The Wieambilla shootings was a religiously motivated terrorist attack in Australia on 12 December 2022. It involved the killing of police constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow, and neighbour Alan Dare, at a remote rural property in Wieambilla in Queensland.

Three residents, brothers Gareth and Nathaniel Train, and Gareth’s wife, Stacey Train, were subsequently shot and killed by responding police.

On 17 February 2023, Deputy Police Commissioner Tracy Linford said at a press conference, “We [Queensland Police] don’t believe this attack was random or spontaneous” and “There is absolutely no evidence at this time that there is anyone else in Australia that participated or assisted in this attack.”

Linford stated that the Trains were religious extremists who subscribed to “a broad Christian fundamentalist belief system known as premillennialism” and that the attack was religiously motivated.

Linford said police reviewed more than 190 statements and recorded interviews, the Trains’ online history (including a YouTube channel littered with Christian symbolism and quotes as first reported by Crikey) and even Stacey Train’s own diary.

Weeks later, ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) director-general Mike Burgess said the spy agency had worked with Queensland police and agreed with its conclusion.

“We believe the shooting was an act of politically motivated violence, primarily motivated by a Christian violent extremist ideology,” Burgess said during his annual threat assessment speech delivered on 21 February.

Despite both agencies’ teams of experts assessing the Trains’ motives based on extensive evidence – much of it not made public – prominent Australian Christian figures concluded otherwise: the Wieambilla killers were not really Christians.

Family First-backed candidate in the March 25 NSW election and former Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) managing director Lyle Shelton said the police’s determination was “quite offensive”.

“There is nothing in Christianity that justifies the murder of police or anyone for that matter. It is not possible to be ‘Christian extremism’ because what occurred was not Christian,” he posted on Facebook.

His successor at the ACL, Martyn Iles, said attributing motivation for the attack to “the most popular eschatology in evangelical and Pentecostal circles” proved that “we’re living in clown world”.

Iles, who has since left the ACL, called on Linford to show that premillennialism permitted violence, before linking the designation to historical Christian persecution: “In ancient Rome, the authorities blamed Christianity for the evils of their day because they either hated it, or were totally ignorant concerning it. I guess history can repeat.”

Dave Pellowe, an organiser of the 4 March Brisbane Christian political conference labelled Church and State, argued that Islam or belief in climate change would be more likely to cause violence than premillennialism in an article titled “Queensland Police just called all Christians ‘terrorists’”.

“Such a link would be easy to draw, as it is with false religions whose founder was a murdering war lord terrorist with a track record to back up his explicit incitements to violence,” he wrote for his Christian online publication The Good Sauce.

“There is more basis for prepper terrorism in the climate alarmism dogma preached by leftists, globalists and elitists than such orthodox Christian doctrine as premillenialism, so why isn’t the lying harlot media (LHM) blamed for this tragedy? That’s at least somewhat plausible.”

Attendees at the conference were urged to flood the Liberal Party with members to gain long-term conservative Christian influence.

Greg Barton, Deakin University terrorism and violent extremism expert, pointed to the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch mosque mass shootings as an example of Australian-grown, right-wing terrorism.

“[ASIO and Australian police are] very good at disrupting large, well-organised plots … but everyone struggles with the lone actor attack,” Dr Barton said.

“They would look opportunistically for soft targets; the Christchurch mosque, at the time of the attack, was a soft target. It was welcoming and friendly and didn’t have tight security.”

Dr Barton said Australia’s court system is better equipped to deal with Islamic terrorism than right-wing terrorism.

“There’s been a number of cases in which the judge ruling on the case has put on record their findings reflecting a real blind spot when it comes to understanding the nature of far-right extremism,” he said.

“It undermines efforts to build trust with communities, so members of the Muslim community were saying, ‘How come when it’s one of our kids, a brown kid, a Muslim, they immediately get a heavy response from the law, but [when] a white kid does something that seems even more serious, they get dismissed’? That undermines faith in competence in our society.”

New Zealand barrister Brian Henry is broadly in agreement, although he takes issue with the phrase “better equipped”.

“Better equipped is the wrong word,” he says. “They are more conditioned to accept and find Islamic terrorism than white right-wing terrorism.

“Both New Zealand and Australia struggle with white misbehaviour. Sadly it took the Christchurch tragedy to lead reform in that thinking.

“Both countries’ systems have a long way to go. The leadership is waking but the rank and file are still working on ingrained thinking and stereotypes.

“There is hope in the future but we are not there yet. We’re working on it.”