The Chaser Report - Fyre Festival's Closing Down Sale | Amanda Tattersall

Episode Date: April 29, 2025

Dom reviews his prediction on the Fyre Festival 2.0's chances of going ahead, while Charles gives an update on his favourite 170Km long line city. Plus, Amanda Tattersall from The ChangeMakers Podcast joins to show us how podcasting should be done.Listen to The ChangeMakers Podcast with Michael Bradley:https://changemakerspodcast.org/michael-bradley-changemaker-chat-lawyers/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And with a special treat at the end of today's episode, we have a clip from our sibling podcast from the Iconiclass Network, change makers hosted by Amanda Tannissel. Amanda. Hello, Dom and Charles. Welcome.

Fancy seeing you here. Amazing to run into you, love. like this. Now look, you've actually done something which Charles and I used to do and really just we don't make the effort enough anymore, which is actually get a good guest. In fact, you do every episode. It's true. I decided that the world is filled with interesting people and I can do more as lovely as you two are. I can go talk to them too. I think you misunderstand what podcasting is, which is two white men chatting. Yeah, as a woman, I feel that that is too limiting for me. So I decided to go actually talk to a white man in this podcast but a very interesting was it hamish or

Andy so who is it so i actually talked i actually engaged a lawyer a guy called michael bradley who i think you guys know yeah he's our lawyer has he been on this podcast i think he's been on chase report as well he's he's he's sort of the representative to the to the to the activists and the downtrodden like michael and and us and white men and white podcasts but michael um has a reputation as the guy who took on Lachlan Murdoch when Crikey was suing Crikey. He was the one who ran that strategy that eventually saw Lachlan Murdoch drop the case. He also has supported Grace Tame. He supports a whole bunch of refugees. He's quite an interesting guy. But in the podcast, what I found fascinating is that for 20 years, he actually was a very conventional commercial lawyer. And

what he has done in building Mark Lawyers, the law firm that he now is at, he's sort of turned on Let's head everything about what it means to be a commercial lawyer. And that's what we talk about on the podcast. So I hope there's lots of fascinating anecdotes from his commercial law days. Well, there is a lot of talk of timesheets, I'll be honest, but in a sort of downtrodden and satirical kind of way. Are you saying it's possible to be a commercial lawyer running a law firm, have a social conscience and actually have a business that sort of works?

Well, this is the aberration. What are we doing here? I reckon commercial lawyers out there should have a listen to this. I know they're your main audience. They're all tuning into you guys all the time. Genuinely thought-provoking and interesting. And frankly, I don't think our audience is going to be able to add. I'm really sorry.

But thank you for coming by. We'll put a clip at the end of this episode and subscribe to ChangeMakers. Wherever you get your podcasts. And it should be noted that Michael is incredibly witty. And an erudite, isn't he? It's very bright. Yeah, he did this speech for The Shot a couple of years ago. We did some end of year show.

And, oh, he was much better than the comedians. Yes, it was so funny. But also, he got a bit of a reputation on Twitter when it was called Twitter and fun. That's right. During COVID. He was hilarious during COVID. So, yeah, he, he shines a bit of that humour on in the episode. So we were going to do a quick little 30 second introduction on the way into this episode.

But frankly, this has proven quite a lot more interesting than what I had planned, particularly because when I tell you that this episode is about the current state of the fire festival, Just an update on that So stay with us for that But then at the end of the episode You'll have Amanda Talking to Michael Bradley Which frankly sounds like an excellent proposition

Thank you Amanda Thank you Thank you for having me So Charles I suppose we should have the ads now And then we can I want to skip to the interview with Michael Bradley Why are we? The episode today at all

Look a couple of weeks ago Charles I know we like to boast about When we get predictions right Don't we? We like to come back and have a bit of a brand Yes In fact I think I predicted That you were going to boast

about getting this prediction rush. I'm not sure how much credit, even we, even the egomaniacs that we are, Charles, can take for calling this news. The Fire Festival 2 originally scheduled for Pliadil Carmen in late May. It's spent a couple of weeks from now. Yes. Initially it said it is postponed and will be rescheduled.

They now say it's simply not happening. It's not going to take place. And we did an entire episode about this upcoming festival. For people who miss that, this is the one where the guy who organized the five festival won, which is fucking hilarious tale. There's a couple of Netflix shows. There's several documentaries about how crazy. Billiam McFarlane.

He ended up in jail for a couple of years for fraud for doing it. And you shrewdly predicted. Somehow I thought lightning would strike or fail to strike twice in the same place. Yeah. And so is there anything? I mean, do we get a sense that there was any grift? There's a lot of fun to be had here. There was a TikTok trend a few, about a month ago where people were showing emails of being asked to perform in the Fire Festival 2 concert.

