What is motivating that kind of behavior amongst young children? Do experts know what drives children to inflict that kind of harm on others?

Yeah, look, it's a really complicated picture, and I'm not a psychologist myself, so I can't really put myself in that mindset.

But, you know, one thing that comes up time and again in these sort of matters is this idea of community and group membership.

You know, once you're in these spaces, things can become normalized, and a lot of the collection and sharing of this material is about building status.

So in some cases, entry into more exclusive or higher levels of chat rooms was predicated on the creation of new material, whether that be sexually explicit material, child sexual abuse material, or violent material.

So it's a very complicated thing to understand from the outside.

I did speak to the prosecutor of this matter in Sweden, and she told me, you know, this idea of motivation had been a big topic of the trial, to understand what exactly was happening here.

What are experts that you've been speaking to saying can be done to help protect children from being dragged into these parts of the internet?

[protesters chanting]

So as I turned up and, like, turned onto George Street, I could see posters about vaccines.

I could see posters about 15-minute cities, which is a kind of conspiratorial understanding of a town planning idea that claims it's a way to lock us down and put us under government control instead of being about walkable cities.

Um, I could see T-shirts with the line "Expose the 28" on it that refers to a conspiracy theory that spread widely in Australia about a twen- a list of 28 elite pedophiles, including a prime minister.

I saw things about the Russia-Ukraine war.

You know, it really showed to me how so many of these ideas had kind of merged and were able to share space.

Even if people didn't show up for the exact same reason, they shared a common sentiment, and the idea was that there was something really wrong in the world, and, you know, that's not a unique feeling.

Has the effect of that been long-lasting or do you think that- People are now less susceptible because we're mostly out of that era.

Now, early speculation around, uh, the motivation of the Train family members was that it centered on sovereign citizen, uh, sovereign citizen ideology.

A- and it's an example of how these beliefs can lead you to extreme acts because they are extreme beliefs.

When you say that you are on the side of good and other people are on the side of evil, and you think that they're doing terrible things and maybe not just threatening yourself, but perhaps threatening and actually harming lots of other people, that kind of mindset leads you very quickly to deciding that you wanna take e- extreme response yourself.

And if you spend any time in these communities online or even in person, they are ones where talk of violence is pretty common.

Thankfully, it doesn't often become real acts, but it does enough for it to be a, a serious threat.

So tell me how worried you are that Australia could head down that same path.

Look, it's, it's hard to compare different cultures, uh, and different countries, but the effect on individuals varies widely.

Like saying that you believe that Harold Holt was kidnapped by the Chinese in a submarine, very different to saying that you think that, you know, vaccines are filled with microchips and so you won't let your children or anyone else in your life get vaccinated.

Why did that case stand out to you?

So for a few years now, I had noticed a kind of steady drumbeat, I suppose, of young people, children as young as 13, 14, being charged in Australia with an offense of possession of violent extremist material, both federally and in South Australia, which has its own specific laws on the books.

And this case of Sarah, which is a pseudonym, struck me when it started being reported in the media and I chased down the court documents in order to more fully understand what exactly had happened here.

So Sarah, sh- she was 14.

A family member found disturbing videos on her phone and reported them to police.

Counterterror detectives came and seized her devices, her school laptop.

And when she was interviewed by police, Sarah told them a lot about what her interests had been.

Do these laws do that?

And since then, it's been seven years, the propaganda that the attacker filmed you've seen come up in separate, completely unrelated cases.

That's right.

So as part of my reporting here at The Guardian, I do track certain cases associated with extremism or terrorism offences.

And, you know, here in Australia, the government has regularly raised the alarm about the number of young people showing up in these cases.

So there was a case in South Australia when a boy was 14.

He had downloaded more than a dozen videos of the terrorist attack.

that happened in Christchurch.

One person you did speak to, Hank Terran, Chief Executive of Open Measures, he seemed to suggest that there was a lot more Australia could be doing to stop people from becoming radicalised.

