''The Chaser election specials'' are a number of Australian

political satire Political satire is satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where Political discourse analysis, political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing ...

based comedy programs produced by

The Chaser The Chaser are an Australian satirical comedy group, best known for their television programmes and satirical news masthead. The group take their name from their satirical newspaper, a publication known to challenge conventions of taste. The ...

. The shows, which have run under various titles, provide commentary on

Australian federal election Elections in Australia take place periodically to elect the legislature of the Commonwealth of Australia, as well as for each Australian state and territory and for local government councils. Elections in all jurisdictions follow similar princip ...

and has been produced since 2001 for ABC TV. The first show, ''The Election Chaser'' in 2001 was the first ever television production of the Chaser team. In 2004 and 2007 they produced ''The Chaser Decides'' which won the

Logie Award The Logie Awards (officially the TV Week Logie Awards; colloquially known as The Logies) is an annual gathering to celebrate Australian television, sponsored and organised by the magazine ''TV Week''. The first ceremony was held in 1959 as the ...

for "Most Outstanding Comedy Program" for the 2004 series. In 2010, the Chaser team produced a 5-episode series about the 2010 election, called ''Yes We Canberra!''. A new series was produced for the 2013 election, called ''The Hamster Decides.'' ''The Chaser's Election Desk'' aired in the six weeks prior to the 2016 federal election.

Series

2001 series (''The Election Chaser'')

The show was the first television production of

team, which had been running their satirical newspaper ''

'' since 1999. An ABC personality,

Andrew Denton Andrew Christopher Denton (born 4 May 1960) is an Australian television producer, comedian, Gold Logie-nominated television presenter and former radio host, and was the host of the ABC's weekly television interview program ''Enough Rope'' and ...

, offered the Chaser, as a collective, a contract with the ABC and they went on to produce ''The Election Chaser'', which first aired on 23 October 2001. It was based around the 2001 federal election and was presented in the form of an election tally room, similar to the regular ABC election coverage. The presenters (panelists) were Charles Firth,

Julian Morrow Julian Francis Xavier Morrow (born 1975) is an Australian comedian and television producer from Sydney. He is best known for being a member of the satirical team The Chaser. As a member of The Chaser, he has appeared on several ABC Television p ...

, Chris Taylor,

Craig Reucassel Craig Bruce Reucassel is an Australian television and radio comedian. He is best known for being a member of satirical team The Chaser. He hosted the Australian version of ''Balls of Steel'', which premiered in April 2011. Since 2013, Reucassel ...

Chas Licciardello Charles John "Chas" Licciardello (born 10 May 1977) is an Australian comedian and member of satirical team The Chaser. He's currently the co-host, with John Barron, of ''Planet America'' on ABC (Australian TV channel), ABC TV. Licciardello has a ...

and

Dominic Knight Dominic John Sebastian Knight (born 26 January 1977) is an Australian novelist, comedy writer, radio host and media commentator. Best known as a member of the Australian political satire comedy Logie Awardwinning group The Chaser, he is also a ...

. The show was nominated for "Most Outstanding Comedy Program" in the 2002 Logies but lost to ''

The Micallef Program ''The Micallef P(r)ogram(me)'' is an Australian sketch comedy TV series hosted by Shaun Micallef, and written by Micallef and Gary McCaffrie, that ran from 1998 to 2001 on ABC TV. It was known as ''The Micallef Program'' in its first series, ...

'', which also ran on the ABC.

2004 series (''The Chaser Decides'')

Since ''The Election Chaser'', the Chaser team had gone on to produce ''

CNNNN ''CNNNN'' (''Chaser NoN-stop News Network'') is a Logie Award winning Australian television program, satirising American news channels CNN and Fox News. It was produced and hosted by comedy team The Chaser. ''CNNNNs slogan was "We Report, You ...

'', a spoof of various 24-hour news networks, which ran in 2002 and 2003. ''CNNNN'' won the 2004 Logie for "Most Outstanding Comedy Program". With the 2004 federal election looming, The Chaser team decided to produce another series based upon ''The Election Chaser''. The show was titled ''The Chaser Decides'' and ran at the timeslot of Thursday from 24 September 2004 to 14 October 2004. The show was presented again in a National Tally Room, but only had four presenters in Morrow, Reucassel, Taylor and

Andrew Hansen Andrew John Hansen (born 18 September 1974) is an Australian comedian, musician and author, best known for being a member of satirical team The Chaser. As a member of The Chaser, Hansen's television work includes co-writing and starring in ABC ...

. Licciardello and Firth did reporting roles while Knight stayed on as a writer. The show was hugely popular and won the 2005 Logie award for "Most Outstanding Comedy Program".

2007 series (''The Chaser Decides'')

Following the second series of ''

The Chaser's War on Everything ''The Chaser's War on Everything'' is an Australian television satirical comedy series broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television station ABC1. It has won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Television Comedy S ...

'', the Chaser crew produced two episodes of ''The Chaser Decides'' based on the

2007 federal election This electoral calendar 2007 lists the national/federal direct elections held in 2007 in the de jure and de facto sovereign states and their dependent territories. Referendums are included, although they are not elections. By-elections are not i ...

. The two episodes replaced the ''War on Everything'' in its timeslot for 21 November and 28 November 2007. The format took the same as the 2004 series.

