The Lindt cafe siege inquest has heard that NSW Police might have had difficulty in accessing the expertise of the Australian Defence Force.
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Counsel assisting the coroner Jeremy Gormly, SC, suggested on Wednesday morning that there might have been legal and institutional roadblocks to police calling on the ADF for specific capabilities, short of a full handover, during the 2014 crisis.
"We have perhaps the unhealthy consequence of [a federal] system [where] the NSW Police Force are trying to manage a siege [and] don't have a capacity, but the people they deal with [the ADF] do but they can't access that capacity," he said.
The inquest heard that the ADF had stood up a tactical team from its Holsworthy base and had observers at the police forward command post, as well as at the state crisis centre.
The ADF had also assessed police plans to bring the siege to an end and deemed them feasible.
However, confidential protocols between the Commonwealth and state related to an ADF deployment in a domestic setting may have hampered the NSW Police from accessing some defence capabilities.
