The Chaser Report - How To Become An Arms Dealer | James Schloeffel

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Intern Aleksa manages to penetrate the tight security at an arms fair to pitch some innovative products, James Schloeffel of The Shovel reacts to the $500 lockdown handout, and Intern Zander reveals a more efficient way to listen to this podcast. Oh, and Craig, Dom, Charles and Bec do what they usually do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Friday, the 4th of June, which means we've made it at the end of two weeks. Charles, congratulations. Yes, what a great date is except for people in Melbourne. What a wonderful, you know, the whole of Australia is just going to have so much fun this weekend except for people in Melbourne. Now, a very interesting news item yesterday. I don't know whether you saw this.

The ABC has pulled an episode of Four Corners. Oh, really? had potential links between, and again, this isn't proven, Scott Morrison and QAnon. It never occurred to me that the PM could have something to do with that strange group in the US that think that liberals, you know, eat babies and stuff like that. Yeah, well, it's the Q&ON are the people who believe that the world is run by a cabal of Satan worshipping pedophile. Yes, and that Donald Trump is the one to save us from it.

But you're saying that Four Corners had a report on this. They were going to do it. And perhaps they thought, you know, we're getting on so well with the Liberal Party post the Christian Porter. settlement, just not stretch the friendship this week. Maybe that was part of the settlement and we'll also drop the Four Corners. But no, that is very interesting because I wonder where Four Corners were getting their information from because in our very last show, which was called the Anti-Experts Guide to the pandemic, James Schleffle and I from the Shovel, actually exposed Scott Morrison's links to Q&ON in our live show.

So have you got a conspiracy theory about how Four Corners got wind of this conspiracy theory? Well, it's true. Like, it is actually true that one of the big proponents of Q&On in Australia is a guy who goes under the name Burned Spy online. And his wife, he's on Scott Morrison's staff, or at least was until very recently. They're basically family friends. So, yes, he does have enormous links to Q&ON. I can tell you, I can reveal for the very first time on this podcast. Well, because four corners isn't going to touch it.

They are cowards. They are cowards. Either that. There's even photos. Either that or Four Corners is in league with Q. Ah, yes. Of course. They're just, they're all Satan.

Well, that's the whole thing about Q&N, isn't it? Like, if anything ever happens, you just say, oh, well, they're in on the conspiracy, aren't they? Ida Butros, she probably eats babies for a living. That's probably how she gets her sustenance. You heard it here first and probably also last. Also on today's show. So, in turn, Alexa, goes to an arms dealing conference. I couldn't be here for that, so I'm looking forward to that conversation.

And we crossed down to Melbourne to talk to James Schleffle about Scott Morrison's new COVID disaster plan. And if you find this daily podcast a little bit too long and difficult to listen to every single day, have we got a trick for you? That's all and more coming up on the Chase Report, but let's first of all go to the Chase News headlines. Scott Morrison has announced 100% of essential workers have received the COVID vaccine. Those vaccinated are himself, his mum, his wife, his daughter, his other daughter, Rupert Murdoch, and Just For Laughs, the family dog. So everyone essential now has the vaccine. In world news, Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has stepped down,

saying he wanted to spend more time murdering children. And it's Pride Month this month, and as part of the celebration, the Chaser would like to remind our listeners that no matter what your gender or sexuality, you're still a valuable revenue source to us. That's the latest Chaser news, less news, more often. I'm Rebecca Deunamuno. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Pride Month. Hey look, we made our logo rainbow-coloured.

What a help we were when you were being beaten on the streets. Craig's here, it's the Craig segment. Now Craig, joining us now is one of our very lucky interns. Sir Volovic. Is there a own? Vullovich. It's good to see you treat the interns well, hey? I mean, you know, look, we sack them so quickly.

We don't like to learn their names or anything. If you learn their names, you become familiar with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To get sentimental. Anyway, we sent up to Brisbane this week. Why do we send you up to Brisbane? There's a big arms expo for the past three days, biggest military expo in Australia. No, no, this is what we've always worried about, okay?

This is Charles is always into expanding the chase into areas. And I just, the number of times we've told him not to become arms, manufacturers or buyers or set up his own army, don't do this, okay, Alexa, man? You should have gotten, gotten, gotten, talking to him, you know, a few days ago. Yeah. He already sent me and, um, the horse has already bolted them on the back track. You'll be happy to find out that they didn't like any of the ideas I pitched. They didn't want to buy any of our products.

Did you get in? Yeah. Somehow out of, how did you get in? Like, is it just open, can anyone go in who wants to buy my arm? It's invite only. So you have to be a weapons manufacturer and you have to earn more than like, I think it was like $25 million a year or something.

