Hoax package "waste of resources"
Media Conference, Winchester Police Centre, Canberra
Commander Shane Connelly, Deputy Chief Police Officer, ACT
Dr Charles Guest, Chief Health Officer, ACT
David Prince, Chief Officer, ACT Fire Brigade
Thursday 9 June 2005
Shane Connelly: Thankyou ladies and gentlemen. My name's Shane Connelly, I have Dr Charles Guest on the left and David Prince on the right. Charles is our Chief Health Officer and I'm the Deputy Chief Police Officer in charge of Investigations Support; David of course is in charge of ACT Fire Brigade. And in starting this media conference I'd firstly like to make you aware of some good results in relation to the seven incidents we've had this morning at various places involving a powder substance. The good results are that that both the British High Commission and the Japanese Embassy have proven to be clear through analysis at ACT Pathology. That said, I'd like to start this conference today to say that the ACT Policing condemns in the strongest terms the waste of resources associated with the spate of white powder incidents that have occurred throughout the ACT and I believe in other Territories today. These resources involve police, fire, ambulance, and pathology and take us away from our normal duties. Every time these incidents happen, an offence is committed, but there's more than that to it: every time an incident such as this happens someone in a mailroom somewhere has been traumatised, has to go through a decontamination process, is worried about their own health. Every time an incident such as this happens an investigation that we would otherwise be doing has to be postponed or put off so that we can do these investigations. This impacts on all our resources which means that ACT Police can't do it s job properly, it means that ACT Fire Brigade who've got other business they need to be doing in terms of protecting the public can't do its business properly. These offences have to be condemned at the highest level. They're nonsensical and we will be pursuing the offenders with vigour. I might add I will be talking to the Director of Public Prosecutions in terms of seeking to have costs, and I mean costs of all agencies involved, sought from these persons if we bring them to justice. It's a nonsense, it's a waste of resources and it's a silly way for any person to make their point - political or otherwise. That said, the response today has followed our normal protocols, we've utilised all our resources and I thank all the agencies involved. I also want to thank our agencies nearby in NSW who've provided us assistance in liaison. I'll let David talk about that. Certainly resources in Goulburn and Queanbeyan in terms of fire and ambulance have been assistance, as have the NSW Police Service. That said I'll hand it over to David first and then to Charles.
David Prince: Thankyou Shane, I think it's important to send a message to the whole community that suspicious substances coming through the post is absolutely irresponsible. Such actions achieve absolutely nothing and I concur with what Shane has already said. The Brigade is experienced in these matters and has dealt with this type of incident on a number of occasions with ACT Policing, ACT Ambulance and obviously ACT Health since 2001. The Brigade has nine appliances as normal; we have stood up four extra appliances today to ensure that we have 13 appliances dealing with the district and we have asked NSW, both from Queanbeyan and Goulburn, to send pumpers to be available and on standby to assist in the local jurisdiction. The brigade has extra resources being sought through the NSW Fire Brigade if such incidents occur again so that HAZMAT teams are available to respond to these incidents. I've also ensured the ACT Rural Fire Service are dealing with all bush and grass fires and the ACT SES have assisted in supporting agencies across the board in the Territory. Thankyou.
Charles Guest: From the point of view of ACT Health these incidents are very serious in tying up our pathology services and other staff from the Health Protection Service and elsewhere, and we deplore them in the strongest possible terms.
Reporter: Given that the assumption that we make is that people doing these things are seeking a response and visible reaction, do you accept that there is some difficultly with the media in terms of how to report them and I take it if you're a calling a press conference, it means that you want publicity about a hoax, and obviously the question is: is that they way to go?
Shane Connelly: Look, I want the publicity and the media services today, to let the public know what's going on out there. People have a point to make and I understand political differences; your question is very valid. Margaret Thatcher once said that "the media is the oxygen of the terrorist" and equally media in relation to events such as this, may encourage people to go on with this. I think the public needs to know and these people who're doing it, what they're really doing, who they're really hurting. The statement they might be seeking to make is just a waste of money and the only people they're hurting is the very country that they may be trying to represent or their cause - they're hurting their own cause. It's a nonsense, it's a stupid way to do things. There's free speech and it's welcomed in this country and there are ways that people can demonstrate their upset or disagreement with policies or whatever. But this way is traumatising people in mailrooms, people who are just doing their job, these are just workers. The only thing they're (offenders) doing is causing pain and suffering and fear to those people and they're taking away resources from their very own country away from necessary work that we need to be doing; this is what we're paid to do - work for the Australian people.
Reporter: You talk about hurting their own cause; are all the events today linked? Are they related to the four previous incidences that we've had? Can you give us some details?
