The Independent Police Conduct Authority was about to release its report on fleeing driver incidents, an issue that was bound to attract plenty of public attention.
Then he received a phone call from the Canterbury district commander.
"It was advising to me that we had an active shooter situation at the Deans Ave mosque."
He immediately rushed from his eighth floor office at Police National Headquarters to the third floor command room, where he helped lead a major national response.
That included watching the livestream the alleged terrorist was broadcasting.
"We knew exactly what was going on."
In his role, he had three main responsibilities in the immediate aftermath.
Firstly, to establish a command cadre, appointing a national commander.
Then he had to set priorities for an immediate response — public safety, the victims, and the safety of staff responding.
And lastly, he had to notify the national security team.
That was all within the first 10 to 15 minutes.
Within 18 minutes and 59 seconds, the alleged terrorist had been arrested.
"Those first few hours is really making sense out of chaos.
"We didn’t know if there were multiple points of attack, we didn’t know if this was solely at those locations or whether there were other locations nationally under threat."
That meant mobilising the entire police force, he said.
"Despite the fact it was the first incident of this nature and scale and tragedy, our response showed that we were really well prepared."