Okay. And so I'll send you up there with the idea that maybe you'd be able to sneak in via a goods lift or something like that, right? So how did you actually get in? Look, I think we were quite lucky in the fact that we were so disorganised that we couldn't go on the first day.

So I only showed up on the second day. But given that extra time, I was able to Google land forces. And on Twitter, you've got all these pictures of people with their lanyards just like smiling at the expo. Oh, very good. That's pretty sneaky. That's clever.

This wasn't planned. This was a complete accident. But ended up finding the lanyards, copying the design vaguely. I don't know how legal. I got a late night call from Alexa the night before going, can I just copy and paste the logo and put it on a lanyard? And I said, because I'm, you know, big on not being illegal, right? Yes, yeah.

I said, I think that might be actually illegal. But also, what did you do with the QR card? Oh, right. So I saw there's a little QR code. I'm like, I assume they scanned this. And I just got a QR code of the Chaser website, popped it on the ID. Like, I was quite sure that we weren't going to be let in. Also, they had like orange lanyards, office works and they had black ones.

Like it was, you know, it was a long shot. Yeah, yeah. But it was. So he was whilst in there. I presume you were in a suit, were you? Yeah, I was in a suit, my formal suit from when I was 19. I was going to say, I mean, you're young, right? Yeah, I think you.

They don't look like, I presume you're average chance, matter of fact. I'm an up-and-coming arms dealer, you know, trying to break into the market. But did they scan the QR code? That's the insane bit. Like, we went through two different security guards. One guy kind of looked at it. Obviously, like, my thing is completely fake. It's like a third of the size of all the other passes, all the wrong colours.

He waves me in. So it was different size as well. I mean, I could engage properly the size. Also, I didn't have a printer, so I had to rely on someone else. He made it the same size as it looked on Twitter. Yeah, exactly. And I had the tweet around it as well. You had a picture of another guy holding it.

And yeah, got past that guy and a lady went to scan it. She scanned it. I have no idea what appeared on her scanning machine, but she was just like, come on through. And after they had the conveyor belts with like the security stuff, they sent my back through. I had all my recording equipment in there. They didn't mind that. I had a lapel mic like taped to my chest underneath my clothes.

Went through the metal detector. It did a beeping thing. And then you took out the handheld metal detector. I went over the lapel mic. It beeped exactly where the mic was. I'm like, oh, fuck, okay, this is my time to go. And I think he just assumed it was my lanyard like chain. or the metal bit from there

and he's just like hop on through and I just came face to face with the giant tank. Well, there you go. I mean, it's good to know there's crap security at an arms convention. Yeah. This is great to hear.

And were there guns and things like that? Could you have conceivably walked away? I was having so much fun. There were so many guns. I was shooting everyone at the convention. Yeah, but what, so what did you do on the convention? It was confronting. The first thing I saw as I went in, these two guys

and like full body armor, like digital exoskeleton things. They kind of looked like Darth Vader and they were just wailing. on each other. They had all these weapons. You're kind of demonstrating how much you could throw each other around, all these people in suits watching and applauding. This is like they're in exoskeleton type thing. Yeah, this is like future tech. Oh no. God, we're going to die. Yeah, it's pretty horrible. But I spoke to one of the dudes, one of the exoskeleton guys. And I asked him, I was like,

oh, you know, it kind of looks a bit like Darth Vader. Don't you feel like you're the bad guy, what you put this on? And he was like, yeah, yeah, I do. But it's actually a good thing. He was like, it helped, once I put this mask on, it kind of dehumanizes it and I don't feel as responsible for what I'm doing. Oh, that's good. That's a good thing. He's like, this is great. I can kill it random and not care about the consequences.

He was so open. And he just kept going. He's like, yeah, and it's really good for like domestic kind of right situations. If people are like on the street, you know, you put this on and you can just like do whatever you want to them. Oh, shit. Like, who do you think you're talking to? He's just going to really screw over those climate strikes.

Exactly. Hey kids. And then, but you were there to sell arms. Oh, yeah. I had some cool weapons. So I went to the big, big guys. I went to Lockheed Martin, one of the biggest, or the biggest, or the biggest arms manufacturer in the world and so tried to sell one of our missiles. The pitch was that there are no war crimes in

space. So we're going to make a missile that shoots so high up into space that by the time it comes down, the Geneva Convention doesn't count. Oh, that's good. But they're just like, yeah, we've got that. Yeah, we've done that already. I think it's just like, well, the Geneva Convention never stopped us before, so I don't think that's really a marketable device. And so we've got a, the first video came out last night. It's available on Twitter, at Chaser, on Facebook, which is at the Chaser. And the TikTok. For the young ones. Yeah, which is at chaser.com.

