The Chaser Report - APEC's 15th Anniversary | War Stories

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

To commemorate (or bask in the glory of the moment keeping us relevant) the 15th anniversary of the infamous APEC stunt, we take a look back at what Chas and Jules had to say in our Summer podcast series 'War Stories'. Go back and listen to them for a fun nostalgia trip if you want more yarns from the glory days. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. Fizz is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigle Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is the Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report. I'm Charles Firth. today is Lockland Hodson. Hi, Charles. Hey, how's your weekend been? Oh, my weekend was a complete disaster. Oh, why? Because I, uh, it's been raining a little bit. I don't know whether

you've noticed. We, we live in Sydney. Ah, yeah, no, I did, uh, I did enjoy my swim to, to work today. It's true. I decided on Friday to do this thing where I would ride my bike in the rain, right? Because I just thought, it's just going to rain forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I've got this, I want to. You've got to buy it. You've got to use it. It's going to rain. You're going to have to drive it in the rain eventually. Mindful, sort of, you know, like, I will ignore the rest of the world. You know, I will set the world according to what I need out of this world. And I need to ride my bike. You have not got a history at all of catastrophic bike accidents. Well, funny, you should mention that because I was right, I was just not.

need the office and slipped off the bike. There was this really sort of moldy patch of land and went straight over the things. And it was one of those things where it took like five minutes for the crash to happen. Like it all happened in slow minutes. No, not five minutes, but like 30, it felt like it was 30 seconds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it sort of went over the bars and I was thinking, fuck, I'm doing it again. I'm fucking crashing again.

This is a fucking outrageous thing. And you were able to have all of those thoughts. As I was going out, and then it was like, oh my God, my head is going to break my fall. It's my head that's aiming for the ground. And I just, it was like, it must have looked so slapstey. Because it just, just my head just slammed into the ground. Did you actually, were you wearing a helmet? I was wearing a helmet.

I definitely would have died had I not been wearing a helmet. So kids, the lesson is, if you want to kill yourself, don't wear a helmet. Okay. So would you recommend riding a bike in the rain now that you've ticked that off your bucket list? I feel like the answer should be, yeah, I'm not going to ride my bike in the rain ever again. But it's never going to stop raining ever again. So that basically means there's no more. And bike ride, I live for bike riding.

You have to get one of those aquatrikes, I think, is what you've got to do. You know those bikes that have the paddles with the wheels? Yes. Just buy one of them. That's your new commute. They've got them in Centennial Park. Yeah. You should nick one.

Yeah, I'll nick one. And that's how I get to work. That would actually make a really good stunt. Okay, done. Cool. Well, speaking of catastrophic accidents on the roads. Oh, yeah. We've completely missed a very important chaser anniversary in the last month that I think we do actually sort of have to address.

Oh, really? Did you know that the start of September? Oh, yeah. Was the 15th anniversary for the Apex stunt. Oh, wow. And we just totally... And we just totally... Isn't our entire organisation basically basking in the globe of that one single stunt?

No, I'm surprised that we don't celebrate the 14th and the 16th birthday, it's 17th. Yeah. We should do something nice for it. Well, I thought that we did. At the start of this year, you remember how we did all those war stories episodes? Yes, they're terribly unsuccessful. Like, really great content. Amazing content.

Critically acclaimed. Which we put out the worst time of year, which was beginning of January. and nobody listen to it. For some reason, no one who does the publishing of a podcast has the goals to admit to people who actually create podcasts like Charles and I that you shouldn't release a podcast in January because no one listens to it. So we had this amazing idea. Well, Charles had this amazing idea, which was let's record all the Chaser guys

telling fantastic stories from their TV days. Yeah, war stories. War stories. Anyway, we recorded all this amazing content. No one listened to it. So we've got everyone talking about APEC, Chaz and Jules, who are both in it, telling their stories of APEC. We're never allowed to get published on the ABC.

So this is exclusive stuff that you get to listen to, listener. I thought to celebrate it and to write off today, let's just replay that. Yeah, well, that means that I can go and lie down and keep recovering from my concussion. So I think that's a great idea. Well, let's take a listen to what Chaz's. and Jules have to say about the Apex Stunt. Now, Chaz, in your list here, it's time for the big one. Yes, yes.

