doing in a car?
Your key.
There's a tiny gap in the key ring.
The key ring is what?
Yeah, the key ring can have, because it's a key, no, not a car, key ring.
It's gotta let go of the car.
It's a key ring.
You go up to your house when you get home and go, beep.
There's a little gap.
It's a key ring.
You keep all your keys on one key ring.
You don't think, oh, I've got my car key ring over here.
There's my house key ring.
Oh, and there's the one for the safe over here.
You know all those different key rings you've got, you should put them all on a key ring.
And put the dog in the car.
It's taking care of the kids while you're at the casino.
And as well as all those key rings we've been talking about, there's also a sound activated
gun key ring too.
If you lose it, you just whistle, and from the screams of the wounded and the angle of
the blood spatters, you can work out where your keys are.
Guns that look like key rings, knives that look like combs, capsicum spray that looks
like hairspray.
Soldiers won't need backpacks anymore.
They can go into battle carrying a handbag.
When you run out of bullets instead of a bayonet, charge just to hit them with a bag.
Get out of it!
If someone's coming at you, you can go, your hair's a mess!
The Pump Action Robinses are on 11 points.
The Semi Automatic Macrossens, 13 points.
Let's kiss this one goodnight.
Mikey Margot-Robert, your strange but true clues were the name tag, the needle, and the
sick bag.
It's all to do with the budget.
First of all, if you're over 65, you can get a free flu injection.
That'll scare me, huh?
Wait a minute, you take your name tag first, put the flu injection in, and if something
goes wrong, you've got the sick bag.
Every person, I could suddenly look forward to over 65 flu injections.
Pay it free!
Can't wait!
I also think as part of the Liberal Party's health strategy, that's the flu, that's when
you get sick, and this is for Alzheimer's.
It is a medical story.
There was a champion on a plane who had a heart attack.
Normally when you imagine situations like that, you know, someone has a heart attack,
you always shout out, is there a doctor in the house?
Well fortunately, there was, coming back from a convention, the world's leading cardiologist
on the plane, who cured him, as you would imagine.
Any disagreements?
Yeah, well there was one problem, in fact, it was mostly about the billing.
The thing I would have loved though, is if they'd have been like, if they'd have said
again, is there a doctor in the house?
And they'd have all stood up and they were proctologists.
I think they opened him up with that little plastic knife, it was amazing, because I can't
get the crackers open with this thing.
You are right, four points, fantastic, brilliant.
When Klaus Schmidt had a heart attack on a Lutanzia flight from Dublin to Frankfurt
recently, the crew asked if there were any doctors on board.
There were 40 of the world's top cardiac specialists returning from a conference in Ireland.
Of course there was no defibrillator on the plane, so they had to shock Klaus with the
economy class food.
It's a good thing he didn't need oxygen, they would have had to punch a hole in the side
of the plane so a mask would drop from the ceiling.
Schmidt was able to walk off the plane after he was given an injection of a brand new drug,
which had only just come on the market.
Unfortunately the Frankfurt sniffer dogs didn't know the drug was legal, and mauled
him to death as he walked to the ambulance.
Julie James Joanna, your story is linked to the car ad, the calendar and that wrench.
Can I just say before we start, this calendar has been sitting on my desk the whole show
and I don't know but I think this girl is giving me the eye.
I think that's my old maths teacher.
What I'm worried about is that we're going to be so fixated on elements of the calendar
that we may miss the little hint that ABC props have given the team, which is that this
car ad is in, you have to ring, Moscow.
They're all mad those Russians, it's some sort of mechanic that went berserk because
someone was eyeing off his girlfriend who was posing in one of those and bashed the
crap out of him with a wrench.
Okay.
Hey Paul, if we lose tonight, I couldn't be happier.
The thing about Russians is they take a good idea and they have a tendency just to go that
little bit too far.
So we had the Communist Manifesto, a simple idea, share things around a bit.
Probably a little bit too young, you may not remember the Communist Manifesto, but there
was this chap called Mark, but don't worry about it.
Anyway, so they had this idea, right, share it around a bit, went too far, threw out the
whole lot of them, caused untold human suffering for decades.
Now we give them capitalism.
What do they do?
They go too far.
We've got a little business going, fixing cars, right?
Right.
And they think, shoot, that's a nice car.
Panic.
Don't worry about the swearing.
Look, there's more.
You know, I get the sense, gentlemen, that you're more interested in his picture than
my gorgeous four wheel drive.
Never, no.
Never let it be said.
Now look, they see the cars, they think we don't want to just fix them and give them
back for a few bucks.
We want the whole car.
They strip the car, the car goes to pieces and they actually dug up this old garage in
Moscow after they, yeah, they did this first.
And then they-
This is of course completely irrelevant.
Don't let that worry you.
This is car mechanics.
Every mechanic is going through this.
You see one of these.
That is a sad push for ratings.
This is Jan Smith, leading tape mechanic student who got the gold medal last year.
Anyway, back to you.
Strip the car and then they go, well, what do we do with the client?
Just finish the story.
They go, what are we going to do?
What are we going to do if the client drops us?
So they go, oh, we'll kill the client.
And they dug up the garage and they found all these dead clients, but they were so stupid
because they left their driver's license on them.
Even though they were so stupid, they were still trying to get the car.
And they were still trying to get the car.
Because they left their driver's license on them in the bodies, in the bodies in the
ground, so they could identify all of the dead people who's- and then they could work
out that their cars were missing.
And then they put one and one together and-
I'm just glad it's over.
They are right, ladies and gentlemen.
Mechanics in a Moscow garage have been arrested for murdering customers, burying them out
the back and reselling their cars.
It's so different in this country.
The customers are safe because auto mechanics take out their sadistic impulses on the apprentices.
The good news is the Russian mechanics were not the type to waste usable parts.
So many of the cars were resold with strange new leather upholstery.
Thankfully many customers did survive.
There were a lot of drivers.
The mechanics worked out.
The resale of the car wouldn't cover the cost of a bullet.
Mikey Rodman's Margo Kingston and Robert Gottliebsen scored a homicidal 15 points.
Snuffed out by Julie Macross and James O'Loughlin and Joanna Sweep on a lethal 17 points.
So we say get well soon, Rolf.
And leave you with the good news that Peter Costello has admitted the last few weeks haven't been all budget worth.
He's had a bit of fun too.
In fact he's been out nearly every night dancing on Peter Reith's grave.
Good night.
Stay with us tonight as we present a special tribute to Frank Sinatra, the voice of the century.
As a result our advertised movie Tenderloving Care will not be seen.