2010 series (''Yes We Canberra'')

For the 2010 federal election, The Chaser appeared in five episodes of the retitled ''Yes We Canberra!''. Four episodes aired before the election date on Wednesday's at 9.45 pm and one episode after the election in that timeslot. This was the group's first television production in almost a year after the third and final season of ''War on Everything'' in 2009. The show premiered on 28 July 2010, with the election to be held on 21 August. The shows context was supposedly part of news program

Lateline ''Lateline'' was an Australian television news program which ran from 1990 until 2017. The program initially aired weeknights on ABC TV. In later years it was also broadcast internationally throughout Asia and the Pacific on the Australia Plu ...

with the Chaser team being there to warm up the crowd for Tony Jones or

Leigh Sales Leigh Peta Sales (born 10 May 1973) is an Australian journalist and author, best known for her work with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.David Stratton David James Stratton (born 10 September 1939) is an English-Australian award-winning film critic, as both a journalist and interviewer, film historian and lecturer and television personality and producer. Life and career Born in Trowbridge, ...

and

Margaret Pomeranz Margaret Pomeranz (born 14 July 1944) is an Australian film critic, writer, producer and television personality. Early life Pomeranz was born Margeret Anne Jones-Owen on 14 July 1944 in Waverley, a suburb of Sydney. She was educated at the P ...

. A DVD containing all five episodes plus extras and commentary was released by Roadshow Entertainment on 16 September 2010. Extras include deleted and extended scenes plus behind the scenes footage.

2013 series (''The Hamster Decides'')

In March 2012, the Chaser announced the 2013 election series, tentatively called ''The Election Hamster''. It was announced that it will be called ''The Hamster Decides'' and the first of five episodes was to air on 21 August 2013. When Kevin Rudd announced the change of election date from 14 to 7 September, the first episode was brought forward one week to 14 August. The show was run at a timeslot of 9:15pm on Wednesday. The set used was the same set as ''

The Hamster Wheel ''The Hamster Wheel'' is an Australian television satirical comedy series broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television station ABC1. It is created and presented by the satirical group The Chaser. Production In July 20 ...

''.

2016 series (''The Chaser’s Election Desk'')

The 2016 series, ''The Chaser’s Election Desk'', began on 8 June 2016. New cast members that joined the series included Zoe Norton Lodge, Ben Jenkins, Kirsten Drysdale, Alex Lee, Scott Abbot, Mark Sutton and Hannah Reilly.

2019 series (''Democracy Sausage'')

In November 2018, it was announced that the ABC declined to fund an election special for the 2019 election. Instead, Taylor and Reucassel hosted a podcast, ''Democracy Sausage'', available for free on the ABC's website. In the later weeks of the campaign episodes were also available on

ABC iView ABC iview is a video on demand and catch-up TV service run by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Currently iview video content can only be viewed by users in Australia. As of 2016, ABC iview attracts around 50 million plays monthly and ac ...

and

ABC Comedy ABC TV Plus (formerly ABC2 and ABC Comedy) is an Australian free-to-air television channel owned by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and part of its ABC Television network. The channel broadcasts a range of general entertainment prog ...

2022 series (The Chaser Report: Election Edition)

There was again no TV series for the 2022 election. Instead, Charles Firth and

did a free daily election podcast called ''The Chaser Report: Election Edition''. Other members

, Andrew Hanson, Chris Taylor and

appear occasionally, as well as the "Chaser Interns", with occasional pranks uploaded to The Chaser's

social media Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social medi ...

channels.

Home release

On 3 December 2010, a DVD titled ''The Chaser Election Collection'' was released. It contained every election special The Chaser had screened to date, as well as special features including the never-before-seen ''The Election Chaser'' pilot.

Jokes/Segments

Primary

The Mal Award

Every episode of the show ends with a member of The Chaser presenting The Mal Award, named after

Mal Meninga Malcolm Norman Meninga (; born 8 July 1960) is an Australian professional rugby league coach who is the head coach of the Australian national team and a former professional rugby league footballer. Meninga is widely regarded as one of the fin ...

's extremely short political career in 2001. Every week, the team present the award to a politician "for the greatest act of political suicide during an election campaign". In the 28 November 2007 episode, Meninga satirised himself when brought in to present the award but "gave up" mid-speech.

Former

"This Person Votes"

A joke featured in all but the 2010 series, the show would often feature short clips of people (usually drunk) acting ignorant towards the election (e.g. " I reckon Mickey Mouse is the best", "Who's

John Howard John Winston Howard (born 26 July 1939) is an Australian former politician who served as the 25th prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, holding office as leader of the Liberal Party. His eleven-year tenure as prime minister is the s ...

?"), followed by an on-screen graphic that reads ''This Person Votes''. For episodes that aired after the election, it was replaced by ''This Person Voted ''.

Scrolling Newsbar

For the 2004 and 2007 series, a newsbar - similar to the one that would appear in

- would scroll across the bottom of the screen, with humorous news items. For the 2010, 2013 and 2016 series, it was replaced with fake

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

updates from celebrities and politicians.

Notes

References

External links

The Chaser Official Website

The Chaser Decides ABC Official Website

''Yes We Canberra!'' official website
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Chaser Election Specials, The The Chaser Australian satirical television shows Australian political comedy television series Australian Broadcasting Corporation original programming 2001 Australian television series debuts 2000s Australian comedy television series 2010 Australian television series endings Television shows set in Australian Capital Territory Logie Award for Most Outstanding Comedy Program winners Television series by Fremantle (company)