constitute murder.
890 As with the incidents at Bindoon, Person 19 is an important witness for the respondents in relation to the incident at Lancelin, although the respondents also rely on other witnesses.
891 There was an event before the incident at Lancelin which is said by the respondents to be relevant.
892 Person 19 said that one morning in 2012, he, the applicant and Person 4 went to breakfast at a café near the Swanbourne Barracks. During breakfast, the applicant said that Person 10, who was new to the SASR, needed to be blooded and needed to prove himself. Person 19 did not need to prove himself because he had been with the Commandos and had previously deployed to Afghanistan. The applicant denied that such a conversation took place. Person 4 did not recall such a conversation, although he admitted it was possible there was such a conversation.
893 The respondents submit that the applicant then rehearsed his plan to blood Person 10 in May 2012 during a live fire training exercise at Lancelin. Person 4 was not present on that occasion as he had deployed to Afghanistan over that period.
894 Person 7 said that the troop conducted training at Lancelin at the very end of pre-deployment training in 2012. He said the final exercise in the week involved simulating the detention of a PUC in order to give the incoming troop commander and troop sergeant an understanding of the process. The troop commander and troop sergeant were doing their first deployment in these positions. I interrupt the narrative at this point to make two points.
895 First, the applicant made a very substantial attack on the honesty and reliability of Person 7. This attack was dealt with by the parties and will be dealt with by me in the context of the alleged assaults on PUCs. As I will make clear in that context, I find that Person 7 was an honest and reliable witness with respect to the principal matters upon which he gave evidence.
896 Secondly, the applicant's submissions about the incident at Lancelin focus on whether the applicant said the words attributed to him and referred to below. The circumstances surrounding the training exercise were not dealt with by the applicant in his submissions. The applicant's evidence concerning those circumstances was that there could well have been such an exercise at Lancelin where a member or members of the troop were playing the role of PUCs.
