By Jessica McSweeney and Mackenzie Price
It was the $700,000 water cannon that NSW Police supposedly needed after the Cronulla riots. Now the truck has been quietly auctioned off – despite not firing a single drop of water at any rioters.
After a string of violence across Sydney in the early 2000s, including riots in Cronulla and Redfern, the water cannon was purchased by the state government as a way to control violent crowds.
The police water cannon was fired for a media event here in 2007 – but never at rioters. Credit: Brendan Esposito
Despite the then-government insisting the water cannon was a much-needed tool for police, it was donated to Fire and Rescue NSW in 2019 without ever being fired. The Herald can now reveal the police’s most famous white elephant was stripped of its firefighting gear and sold last month.
Repurposed by FRNSW as a bulk water tanker, the vehicle had much more success fighting fires than protesters. Brought to fire grounds as a way for firefighters to easily replenish their water reserves, the former police vehicle was used to combat blazes at the Jenolan Caves in 2020.
Data obtained by Nine News through freedom of information laws shows the tanker was called out to 81 incidents from November 2019 to August 2024.
It was used by firefighters as a back-up water supply that trucks could tap into at a fire ground, and outside of fire seasons as a way to provide a water source to communities experiencing drought.
Given a different lick of paint and renamed a bulk water tanker, the vehicle was used to fight fires at Jenolan Caves during Black Summer.Credit: Fire and Rescue NSW
A Fire and Rescue NSW spokesperson said the vehicle was put up for auction not because it was no longer useful, but because it had reached the end of its service life.
It’s a quiet end to one of the NSW Police’s most controversial purchases.
Few in the force even wanted the water cannon. In 2004, after the Redfern riots, then-NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said there was no need for tactics such as rubber bullets or water cannon.
“This is not Northern Ireland, this is Sydney NSW,” he said.
A water cannon is used in a riot in West Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2002.Credit: AP
In 2005, he told the ABC after the Macquarie Fields riots: “I think when we’ve got to the stage of issuing water cannons, sprays, Mace and these sorts of things, in that sense we’ve really lost the plot.”
The Morris Iemma Labor government made the purchase anyway, and the truck was unveiled two weeks before the 2007 Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit (APEC), which attracted thousands of protesters.
Other than a media event to show off its capabilities, the cannon was never fired. At a budget estimates hearing in 2023, now-Acting NSW Police Commissioner David Hudson said, “it probably never should’ve been deployed”.
He said after it was donated to FRNSW, “it was deployed down the South Coast and, I am told, saved three lives”.
“So it sort of justified it. We would still have never used it,” he said.
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