I think it was the funniest thing the Chasers have ever done but yes, it could have ended in disaster if someone had been a bit trigger-happy.
Ths SMH poll results reflect what everyone has said all along and that is why the hell did we need APEC in Sydney in the first place.

Yes it was funny but it could have cost a life, will we still laugh if the next terrorist attack uses the idea.
Or if the blunder puts the crew in prison to save face?
Bit over board bit rude hugely funny but.

I really cannot see this stunt having cost a life. The police snipers are not going to start spraying bullets around merely because things below look a bit odd. If they did that they could easily end up killing legitimate APEC delegates.

Now, if Chaser Chas had pulled out a machine gun, things might have been different, but of course Chas was never going to do that.

The idea that someone could have been killed is just spin introduced by the Police Commissioner and others in an attempt to justify their claim that this stunt should not have taken place.

Was it really funny? I know a lot of people who think it was downright stupid and irresponsible

I thought it was magnificent, on so-o-o-o-o many levels!

First of all, it made an absolute mockery of the security that has been such a major feature of life in the city this week. Teams of police on every street corner and every railway station, barriers across key intersections, convoys of riot police in shiny new black 4WDs racing through the city with lights flashing... and one team of comedians drives to the front of George Bush's hotel.

Priceless.

The red faces are everywhere - "a stupid stunt, they could have been shot", "they were arrested, just shows the security works"... lots of spin.

Bit of a problem, though.

Send them to jail, big public backlash.

Don't send them to jail, show up the "APEC Act 2007" as the bureaucratic farce that it is - and make it a little more difficult to throw all those hippies in jail at the weekend.

I reckon they did everyone a favour. The security services will have to a) take their job a little more seriously and b) take themselves a little less seriously - a very positive combination. Until this incident, they were so far up themselves it was embarrassing.

And they gave us a good laugh.

Well, most of us. There's probably a dried-up ex suburban lawyer somewhere watching the last nail being hammered into the coffin his political career.

There's every chance they'll be acquitted anyway. They deny intending to enter the restricted area, claiming that they did not realise that it was one, or in other words, believed that it was not one. Provided they're believed, and a court finds that their belief was reasonable in the circumstances (despite being wrong) then that's a defence in law.

There's also the issue of being waived through by the police. That could constitute permission, which would make their entry into the restricted area lawful.

Sylvia.