Threatening to drive a tank through Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station landed a Ballan man in the Ballarat Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.
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Malcolm Willett pleaded guilty to separate incidents that included using a carriage service to menace and knowingly possessing child pornography.
He was placed on a two-year community corrections order.
The first charge related to threat Willett made to a Public Transport Victoria worker on December 27 last year.
He had called PTV to ask about the public holiday timetable, but became threatening when he did not like the response he received from a staff member.
Willett also breached a community corrections order.
The child pornography charges stemmed from an incident when Australian police received notification of child pornography being uploaded to a messaging application.
Using the name Dexter80, Willett exchanged texts with another user that discussed child sex offences in detail.
An Office of the Public Prosecutor representative said Willett admitted to police he had been drinking before the phone call to PTV.
“He said terrorists plots foiled by the AFP (Australian Federal Police) were nothing compared to what he could do,” she said.
“He said he would use an army tank.”
The prosecutor said Willett claimed he had been trying to stop pedophiles when he committed the crime.
“The accused told police ‘I go online to catch all the sickos you cops do not’,” she said.
Defence counsel Miss McGrath said many of the hallmarks of child pornography cases were missing in this instance.
“It is at the lower end of the scale – there were no images in this case,” she said.
“This was case was about a misguided attempt by Mr Willett to correct what he saw as an injustice.
“The offending was of short duration and targeted towards people he thought was a danger.”
Mr Willett completed 250 hours of community correction work before he made the menacing phone call to PTV.
A psychiatric report also said he had borderline personality disorder, was diagnosed with ADD at 15 and had been admitted to psychiatric hospitals.
Magistrate Robinson said Willett was pushing very closely to a term of imprisonment.
“This type of conduct that he continues to engage in cannot be allowed,” he said.
“How is the community to be protected.”
Miss McGrath said Mr Willett could be rehabilitated if he was afforded the opportunity to engage with corrections over a significant period of time.