Do you want to just give a hint of what that one? Well, I tried to get into the arms convention as an arms dealer, but what I had was a whole bunch of mannequin arms. So I was just trying to get in there selling arms and confuse us for why they wouldn't let me in. That's very good. Well, look out for it. Thank you.

Nice job. Yeah, Alexa. Well done. Are you ready for the next arms convention? Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Pride Month. To celebrate, the Chaser is releasing a special limited edition Rainbow Defamation Lawsuit Complete with glitter

The Chaser Report More news Less often So Dom I'm really excited There's a new sequel coming out For A Quiet Place Oh the Emily Blunt John Krasinski horror movie thing

Yes yes Where they don't say anything at all ever The whole movie is just completely silent Yeah it is incredibly exciting It did so well I've got to say that I saw the trailer I'm worried it might be a little bit too quiet.

Oh, really? Let's have a listen. Coming to cinemas this winter, relive all the wonder of a quiet place in a quiet place too. Packed with danger. Full of action. and with a mission that will defy all the odds.

I don't think this format really works on audio. A quiet place too. Look, you're just going to have to take out word for it that it's any good. Today's episode of The Chaser Report brought to you by Pride Month. Please buy all of our tacky rainbow shit. Now, Charles, on the show quite a lot recently, we've headed down to Melbourne to find out how people that we know and love are coping with the lockdown. But I don't think we should do that anymore.

Instead, I think we should head to Melbourne to find out how people that we're very fond of are coping with the extension of the lockdown. So James Schlevel of the shovel joins us once more. Hello, James. Hello, Tom. How are you? Probably a bit better than everyone in the entire state of Victoria right now. Yeah.

Yeah, do you know what? It's just really, really boring. I think that's the best way to describe it. Like I've literally just finished Netflix and moving on to Stan. And like, you just run out of things to do. I'm actually thinking of getting a COVID test just for something to do.

Just to get out the door. I think that's why the testing numbers are so high in Victoria at the moment. I think most of those people are just finding an excuse to get out of their house. But the big news this morning, James, is that yesterday afternoon, Scott Morrison announced that at last, was actually going to do something for the people of Victoria.

Oh, well, it must be taking the vaccine roll out seriously. Is that what he's doing? No, no, he's not doing that, no. Oh, what's he doing? Is it jobkeeper, Charles? He rolled out jobkeeper to the people of Victoria who can't work. Yes, I've heard about this. The COVID support payment that he announced yesterday.

Yes, yes. I've heard about this. What I've heard is it's going to provide $500 a week for those working 20 hours a week or $22 million. for those who own a chain of furniture betting at electrical stores. Oh, that's great. And so do you happen to own a furniture and electrical chain? I don't.

Oh, I don't. But I don't think it's good. I mean, there is one catch, though. It's only going to apply to people with less than $10,000 or more than $1.5 billion in liquid assets. Sounds fair. Yeah, well, that sounds very fair. So as angrily, Scott Morrison is handing out money, but. he's going to find the dickiest way to do it.

I think there's probably about four people who will be eligible for this. Jerry Harvey and about three other people. Yeah. And then the other detail that I saw yesterday was that they're going to get Victorian, Victoria's government to pay half the cost of the scheme. Is they right? Oh, I didn't see that.

Yeah, yeah. I think it's because they honestly think that Victoria is just locking down to get the benefits. Like they're sort of the dull bludger of Australia. Yeah. I mean, we just do this shit for fun these days. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

It was encouraging, though, James, to see Dan Andrews actually coming out with a statement saying he's back on deck reasonably soon. I'm not quite sure when, but he told Victorians to keep fighting and the Herald's son's taking him up on it immediately. Yes. I'm sure they have. Look, Dan Andrews, he's a funny figure in this state. People either absolutely fucking love him or absolutely hate him. And I'm sure that tweet just brought back all the memories for everyone. So, James, how long do you think this lockdown is going to go for now?

I mean, it's been extended once already. The case numbers haven't blown out. Do you think it's going to be 2022 or 2023? I think we're just going to take it a week at a time. It's just that torture, you know, of not knowing. It's a bit like Pavlov's dogs, you know, like where you just, it's that unexpected. You just don't know when you get that electrical shock.

