The Australian federal police officer who authorised an undercover operation that resulted in an autistic boy being charged with terror offences has told a Senate estimates hearing that he would do so again under the same circumstances.
Guardian Australia revealed earlier this month that a Victorian children’s court had granted a permanent stay in the case of the boy, given the pseudonym Thomas Carrick, with magistrate Lesley Fleming making a raft of serious findings against police, including that they had fed his fixation with Islamic State.
The AFP deputy commissioner Ian McCartney said attempts to deradicalise the boy after his parents approached Victoria police in April 2021 had failed, and he was thought to be becoming a greater threat when McCartney authorised the major operation.
That operation involved Thomas being targeted by an undercover officer online.
McCartney, whose conduct was not directly criticised in the magistrate’s decision, told the Senate late on Tuesday that “if I had the same set of circumstances, I would sign that [authorisation] again”.
“He’d expressed a desire to carry out a violent act. He had expressed a desire to carry out a school shooting. He was researching material on how to build a bomb. He was engaging with likeminded individuals.
“There was a concerted three and half month focus on the CVE [countering violent extremism] strategy, however – a really important point – by late July the decision had been made this … was not working.
“The decision made by that [Victoria police] team was that it wasn’t being effective. He was becoming more and more radicalised.”
McCartney said this was when the case was referred to the joint counter-terror team, which includes AFP, Victoria police and Asio members, eventually leading to the decision to authorise an undercover operation.
He said that after Fleming made her findings in October last year the AFP initiated a review into its handling of the case, which will be overseen by deputy commissioner Lesa Gale, and he said would include a review of the conduct of the officers involved.
It will focus on the online undercover strategy and how Thomas was engaged with, the challenges the AFP face in these matters and how to handle similar cases in future, and the “flow of information” as part of that online strategy through the JCTT, including the information provided to McCartney before he authorised the operation.
But the Greens senator David Shoebridge said McCartney’s statement that he would authorise the operation showed why it was so “deeply troubling” there was not an independent investigation into the case, adding that the current review could not result in any officer being sanctioned.
Shoebridge referred McCartney to a specific passage of Fleming’s decision, in which she said the undercover operative’s evidence should not be admitted.
“The [operative’s] evidence in its entirety revealed an orchestrated litany of communications between the seasoned covert operator and the child over an extended period of time in frequency and regularity which was so highly improper to count significantly against the admission of the evidence,” Fleming found.
Shoebridge said the passage showed “a clear, unambiguous, extraordinary criticism of the behaviour of one of your undercover operatives … and that undercover operative, like you, is facing no possibility of sanctions”.
McCartney agreed that neither he nor the undercover operative was subject to a professional standards investigation.
Gale did not respond to questions from Shoebridge about whether she was able to sanction officers involved in the investigation, saying only that she expected to make a range of recommendations after a “transparent” review.
The AFP commissioner, Reece Kershaw, told the hearing that professional standards could “act at any time” to investigate officers involved in the case, should it see fit.
Earlier in estimates on Tuesday, the acting commonwealth director of public prosecutions, Scott Bruckard, said it was in the public interest to charge Thomas.
He also said the courts had previously acknowledged there was a “fine line” between acceptable and improper conduct when it came to the work of undercover operatives.
Bruckard said the CDPP was not currently reviewing the case.
He did not directly respond when asked by Shoebridge if he had ever seen “such a complete savaging” of a case as Fleming delivered, but said a permanent stay was “an unusual outcome” for a prosecution.
“We’re mindful of that. It was an unusual, difficult case,” he said.
“We’re conscious of the criticism that’s been leveled at some of the activities of the police in the course of the investigation.
”I point out in the course of the ruling delivered by the magistrate, she also said that there was sufficient evidence of criminal conduct in the ... possession of investigators for the young person to be charged.”
