Marc Fennell investigates John Friedrich and the National Safety Council of Australia fraud
You probably haven’t heard of John Friedrich, the visionary chairman of the Victorian division of Australia’s National Security Council in the 1970s and 1980s who launched an elite search and rescue operation that defrauded investors and banks of almost $300 million.
Nor did Marc Fennell, despite his obsession with forgotten chapters of Australian history (Things the British stole, Nobody Saw It Coming podcast). When brain host – with director Corrin Grant, his collaborator on the art heist series Framed And Mission – They were all in it when they came across Friedrich’s extraordinary story.
“We looked at each other blankly and said, ‘I’m sorry, there was a guy running his own business.’ thunderbirds Is Victoria out of the country?” says Fennell. “That’s actually not such a bad starting point… It’s one thing to make documentaries about the things everyone’s talking about… But if we’re not going to say that these stories, who is he for God’s sake? “If this had happened in America or Britain there would have been 14 movies made about it by now.”
Grant was astonished to learn about Friedrich: “’Why have I never heard of this man before?’ I thought. The story grew very quickly. And sometimes that happens in news cycles. And then he left. Marc always says Australians aren’t very good at telling their own stories. And it’s an incredible story.”
Highlights from the two-part series Australia’s Biggest Scam? Three journalists who never forgot Friedrich: Hugh Riminton, Kerry O’Brien, and Richard Fidler, a former member of the Doug Anthony All-Stars comedy troupe who foiled Friedrich’s manhunt.
“Kerry O’Brien said something very strange to me,” Fennell says. “‘This is the most frustrating story I’ve ever worked on,’ he said. Consider this man’s years of work and his legacy as a journalist. It’s an interesting admission.”
It has been difficult to find former National Security Council staffers willing to speak during the period in question. Many continued to work in emergency departments and did not want to compromise their careers. Some of them were so traumatized that they couldn’t trust anyone ever since. Others remained fiercely loyal to Friedrich.
“‘If John came into this room right now and said he was going to get the band back together, would you follow him?'” Fennell says. “I would ask.” “And a surprisingly large number of people said, ‘Yes! In a heartbeat.’ There are a million scam stories out there, but here’s a guy who didn’t do it to get himself rich.”
Interviews are mostly shot in sheds or bars.
“I wanted it to feel like you were eavesdropping on a conversation,” says Grant. “It’s like, ‘Here’s a story so amazing you won’t believe it. Stay with me because it’s real.'”
A pub rock soundtrack accompanies archival footage of National Security Council training exercises, which is pure James Bond. As well as para-rescue involving dogs and even pigeons, the group has also pioneered aerial firefighting.
“People who encounter the National Security Council will say, ‘Oh, they had a lot of toys. They had a lot of equipment,'” Grant says. “And especially towards the end, when spending got out of control, [Friedrich] I almost collected them. So I thought it was a playground that he created… Not the people involved. “They were doing incredible work.”
According to Fennell, the most fascinating part of Friedrich’s story is the deception.
“Anyone who has lied about anything knows that those lies put a burden on you,” he says. “It’s a cumulative effect. I’m looking at the footage [Friedrich] towards the end and I swear you can see the weight of the lies. You watch Kerry O’Brien interviews with him and [the late] George Negus is playing cat and mouse, but I can see the pain he’s feeling as he tries to keep his balls in the air. You could argue that the lesson is about the weight this has on him.
Australia’s Biggest Scam? It will premiere on SBS and SBS On Demand on February 24 at 20.30.
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Bridget McManus is the television writer and reviewer for Green Guide. He was deputy editor of Green Guide from 2006 to 2010 and currently writes features and interviews for Life & Style in The Saturday Age and M magazine in The Sunday Age.
