The opening of the NSW coronial inquest into deaths resulting from the Sydney siege smacked more of a PR affair to show that something was happening, when in fact not much was happening. It was kicked off by the NSW Coroner as a showpiece one-hour event last Thursday, at the same time the Commonwealth-State six-week review into the siege was being wrapped-up.



It was a strange curtain raiser for the coronial inquest, only to have it adjourned to a date and place to be unveiled before the end of March. The Coroner doesn’t yet have this important investigation listed as a forthcoming inquest on his website.

We know some of the key details announced by counsel assisting, Jeremy Gormly, had already emerged weeks ago – including the fact that fragments from police bullets were responsible for the death of barrister Katrina Dawson.

The joint Commonwealth-NSW review is being run by bureaucrats from the PM’s and the NSW premier’s departments. It will entirely be a “Yes Minister” affair and we’re unlikely to see any public embarrassment for Asio or other security agencies.

It has now been well ventilated that Asio dropped the ball on the siege gunman Man Haron Monis, after he was threatening an Islamic school principal and sending deranged letters to the families of dead soldiers.

The terms of reference announced by the prime minister on 17 December can be found here.

The NSW police are conducting an “independent” critical incident investigation and the AFP also has its own inquiry. So far the police have stayed schtum about what’s going on there, but there’s ample scope for blame redistribution, finger pointing and duck-shoving.

Nowhere is there a full-blooded public judicial examination run along inquisitorial lines that crosses all jurisdictions and all the Commonwealth and state agencies that have their fingerprints anywhere near the siege itself and its perpetrator.

One would have thought the very politicians who conspicuously parade their security credentials and legitimise a draconian intelligence apparatus, owe the Australian people nothing less than the truth.

At least the coroner’s inquest in NSW is an inquisitorial investigation, largely untroubled by the rules of evidence. The issues it wants to explore have been announced, and include: the particulars of the deaths of each person, security issues concerning Monis as a risk, all aspects of the gun used by the assailant, whether the prosecuting authorities handled bail issues appropriately, Monis’ mental health, siege management, and whether the siege could be categorised as a terrorist attack.

All of this has been separated into six different hearing segments: facts of the siege, the hostage experience, siege management and procedure, Man Haron Monis, bail, and the gun.

The NSW coroner is not expected to trespass too far, if at all, into the responses of Asio and the AFP.

Once we know whatever facts that are permitted to be uncorked there are a couple of other big question that are begging for investigation, but won’t be. Are unexpected attacks in Australia or on Australians linked in any way to our involvement in Iraq and if so what can be done about it?

While the siege was underway on 15 December there was an interesting discussion on the Lowy Institute website with terrorism expert Adam Dolnik. He’s an expert on terrorist-hostage negotiations and terrorist psychology. He said Monis’s attack was “amateurish”, and driven by what are likely to be attention-seeking motives. A professional terrorist would have made sure he brought along his own Isis flag. This person didn’t really know what he was doing and the demands he made “were not useful for Isis propaganda”.

Dolnik could not see an “end game” in what Monis was doing. “The plan-ending is missing.”

Since the 2005 bombings in London the trend has been away from centralised and coordinated jihadist attacks in the west. There hasn’t been a single successful al-Qaida linked attack in the west for the past decade. Maybe intelligence agencies have been successful at heading off synchronised bombing missions.

The Martin Place siege has been declared by Joe Hockey a “terrorist incident” for insurance purposes, but that doesn’t mean it was an act of terrorism.



One thing we do know is that both the coroner, Michael Barnes, and counsel assisting, Jeremy Gormly, are experienced operators.

Barnes was a coroner in Queensland and conducted major inquests in that state before becoming NSW state coroner. He had a brief stint as a journalist, only to have the good fortune to be sacked by News Corp editor Col Allan. Barnes’s father is the famous Age political reporter and deputy editor, the late Allan Barnes.

Gormly’s name will be familiar to inquiry watchers. His imprint can be found on investigations into the Gretley coal mine collapse, the Thredbo landslide, the Andrew Mallard murder conviction in Western Australia, an Icac investigation into an alleged assault at NSW parliament by Joe Tripodi, corruption in NSW Railways, and the McGurk Tapes.

These two lawyers know the ropes. Let’s hope they give us the answers.