You just don't know how long this will last. So it's quite traumatic. Yeah. I mean, our heart really goes out to you and I hope that lockdown finishes very, very soon. But as against that, it's been very handy for the structure of our new daily podcast to cross-terrain down in Melbourne

to find out how they're going, how to tell them that they've got this. Yeah, what are you going to do, guys? When Melbourne comes out of lockdown, you're not going to be able to do anything for content. Four words, super spreader event in Sydney. Charles, I'm sure everyone's podcast at the Chaser report

and I busted Xander the intern the other day listening to the podcast at this speed. Have a listen again. Zandie, get in here. I want to ask you some questions about this. Hello, yeah. This is, you're listening to the podcast at Optimal. speed.

How do you understand? You can't understand it. Yeah, you can. Like, turn it up again. You can definitely hear that. Have you got some sort of super hearing? Or is it just that you're young? It's a super brain.

No, I think I've just trained myself to listen to that speed. Do you listen to all podcasts? Yeah, all podcasts. Because I started listening to like 90-minute long podcasts, right? And a lot of the time, the reader speaks like this. So once you set it to three-time speed, it's perfectly listenable. We don't speak. Let's turn it up again.

Oh, okay, yeah, maybe you're right. It's fairly intelligible. But it must be so unpleasant. It must feel so stressed. But I hear you guys speaking for like six hours a day already, right? Yeah. So I'm trying to like be efficient about the time, my own time. I have to listen to you guys speak.

So, Zanda, when we said to all the interns, please, you've got to listen to the podcast all day on all channels, every device you can find to boost the numbers. Are you doing it at this speed? I'm not sure it counts for the stats. No, it definitely does, right? Because that's the thing. The other interns,

they probably don't spend 20 minutes of their day listening to the podcast, right? They're lying. Me, it's only like six minutes of my day. That's very achievable. That's the walk from the station to the office. When you listen to this later today, will you, that'll be on nine times speed, weren't it?

Yes, it would be incredibly fast. Maybe. Let's just speed this bit up nine times faster in post-production so everyone can hear what that's like. Good luck, everybody. But Charles, should we actually ask Zanda some random questions about yesterday's podcast to see if he was actually paying attention? Yes. What was the podcast about, Zander? Victoria's back in lockdown. It's been extended for another week.

You were talking about how in the headline segment there was the new Channel 9 ad about their ultra-white COVID ad. Okay. So Charles, is it that we're just old and doddery and don't have the ability to listen to something three times speed? Well, I think the good thing is that, you know, like, if this is seriously the pace of Xander's brain, then I don't have to worry about him because, you know, like, it doesn't matter if he doesn't ever house. It's clearly a genius. Yeah, by the end of the year, he'll be our boss. That's fine.

But there is an upside of this, which is that if you don't have time to listen to us every day, triple speed. Exactly. then you can get like the whole week. But my app doesn't even do triple speed. Like I use the Apple podcast app, but it only goes up to double speed. I checked it out. And double speed you can't understand it.

It's an inferior podcasting app, Charles. What do you use? Pocket casts. Pocket casts. All right. Well, if you have pocket casts, you've got no excuse for not spending the six minutes a day enjoying this very relaxing comedy podcast.

The Chaser Report. Now with Extra Whispers. Charles, just before we go, a bit of good news. We've been worrying about coal, and the energy crisis and pollution. You'd be glad to know that as of yesterday, it has been solved. Oh, great. Yep, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have actually taken over an old coal plant

and they're turning it into a brand new kind of energy producing facility we've never seen before, and it's incredibly exciting. What sort of power do you think it is? What is it coal power? It's nuclear power, Charles. Oh, great. It's a new kind of nuclear reactor called a natrium reactor. And they say it's very clean and fantastic.

Natrium. Well, it must be natural if it's got natry. Yeah, it's nature's energy source if that wasn't already the brand of a bullshit supplement company. And I have never heard of a nuclear power plant going wrong. But that is just, as far as I'm concerned, in the whole history of nuclear power plants, which is not very long, there hasn't been a single disaster that's led to decades and decades of problems. No, but Charles, that was old nuclear. This is new, advanced nuclear.

It's much cleaner. It's actually much less dangerous in that way. It does have a little caveat in this article from The Guardian. It does say that nuclear power experts have warned that these advanced reactors could have higher risks than conventional ones. But what could possibly go wrong? What could possibly? On that happy note, I think we should end the show.

Yes, have a great weekend thinking about that. In the meantime, plenty of news up at chaser.com. And you can find us on the socials as well. Why not spend your weekend in lockdown writing us a five-star review. Thanks to Road microphones for our gear and we're part of the ACAST Creator Network. Goodbye.