‘Catastrophic, premeditated, calculated murder’ prompts security talks

Australia’s top law officers will investigate the options to set up a strengthened national gun register after the shooting of two police officers and neighbour at a rural Queensland property last year.

The conspiracy-laden concoction of views espoused by those responsible, spanning right-wing, religious and self-described “extremist” elements, has also sparked a secretive security agency briefing for national leaders.

The Wieambilla property in which lived brothers Nathaniel and Gareth Train, along with Gareth’s wife Stacey, and where the shooting took place.Credit: Nine

Constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow were killed alongside Alan Dare after visiting the Wieambilla property inhabited by brothers Nathaniel and Gareth Train, along with Gareth’s wife Stacey, in December.

The brothers had a history of firearm breaches and possessed “significant weaponry” at the site of the siege, where the conspiracy-fuelled Trains were also shot dead, with questions raised about information sharing between Queensland and NSW authorities.

“It’s quite clear that we need to do better in co-operation between jurisdictions when it comes to firearms,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters after a meeting of national cabinet on Friday.

Albanese said this was a “necessary measure”, with leaders agreeing their attorneys-general would report back with options by the middle of the year at their own regular meeting.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had flagged her intention to raise the long-running lack of a true national firearm register – labelled a “national disgrace” by the Australian Federal Police Association – in the days after the attack.

Such a database was first recommended more than 30 years ago after mass killings in Victoria, repeated after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, and fast-tracked after the 2014 Lindt cafe siege.

But the outcome, dubbed the Australian Firearms Information Network, has not yet lived up to expectations because of the patchwork data across jurisdictions and lack of real-time detail available to police.

The Australian Federal Police Association praised the fresh action, with president Alex Caruana telling this masthead loopholes allowing the purchase of ammunition for prohibited weapons were among other issues needing to be addressed.

As Queensland police, including its specialist counter-terrorism team, prepare a report for the coroner on the December event and what may have contributed to it, Albanese said ASIO director general Mike Burgess had also given a “high-level briefing” to national cabinet.

This included talk about the rise of right-wing extremism, “so-called sovereign citizens” and other matters, Albanese said, following discussions about the attack among leaders on Thursday night.

“The catastrophic, premeditated, calculated murder that occurred there on the basis of a warped ideology ... requires us to do what we can to keep the citizens we all represent safe,” he responded to a question about federal terrorism law reforms under way and whether he thought the label applied to the attack.

“We know that the threat is real and tragically, we’ve seen the consequences of it.”

An ASIO spokesperson said the agency regularly provided political leaders and ministers with sensitive intelligence briefings which would be inappropriate to elaborate on.

Experts had previously questioned the decision of Queensland police to shy away from applying the label of terrorism to the killing. Burgess spoke last year about growing concern at ASIO over online radicalisation fuelled by the pandemic.

Existing long before the pandemic, both the FBI in the United States and NSW police have deemed sovereign citizens “domestic terrorists” or a “potential terrorist threat”.