And it was hard to tell which, because he went down through A listers and B lists and C listers and D listers. And it was hard to tell whether people were just taking the piss and being said. Very cool. But I think people actually bought tickets. I think it was like literally, you know, J-list material. Yeah, I was going to go. So it's quite confusing because, look, the messaging is a little screwy, as you might think. So the first statement was that it's still going to happen somewhere.

So if you've got tickets, don't worry, it's going to happen. Right, so people have bought tickets. So they said, well, please some people. It would be people who listen to our show. Yeah, and people who watch the documentary and thought, I want to be able to. to make a documentary. I call the documentary. That's right.

They're all there, hundreds of them. So the first statement was, I quote, Fire Festival 2 is still on. We are vetting new locations and will announce our host destination soon. Our priorities remain unchanged. This is completely untrue.

Delivering an unforgettable, safe and transparent experience. That has never been there priority at any point during the process. Then it said, it's postponed, it will be rescheduled. Tickets are not currently available. So is it cancelled or is it not. But then, Charles, it emerges that, in fact, at the Martina Beach Club, the local

government actually wanted a limit of 250 people. And they'd plan for 1800. So there were major problems. But my favourite thing is then the following statement, which came out, which I'll read, because it's been a little bit of a movable feast this, Charles. They say on their website, you can't make this stuff up. Where the government takes you money, issues, permits, promotes the event and then pretends it's never heard of you. That's not just dishonest. It's theft. concerned about fraud that's shocking due to this we've decided to move fire festival to elsewhere it says here so uh that's the first batch of news how do you react to that charles i'm devastated like my my plans for late may are now in turmoil um i don't know what you're wanting me to say

there's there's a new there's but there's another opportunity though charles which is guess what the next beat of news is and this is an opportunity i think particularly not just for the chaser but for you as the sort of entrepreneur oh do they want comedians to go and perform no no it's even better than that um oh do they want to host they want to sell the brand they want to sell the fire festival buy the fire festival brand so they're like buying enron yeah that's right buying enron but less famous or phukushima so billy mcfarlane is selling the brand because And his quotes are so good. It's become bigger than anyone in person

and bigger than what I'm able to lead on my own. Now, that second statement is probably the first true thing he said. He's not capable of putting it on. And then the headline here from NBC, news is, it's a fire sale. Oh, very nice. So, yeah, so Adelaide has the Adelaide Festival.

Sydney has the Sydney Festival. Melbourne has the Melbourne Festival. Yeah, there's a new one called Rising as well. Yeah. Where does fire festival fit in? Is there one of those sort of offshore oil ricks? Yeah. Somewhere extraterritorial.

Where you can't sue for fraud. And it's literally on fire. You'd need, yeah, you said there'd be a flame, that's true. Oh, well, you need somewhere where you can't sue for fraud. I'll tell you in Jeddah yesterday in Saudi Arabia. Oh yeah. It was 47 degrees. There's a heat wave going on in the Middle East at the moment.

Oh my gosh, of course. It should be at Neon. And that Neon. It should be at Neon. That's perfect. Yes. And in fact, the release here, so this is from the festival's official Instagram page. And this solves one of the huge problems that Neum has at the moment.

Have you heard about the problems? There were so many problems. Which one are you talking about? Oh, no. So, yeah, it's a bit of a basket case. You could say it's a bit of a basket fire. Yeah. So it's this great Wall Street Journal podcast about it, which I encourage everyone to look up.

After you listen to, Amanda. Yeah, but it's, there's a two-part series on the journal podcast about the Neon. But in the second episode, there's a clip from one of the employees saying that one of the problems that he faced as an employee was that he was required to spend to his budget, right? Oh, that's hard. Yeah, and so. He didn't run the chaser like that. So just listen to what the requirements. were on him.

I think I was supposed to have spent six or seven hundred million dollars and I couldn't feasibly conceive of a way to expend that sum of money between July and the end of that year. So the point is that he was required to spend six or seven hundred million dollars, right? And he was told this in the middle of the years.

July, he had to finish the end of the year. So you've got to spend the whole amount. Yes. You can't spend. And this was true across every, in every budget line item, it was a similar sort of requirement. You had to spend your money.

You had to hit the opulence. And now listen to how much money he was able to spend. Andy says he'd only managed to spend two or three hundred thousand. He was only $59 million away from reaching his target. How is Billy McFarland not running now? Yes. But this guy, we can solve this guy's problem, which is he can just buy the five feet.

brand for six hundred million dollars and but the most fascinating thing and we'll get back to the five years but the most fascinating thing is the journalist who's doing this podcast asks the people why why did they want all this money spent and it was for proof that something was actually happening it was seen as no one believed that it was humiliating it was humiliating it was humiliating that it clearly wasn't possible to to actually do and so so it was sort of a Ponzi scheme to prove that. Just to prove that. So you had to waste money to prove that it wasn't a waste of money.