Shane Connelly: Ok, look it's too early as you can understand. We go through a series of HAZMAT processes before investigators can get access to the material; most of the material would be safely locked away in Charles's laboratory in air sealed rooms and we don't have access. So it's too early to talk about links and links between them, but I can say we will be pursuing by all means, that's using ACT Policing resources and seeking assistance from Australian Federal Police nationally and other police services, working together from an intelligence-driven perspective, to seek to prosecute these people. They might think they're anonymous but we will try and seek them out.
Reporter: You talk about other incidences in other Territories; are there more of these incidences today not in the ACT? And also can you run through the five embassies?
Shane Connelly: I'll talk about the ones in the ACT today: there are actually seven places. The United States Embassy, the British High Commission, the Japanese Embassy, the Italian Embassy, the Korean Embassy and there was the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and Parliament. Those are the ones of today. I mean policing throughout Australia has suffered these offences since post September 11. In fact they peaked quite strongly in all territories immediately after September 1 and it's a nonsensical thing to do. And the people out there doing them they just need to think who they're really hurting because they're not hurting anyone bar the innocent. What they're hurting is society in the sense that we're not getting to do our job.
Reporter: Do you feel as though their taunting you?
Shane Connelly: No look I don't think that, because at the end of the day we'll do our best to lock them up and then it'll be up to the courts to make a decision as to what their fate should be. So I don't feel that. But what I do feel is that they just need to have a good look at themselves and have a look at how cowardly in they're acting. If they had a cause to speak of, by all means stand outside of somewhere with their sign or whatever they want to do in a lawful way. But to do it in such a cowardly way and attack a person doing a simple and arduous task, is to me it's benign, it's ridiculous, it's just so unnecessary and it's so un-Australian.
Reporter: To what extent do you think the public fuss over what happened at the Indonesian Embassy has excited this event today?
Shane Connelly: Look that's a hard question to answer - you don't know whether we're talking about the same or other offenders; we don't know if you're talking about people who are copycats. It's just very hard to answer. I really can't answer that because you could see certainly post-September 11 we had a spate of these, then it calmed down. I think we were down to about six per quarter at one stage in the ACT and now all of a sudden we've had a resurgence happen.
Reporter: Any reason why so many today?
Shane Connelly: It's just impossible to answer until you know what's going on in the mind of the offender or the offenders, and what sort of ideas or ideologies or what's driving them; it's just too speculative.
Reporter: ?
Shane Connelly: No it doesn't lead me to think that at all. What I'm saying quite clearly is that we will be following all avenues of inquiry; policing is about keeping an open mind and pursuing offenders or offender.
Reporter: Were there any notes in any of the letters or?
Shane Connelly: Too early for me to say that.
Reporter: White powders?
Shane Connelly: As I said I can tell you that we're dealing with substances in envelopes - that's all I can tell you. The nature, the consistency -- I can't talk about because it's detrimental to the investigation.
Reporter: Given there have been so many instances today, have there been any local happenings in Canberra that you haven't been able to attend or where you've had to just not send people because you've been to tied up with this?
Shane Connelly: Nom what we've done is we've utilised our resources and we've called in additional resources to cover all the normal events of ACT Policing, so it's particularly when you involve detectives we have nearly 100 detectives in the ACT and all of them have ongoing inquiries, so by all means some of those inquiries have had to be suspended today so that they could pursue this. But they will go back to their normal caseload, and we'll set up a team or teams to investigate these matters.
Reporter: The localised media coverage over what happened at the Indonesian Embassy and in fact the Government came out and was quite openly making statements and diplomatic moves when that happened - to what extent do you think these sorts of actions and media coverage can influence or produce copycats?
Shane Connelly: Well they can produce copycats but also they can produce public opinion and public condemnation and I believe that public condemnation through your services and through what Australian people will be thinking right now in their homes may make these people think twice and may make them think about alternate strategies to make their political point or points.
Reporter: Are they on a political agenda?
Shane Connelly: No, look whatever their agenda is - I don't know what their agenda is. Their agenda could be they're just crazy. But I can't answer that, so you're right. I would suspect that some of them have a political agenda; some of them may have other problems that they might seek some help with.
Reporter: The sheer number of events today means that it's going to take longer to actually get through all the samples?
Charles Guest: Each test takes time and that's time taken away from processing patient samples, doing other work in a pathology laboratory that we'd like to be getting on with. So yes, this ties up skilled technicians for quite some time.
Reporter: Can you do all seven at once, or do you have to do them at…
Charles Guest: No we don't have the resources to do them all at once; we have been looking carefully today at how we can process more quickly than when we just get one or two. But the laboratory is seriously tied up all afternoon.
Reporter: Are some embassies having to wait for results…..
Charles Guest: The answer to that is it's not a simple process of lining up the seven samples. Getting samples to the laboratories is itself a very demanding task for the Fire Brigade, so until we get the sample, already a lot of work has been done to get it there safely. And the actual wait limiting part of this process is something that we'll have to look at carefully.
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