Author Archives: Tom
236 – Nick Boshier & Jazz Twemlow (The Moth Effect)
Nick Boshier (Trent from Punchy, Bondi Hipsters) and Jazz Twemlow (Tonightly with Tom Ballard lol) are two very nice men and good comedians who have created a new satirical sketch show for Amazon Prime, The Moth Effect.
The dudes let me know the guiding philosophy behind the show’s satire, their favourite sketches, the irony of taking the piss out of corporatism while working for Amazon, giving less of a shit about the insane news cycle and how to do comedy about the shortcomings of “wokeness” without being a douchebag.
Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you
WE ARE ALL IN THIS is scheduled for the Brisbane Comedy Festival in November
Watch The Moth Effect on Amazon Prime
Jazz’s Leftie Bootcamp sketch from Tonightly
ARTICLE: Big-name cast members Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson elevate Moth Effect
ARTICLE: New woke lineup for The Wiggles slammed by outspoken Nationals Senator Matt Canavan
ARTICLE: The ghosts are not silent by ABC Background Briefing
Cause of the Week: The Great Koala National Park (koalapark.org.au)
Cause of the Week: International Rescue Committee (rescue.org)
Direct download | iTunes | Spotify | libsyn
235 – Senator Mehreen Faruqi
Mehreen Faruqi has been a Greens senator for NSW since 2017. Her memoir Too Migrant, Too Muslim, Too Loud was released in July, describing her life, politics and reflections on being a progressive and outspoken migrant in Australia.
Here Mehreen and I discuss how her perceptions of what Australia is have changed over the past thirty years, her thoughts on compromise and incrementalism and the Greens’ role in pushing big bold ideas, as well as her desire to see a “feminist, anti-racist Australia”.
(Sincere apologies for the long time between podcast episodes, everyone: I have been going LOOPY in lockdown and have been having a bit of a rough trot that stopped me doing very much at all. I am much better now though thank you. I hope you are ok too. The end. As you were.)
Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you
My two shows and special filming at Chapel Off Chapel have been rescheduled to October 8th & 9th
WE ARE ALL IN THIS is scheduled for the Brisbane Comedy Festival in November
Mehreen’s book Too Migrant, Too Muslim, Too Loud is out now through Allen & Unwin
ARTICLE: Coalition supports Pauline Hanson motion to ban critical race theory teachings
My episode with outgoing Greens Senator Rachel Siewert
Cause of the Week: Greyhound Rescue (greyhoundrescue.com.au)
Direct download | iTunes | Spotify | libsyn
Senator Rachel Siewert’s Farewell Speech
Just got around to watching this speech from one of the few thoroughly good eggs in Australian politics. I’d highly recommend you take the time to watch it.
You can hear my conversation with Rachel on my podcast here.
234 – Victor Kline (The New Liberals)
Victor Kline is a writer and barrister who is the leader of a new political party, The New Liberals. The party was born out of a frustration that Victor and some close friends felt by the current state of Australian politics and the lack of any party that truly represented them.
Here we discuss what Victor believes it means to be a truly “liberal” party, why they want to reclaim that name, the party’s political strategy, and what I would argue is liberalism’s limits: its inability to wrestle with questions of class and political economy.
I’m doing Dry July please help me/cancer research
I went on “Miners Driving Teslas” with Daniel Bleakley and it was fun
If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron
Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you
WE ARE ALL IN THIS will be at the Brisbane Comedy Festival in August
There’s an encore Sydney show of WE ARE ALL IN THIS on August 20th
My two shows and special filming at Chapel Off Chapel have been rescheduled to August 27th & 28th
ARTICLE: New Liberals’ registration approved despite Liberal party objection over “voter confusion”
ARTICLE: New Liberals leader outlines his party’s politics
Cause of the Week: The New Liberals (newliberals.net.au)
Direct download | iTunes | Spotify | libsyn
I Drove An EV And It Was Fun
It was great fun to join Daniel Bleakley for his Coal Miners Driving Teslas series (even though I am not a coal miner).
We had a fun chat and it went very fast.
An Interview With Kids From My Old Primary School (Very Cute)
233 – Luke McGregor
Luke McGregor is a beloved Australian comedian who co-stars in the ABC series Rosehaven alongside Celia Pacquola and presents “Lukenomics” on The Weekly. He’s also my very nice friend and one time we got KFC together.