This is the one which I think people have been waiting for when they're talking about brushes with the law. This, of course, was the Apex Stunt. You guys have heard a lot about this before, so I'm going to summarize quite quickly the actual stunt itself, which was we're talking about an international event with lots of world leaders, including George Bush, and we drove a limo in pretending to be a Canadian diplomatic vehicle. We got to within meters, and I don't mean hundreds of meters, I mean single-digit

meters of George Bush's hotel before they told us to keep on driving. And we thought, we are going to jail forever if we keep on driving. So we got out of the limo, I was dressed as Assam Bin Laden. As you do. And then this is when this happened. Chief. BIP liaison. Okay.

So here I am. Assam bin Laden staying 10 meters away from Bolton. Orish's hotel. So what do they do? They arrest the other guy. Oh, no, hang on. There's some other guys coming to arrest you now. No, they're for me as well. Poor old Asama. No one likes a summer. In fairness, there's a lot of other reasons to arrest Julian. So they might have been smart. But look, we then ended up in jail for about 13 hours before we were released.

And by the way, the police did a Macca's run. Thank you, police. Yeah, this is in the basement of the Surrey Hills Police Centre, so not actually a jail, but certainly we were in a cell. Yeah, we're in the cell together. Like, it was, it was like an avant-garde album cover. It was Jules the second time of the cell. He and I have been locked up for about 45 minutes, so not much. So we're all there for, yeah, about 12, 30 hours before they let us go.

And they took lots of photos with us, by the way. I learnt the difference between the police officers and the top brass. Yeah, there's suburban cops. Because the police officers, they were a lot. They were saying this whole APEC is incredibly boring. You've made a terrible day, interesting, thank you. Can I have a photo? Can I have an autograph?

That kind of stuff. Can I get you McDonald's? That was great. They were lovely. It was a great time had by all. Whereas the brass seemed very, very angry and very, very chidey in their press conferences, their multiple press conferences over the coming days. They said they're going to throw the book at us with all these laws.

In the end, they just never even charged us. In the end, they just let go. Which was nice. But that sort of took 11 months, didn't it? Yeah, it did. It took a long, long, long, long time to go through. And the ABC lawyers, no doubt, did some serious negotiation on our behalf. Yeah, but in the end, it didn't go anywhere.

The Bulldogs case is still the furthest I've gone in terms of brushes with the law. Do you know why I didn't go anywhere? The reason why I didn't go anywhere is because the police assembled this giant brief of evidence. And it then got passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who's separate from the police, to review it and work out what charges should be filed. and there were many damning facts in the police brief of evidence. One of them, for instance, was that the person who waved you through had that morning. Were you going to say that?

No, I was about saying there's a pretty big deal that the police actually explicitly waved us through. Yes, but also the person who waved you through had that morning given a seminar on how to recognize the chaser. I didn't know that. That's a great thing. It was a legendary member of the federal police who wrote a book about it of his adventures apparently. But also, yeah, a lot of the, again, a lot of the things that they claimed, such as people were running and so on, were disproved by the footage. So, yes, get someone else to review the charges if you do get arrested.

Why did the police just get it right? Is it because they're so used to just lying and getting away with it? Well, it's very embarrassing. $170 million in policing on APEC. I think usually people don't film everything they do. I think usually when people commit crimes or commit alleged crimes, they don't have six cameras. Usually.

That's what's missing from the world's greatest burglars. They just need to get a multi-camera shoot going and they'll get away with it. Yeah, and then they can sell to Netflix, make even more money. That's how Ocean's Eleven word. It's real. It's actually real. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important.

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A final episode of The War Story series Talk about the biggest stunt we ever did, Julia Yes, which one was that again? I've forgotten Ah, if one are you dressed us to Dalai Lama That's right, oh God, yeah, yeah No, no, obviously, yeah Because a lot of people remember it as the OPEC stunt

Yes, I remember it as the OPEC stunt. Yes, I remember it as the OPEC. stunt, but APEC, because it was it, the Asia-Pacific Economic Community, isn't we? And that's why it was a good stunt, because it's so boring, even though it's one of the highlights of our careers, we can't remember what it stands for. Asia-Pacific Economic Community or Cooperation,

cooperation, I think. Something. But George Bush couldn't remember it. He said the OPEC conference. That was one of the two things that made news along with this stunt. Yeah, so this was, what, 2007, I think? Yes, that sounds right. And it was basically a curse, this whole event,

because the Chasers War and everything had done a year, had been going pretty well, it was starting to get quite popular, and it was the stunts that were the thing that was, you know, people were reacting to. And then all of a sudden, a huge international conference came to our, basically our back door in Sydney,