Yeah. And then it was beautiful because then it gets into how they do, because it's the Wall Street Journal, it's a bit nerdy. But they get into how what they would do is instead of backing down on plans that clearly didn't work or make any financial sense, is that they'd just up the projected revenue to match the cost of doing something. That's really. So they had this idea.

It's otherwise it would lose money. If we didn't have a ridiculous revenue projection. Yeah, it's sort of like Elon Musk's times a million type thing. But they had this idea for glamping in the desert, right, which was literally just going to be tents in the desert, right? And the whole idea was, oh, we can probably charge a couple hundred dollars a night for glamping in some desert. And then they realized, oh, but we don't have any food or water or anything.

Like, it would cost a huge amount of money even just for glamping. So they put the projected revenue of, which was that everyone was going to pay $790 a night to go and stay and attend in the business. You probably would. You'd probably pay $100 and then realize the water was $500. This is extraordinary. How is Elon Musk not coming?

Why do we get the person who runs firefills this? Well, to do the glampies. It's one thing he's terrible at. It's providing basic. Camping services, get them a slice of mouldy cheese. That's fantastic. This is perfect. I'm going to just read you the statement from it in their Instagram page.

I just love this. A new chapter begins after two years of building fire with honesty, creativity and relentless effort. It's time to pass the torch. We're officially putting the firebrand up for sale to the right buyer. The platform is yours. Execute the vision, make history. So I think Neon is perfect.

But how is Elon Musk not come into this whole thing yet? Because, I mean, making Neon work sounds like an absurd sort of Elon scale. This is the guy who wants us all to move to Mars. I mean, getting everyone to move to a habitable place in the desert of Saudi Arabia is, while impossible, less impossible than humans getting on Mars during his lifetime, surely. Sorry, are you talking about Elon Musk getting on board Neon? Yeah, I think Elon taking, like bringing fire over, but also then getting Elon to fix Neon. But my theory is that actually it is all part of the same money. Like the reason why Tesla is still trading, a trading company is because MBS.

The Saudis pay. Yeah. Is propping up, propping up his share price. Oh, there you go. They're propping up Twitter. They're propping up everything. Actually, you know what? As ridiculous as the Mars thing is, as Neon is, even the fire festival working

out an actual event, that pales compared to the idea that Tesla's autopilot will ever work. That's clearly never going to happen. I mean, I must say, I think that Elon Musk buying Fires Festival does make sense because certainly their SpaceX rockets seem to catch on fire all the time. Actually, every lordship. It's a fire festival. There you go. There you go.

All right, look. I wanted to go to the Fire Festival too. I'm disappointed that it's not going to happen. I think we should make a bid for it. What we'll have to do is get our lawyer involved to just kick the tie. Due to do some due diligence. You put Michael Bradley onto it and we'll play a clip after this of

his interview with Amanda on change makers you can hear just what a sensible fun fellow he is. And Charles, I don't know why someone who's clearly got enormous now, someone who's to do good in the world is representing you. That's very strange.

We're part of the Ocona Class Network which also includes change makers go and subscribe to it now. If we're going to talk about change making lawyers, this sort of contrast between the lawyer became in the lawyer within the system that you were in for 20 years. I actually would like you to unpack it for us. Like some people here who are listening to us will go, oh yes, I know about lawyer. I went to law school too, whatever. And then there's going to be a ton of people who've got

no idea what you're talking about. Tell us, define for us, paint a picture for us of what a typical lawyer isn't a typical law firm. What is the system that they're operating in? How do they work? What do they look like? Yeah, it's, I mean, it has elements of all of those TV shows. It's a bit rumpole, it's a bit Boston legal. Yeah, it'd be a bit suits, a bit, you know. Suits is a bit sexier than perhaps it really is. Yeah, but it's sort of, you know, they're all glamourized versions of the drudgery, of which there is plenty.

But it is, it is glamorous. And it is still, it certainly was when I started, you know, had high social status. Like, oh, you're a lawyer, you know, with a big firm, you know, like, it was a big deal. And you felt good about yourself. and you wear expensive suits. But yeah, there's a very, there's a model of how you are and a quite rigid structure that you go into. It's all governed essentially by timesheets.

Yeah. And the time sheet you learn very quickly is the thing that defines success and failure because that's how most law firms operate. They charge by the hour and those hours are measured on timesheets and every individual in the business has, you know, a target for how many hours they have to get on their time sheet every day. And that is the determinant of whether it's been a good day or a bad day, whether you get to that target or not.