A month on from his appearance on Q&A alongside (now Nationals leader) Barnaby Fucking Joyce, Luke talks to me about the frustrations of public debate, why studying economics stopped him being a Liberal voter, and the ins and outs of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
I’m doing Dry July please help me/cancer research
If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron
Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you
WE ARE ALL IN THIS will be at the Brisbane Comedy Festival in August
There’s an encore Sydney show of WE ARE ALL IN THIS on August 20th
My two shows and special filming at Chapel Off Chapel have been rescheduled to August 27th & 28th
Free online event: MMT and the Media: Taking Charge of the Narrative with Luke & Bill Mitchell
Daily Mail article on Luke’s appearance on Q&A
Cause of the Week: Brightside Farm Sanctuary (brightside.org.au)
Direct download | iTunes | Spotify | libsyn
232 – Josh Cullinan
Josh Cullinan is the Secretary of the Retail And Fast Food Workers’ Union (RAFFWU); a young fighting union which represents thousands of overwhelmingly younger Australian workers in highly casualised and insecure industries.
RAFFWU was set up in opposition to the right-wing “yellow” union the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (the SDA), aka Christian Porter’s favourite union. In this conversation Josh explains just how bad the SDA has been for workers, the scourge of casualisation and how RAFFWU is organising for a better deal and a better future.
If you’ve got the means please support this show by becoming a Patron
Join the LIASYO Facebook group here please and thank you
This Sunday is World Refugee Day! Please help out the ASRC if you can
WE ARE ALL IN THIS will be at the Brisbane Comedy Festival in August
There’s an encore Sydney show of WE ARE ALL IN THIS on August 20th
My two shows at Chapel Off Chapel have been rescheduled to August 27th & 28th
ARTICLE: Precarious workers held out to dry by Josh Cullinan
ARTICLE: Australia’s Youngest Union Is Organising Retail and Fast-Food Workers (in Jacobin)
ARTICLE: Shopped Out by Ben Schneiders & Royce Millar
Cause of the Week: RAFFWU! Join them yourself or spread the word (raffwu.org.au)
Direct download | iTunes | Spotify | libsyn
I Am Writing A Book lol
The world is in chaos. It’s time for a revolution, goddamnit, and “comedian” Tom Ballard is ready to serve as its glorious leader. (Or at least to tweet about it to #raiseawareness).
After 30 years of his entitled Millennial life, Ballard has had enough of the smashed avocado jokes. He’s furious at the raw deal his generation has been given, and he’s pretty sure things can’t be this crappy because of brunch. It’s not your imagination: Millennials really have inherited the bill for our current ‘prosperity’, and it sucks. Millions of Baby Boomers got beach houses, free education, jobs for life and a franking credit-fed retirement; Millennials have been handed a housing crisis, crippling student debt, the gig economy, a cooked planet, a truly broken political system and now a global pandemic, as a treat. For a moment it looked like COVID-19 might radically change things – like housing the homeless and lifting the unemployed out of poverty – but it ended up just making rich ghouls like Gerry Harvey even richer.
In I, Millennial: One Snowflake’s Screed Against Plague, Boomers, Billionaires & Everything Else, Ballard unpicks how we got here and why. Through the power of jokes, history, interviews and sass, he decodes the state of Australian society today, and lets his fellow Millennials in on just how outraged they should be. Fact-filled and furiously funny, this sprawling book reveals shows that the real joke is how much the ruling class has been getting away with at our expense. It will be a must-read not just for Millennials wondering whether they’re alone in thinking things are weird and bad and massively unfair, but for anyone with an interest in how we’re making our future impossible.
Tom Ballard is an award-winning comedian, broadcaster, philanthropist and virtue-signaller. He pretended to be cool on the triple j breakfast show for years, then went on to perform stand-up all over the world and front his own naughty late-night show for #theirABC, Tonightly with Tom Ballard. (The program was cancelled because it was too funny). He’s also guest hosted Q&A for some reason, and since 2015 he’s sat down with everyone from Lyle Shelton to Yassmin Abdel-Magied for his political interview podcast Like I’m A Six-Year-Old.
“Having never read a book before (too boring), I’m delighted to now be writing one that will fix all of the problems in Australia,” says Ballard. “I hope everyone enjoys reading my insightful social and political analysis, which will involve lots of swearwords and ad hominem attacks. Also there will be some pictures.”
Ben Ball, Publishing Director of Scribner Australia says: ‘As anyone who has seen Tom perform his too-hot-for-the-ABC shows or heard his podcast will know, he has a genius for making genuine, urgent political arguments stingingly funny. This book will speak to the Millennial in all of us who feel the system is broken and the future needs to be rethought.’
I, Millennial will be published in December 2021.