and there were world leaders, the president of America, about, I forget, it was something like 20 world leaders there. And so everyone, one was asking what is the chaser going to do and essentially our answer was nothing there's no way we're going to be able to do anything and the security budget was what 150 million dollars or something just absolutely insane it was the biggest security operation in australian history there were i think like two and a half meter metal fences put around like a around the inner city

yeah and so it was what you what you would describe as a not very welcoming environment to try and do silly stuns, but because it was happening while we were on air, we sort of felt we had to do something. In the end, I mean, I describe it as a stunt that went horribly right, because it was sort of premised on the idea that we would fail, but then we accidentally gate crashed this international conference and made for, I think, you know, the classic 15 seconds of fame, we made the world headlines. I remember the whole weird aspect of it was that Chaz's dressed as a Sam bin Laden. So you've got your address as a security guard. There's a motorcade going down. And I've always found it very amusing that we put Canadian flags on the, on the motorcade.

We're just trying to think of who are the most innocuous country. Well, that's right. Well, we had to think through the possible countries. And so because, you know, we all looked, well, we wouldn't have been convincing if we suggested we were from Indonesia or something. So that narrowed down the countries. The idea that there was a motorcade. We thought about New Zealand, but we didn't think that anyone would believe that New Zealand actually had a motorcade. Prime Minister probably turned up in a bike or something. And so that basically led us to Canada, which turned out to be the right country to go for, because it just had the right veneer of feeling like it was a big enough country,

but no one really knowing who the Prime Minister was. Yeah, and it's kind of innocuous. Oh, Canada, yeah. Exactly. And the whole stunt came about because I was hauled into a security meeting before APEC with one of the ABC's security advisors. And I just assumed that this was, basically, we were going to be read the right act and told what we couldn't do. But Tony, he was the security advisor and was an ex-SAS soldier who loved this stuff, was laying down the law saying what you can't do.

And towards the end of the meeting, he said, there's absolutely no way you'll be able to get in. The only way you'll be able to get into that event is with a motorcade. And I was like, that's quite an interesting idea. And then he was into it. And he gave us all the suggestions for how to get a motorcade in. And then, you know, obviously ABC Legal just went, yeah, that sounds great. Do it. Fantastic.

And we left that day. No, it took a long time. Took a long time to get them over the line. Well, we discussed before that Chase has done to follow the format, where can you take a? Yeah. But where can you take a motorcade? I mean, in the history of that's an even bigger prop than a Trojan horse. Yes.

And the moment that I actually first thought that we might get away with it was when I actually saw the motorcade because it felt like it was just a silly idea that wasn't going to succeed. And in fact, the whole point of the stunt was that the motorcade wouldn't get in and then we would try increasingly silly ways of getting in. And that was where we were going to get the comedy. So I think we had some people who were going to try and get on on those big sort of... There were subsequent plans, right? Yeah, we were going to try and get there by sea. I don't think we could

manage getting there by air because we did think that that would sort of get... Get shot down. Yeah, but we did do by road and it all just worked. But why didn't they tap you, tap your phones and tap your internet accounts and know that that's what you were going to do? Like if it spent $150 million, surely just pay a hacker at 25 bucks and... I just assumed that that would have happened and I kind of thought on the day that when the motorcade drove out of ABC that we would just get police to turn up and, you know,

it'd be off. And it wasn't like we'd made any secret of it, because I remember being asked in radio interviews, what are you going to do for APEC? We've got asked it all the time. And in our typically responsible way, because I thought we weren't going to do anything, I would say things like, look, I can't really tell you,

but it's going to be big. Just to manage expectations, right? So did the motorcade leave from Ultima? It came out at the back of ABC Ultima. And we had two. motorbikes at the beginning that weren't police, but were just guys on bikes who looked a little bit like it. And then, of course, the other thing

was that we had four people running beside the motorcade, which hasn't happened since JFK. No one does that, but we needed to have camera people there. Yeah, so there was a camera crew, but also people walking outside, like you were on foot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, because we stopped the motorcade outside New South Wales Parliament, got out and then started running down the street. And it turned out that what it happened was because there were so many motorcades going around Sydney that day,

