Zach Rolfe bragged about doing ‘cowboy stuff with no rules’ in Alice Springs

Text messages sent by Zach Rolfe to his former fellow soldiers, but kept from the jury at his trial, reveal he thought of Alice Springs as the “wild west” where he got to do “cowboy stuff with no rules”, it can now be revealed.

TEXT messages sent by Zach Rolfe to his former fellow soldiers, but kept from the jury at his trial, reveal he thought of Alice Springs as the “wild west” where he got to do “cowboy stuff with no rules”, it can now be revealed.

In one message, now able to be published for the first time after a suppression order was lifted on Friday, Rolfe told the other man “Alice Springs sucks ha ha”.

“The good thing is it’s like the wild west and f*** all the rules in the job really, but it’s a shit hole,” he wrote.

“Good to start here because of the volume of work but will be good to leave.”

In another message, Rolfe discussed his work with the Immediate Response Team, which was dispatched to Yuendumu in the lead up to his fatal shooting of Kumanjayi Walker.

“We have this small team, IRT, Immediate Response Team,” he wrote.

“They’re not full time, they just get called up from (general duties) for high risk jobs, it’s a sweet gig, just get to do cowboy stuff with no rules.”

In arguing for the text messages to remain secret, Constable Rolfe’s lawyer, David Edwardson QC, said his client would lose the opportunity to sue for defamation based on the imputations prosecutors had sought to draw from them.

“The prosecution unsuccessfully argued, or sought to argue, that there was some sinister connotation to what was said,” he said.

“Those text messages were made to members of the army and they were made in the context of the army, nothing to do with this case and nothing to do with the context in which he was charged.”

Zach Rolfe leaves the Supreme Court during his murder trial. He was found not guilty on all charges. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

But Crown prosecutor, Philip Strickland SC, said any concerns about defamation were unfounded as the text messages were merely Constable Rolfe’s own words.

“Those text messages are communications from the accused himself, so the submission about, if they are published, them being defamatory, of course, doesn’t run,” he said.

“They are simply communications by the accused in his own words, which relate to his attitude or his thoughts about the IRT, or the police, at a particular time.”

In revoking the non-publication orders, Justice Burns said any possible damage to Constable Rolfe’s reputation had to be measured against the importance of the principle of open justice.

“Whichever way one looks at the matter, while there may be some embarrassment, and potentially some damage to the reputation of Mr Rolfe, if that material which is subject to the suppression orders is published, that is of lesser importance, in my view, than ensuring that the public has the means of scrutinising the decisions which have been made by this court,” he said.

Rolfe was found not guilty last week on all charges over the shooting death of Mr Walker in Yuendumu on November 9, 2019.