In what circumstances are police in Australia allowed to use or carry less lethal weapons, Ariel?

So different police forces have different what they call use of force handbooks.

And I think what really got us interested in this topic was this steady drumbeat of protest, I suppose, here in Australia and the police response.

We started to see social media posts of, you know, different items that police were holding.

We saw videos of people being pepper sprayed at protests in Melbourne.

And that got us kind of curious about this category of less lethal, like how is it being used? What tools do police have? And we found really there's been very little public debate or accountability about the rollout of these tools among Australian police.

If you look back at the history when OC spray, pepper spray was introduced in the 80s and 90s, it was really couched as a new police wonder weapon, that would mean they did not have to turn to firearms or lethal force or even physical violence when faced with a violent threat themselves or in a situation where violence was threatened on other people.

There's such a wide range of things that police can do now if there's a case of disorder, I suppose.

Tell, talk to me about what it is about the nature of the internet that's really supercharged them.

Yeah, it's an interesting one.

You know, people do make the, a claim that the internet has made more people believe in conspiracy theories, and we question that.

I mean, I also question the sort of term believe.

What does it really mean when people b- say they believe in a conspiracy theory? Because if we're honest with ourselves, like, we all dabble in these ideas.

They can be kind of fun, like the claim that, you know, Harold Holt was picked up by a Soviet submarine and spirited away, or, you know, that Farlaf was killed by American gangsters.

These aren't, like, extr- these aren't stories that, um, you know, raise red flags immediately.

What did they tell you?

I'm sorry about that But there is no other way! There is no other way !

and there is this famous photograph of him wearing a bulletproof vest while addressing a crowd i think in the victorian town of Sale This was the milieu in which Howard was trying to sell this idea broadly of gun reform because he wanted to bring the country with him.

It was difficult but it was pushed through and I now think it kind of takes a symbolic place in Australia's political history.

You know a lot of people point to that as a moment of true bipartisanship a moment where the country really came together and decided No it was not acceptable for people to have access to Firearms that had that much power That could kill that many people so quickly...that Bulletproof Vest image has become so iconic Many of the photos too of the gun buyback that came in after reforms were passed Semi Automatic umaa and automatic weapons became largely illegal Like all those weapons in general had to be passed in and people could hand in weapons that were now illegal Orr they could pass in weapons that they no longer wanted on Could legally Own Urm in exchange for some financial compensation And then so there's these iconic images of huge bins full of guns and metal detectors At tips Sort of carrying the Weapons across Really Extraordinary imagery It was also After that that this Genuine Reason For Owning a Firearm Came In So the Idea that you could Just own Firearms without having To Explain Why you needed them Or for the Some loose idea of Self defense That Was done With

What have you discovered exactly? What are they being used for, if not for these things?

So i- one issue with the whole gun control, uh, regime in Australia is the lack of data I think about exactly w- where people have firearms and for what reason.

So we were quite limited for that reason to the state of New South Wales, which at least has some gun ownership numbers and statistics broken down by area.

So that we could see that in New South Wales there had been a 10% rise in firearm ownership, um, over the past five years, and overall there are at least 2,000 new guns lawfully entering the community every week.

(booing)

And there is this famous photograph of him wearing a bulletproof vest while addressing a crowd I think in the Victorian town of Sale.

This was the milieu in which Howard was trying to sell this idea broadly of gun reform because he wanted to bring the country with him.

It was difficult but it was pushed through and I now think it kind of takes a, a symbolic place in Australia's political history.

You know, a lot of people point to that as a moment of true bipartisanship, a moment where the country really came together and decided no, it was not acceptable for people to have access to firearms that had that much power, that could, that could kill that many people so quickly.

That bulletproof vest image has become so iconic.

Many of the photos too of the gun buyback that came in after reforms were passed, semi-automatic, um, and automatic weapons became largely illegal.

What have you discovered exactly? What are they being used for, if not for these things?