there'd been a general order issued that no motorcades were to be stopped. So we just started going down the street and cops started waving us through. I remember one guy saying the road is yours and that was when we started to realize that the whole idea that this stunt would end when we got stopped by the police had a fatal flaw in it. So the whole $150 million security operation to protect Sydney from terrorists. this is during the war on terror, al-Qaeda could easily have been trying to penetrate it at the same time. If they'd thought of having a motorcade,

they would have gone all the way through to the Opera House. Yep, yep. They'd put a ring of steel around the city and then left the front door open. And in fact, the Daily Telegraph, the next day, had like an ad for the edition of the Daily Telegraph, and I think it said something like, thank God it was them, which I think is the only time the Daily Telegraph said anything positive about The Chaser. Now, there are lots of things that I've half remember from this period,

because obviously we talked about it a lot but there was a point subsequently where we got the police evidence brief which they'd been planning to use to charge us correct me if I'm wrong, because I know you know this better than I do. Was it not true that the day before something like that John Howard had been held up

out the front of the opera house because the federal police or whoever it was had lost the key to the padlock and that was why the order had gone through that all motorcades had to be waved through? I hope that's true. I've been saying it for years. is, I hope it's true.

I am sure that it's true without actually knowing. I have no memory of that whatsoever, to be honest. It must be true. It must be true. But there were so many things about that day that were funny. The thing I remember from the police tapes was that a lot of the people who were arrested, because I think 11 people were arrested or something. Yeah, yeah.

And me and Chaz were obviously in one category, and then the rest of the guys were crew. And they were going to run a defense that basically the other people, were just sort of doing their job, so they shouldn't be convicted of a criminal offence. The only problem was that one of the employees, it was actually a cousin, second cousin of mine, had the camera on his lap in the motorcade

that was picking up the audio from the microphone that was in my tie. It was also picking up what was being said by him in the motorcade. So they were going to run a legal defence saying, he was just following orders, he is mortified that this has happened, and he didn't want it to happen, but we did then also have a recording of him going, oh my God, this is brilliant, this is awesome, they're letting us right through. These idiots, oh, I love this!

Which somewhat compromised the defense. Well, that was great. Thank you very much, Lachlan, for reminding us of, yeah. I'm a fan of this company before I am a worker of it, so I celebrate. Creepleas, yeah. Well, I mean, you used to stalk me on Wikipedia. I do stalk you on Wikipedia. I made a chase a meme page, I believe, which is how I got hired.

Oh, God. You know that I fixed your Wikipedia. Yeah, I know. As a prison. As a birthday gift for Charles, I fix his Wikipedia. But I've just got to ask, after listening to that Wall Stories episode, after listening to those guys tell those stories, should we do it again? So January's coming up. We've got another period where no one's going to listen to any podcasts.

What are we supposed to do for another month of the show? Should we, what you're saying is, should we go to a huge amount of effort to organize something that nobody will listen to? Well, exactly. So my pitch would be, I've actually have got an idea. This is how I'll pitch it to you is for an incredibly small amount of money, maybe sling them like 50 bucks and a soft serve each, we get Gabby and Alexa to come in on a Saturday. And they record for eight hours in a row. and I just upload increments of that every single day for January. So it's the Gabby and Alexa's soft-serve summer.

And you just give them a time to brainstorm their ideas. Yes. And it's the Gabby and Alexa summer internal damage right off. I love everything about it except for giving them soft-serve. Should we do that? Should we do that? I don't know. If you've got a better idea for what we should do for January,

email it in. I want to be part of it. Oh yeah, no, yeah, we should open it up to the listeners if anyone's got a good idea. But also, I'll want to be part, like... Well, you can join them on the tax right off day, but you can get paid. We get the, we get the tax right off to... We do a Saturday. We do a marathon...

Yeah. But what my... It was cooked. That really risks being incredibly boring. But it could be sort of fascinating, but no one's going to listen to it anyways. Exactly. Like, it doesn't matter. And I thought that, you know how we do those drunk recordings in the pub?

And they were actually terrible. Yes. But they did get listened to it. You could have the fun of doing more drunk recordings. You could get drunk on a Saturday. Yes. And it's all safe because it's just in this little studio. Yes.

And you're all done. Okay, done. Cool. Well, there we go. Drunk Chaser. Drunk Chaser. Drunk January. Drunk January.

It's the opposite of dry July. It's drunk January. The Chaser's drunk January. Oh, that's great. Okay, we've sorted it out. Okay. War stories, move on over. We've got a new hit month coming.

next year. Our gear is from Roe. We're part of the ACAS creator network. Catch you tomorrow. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.

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