Murray Olds: Australian correspondent on the ongoing manhunt in Porepunkah

Victoria police say the search for a man who shot and killed two officers will take longer than expected. 

The two men were gunned down on Tuesday while attempting to serve a search warrant at a rural property in Porepunkah - 300 kilometres outside of Melbourne. 

A major police operation is underway to find accused gunman Dezi Freeman - who could still be armed.  

Australian correspondent Murray Olds says hundreds of officers are tracking the suspect down - and helicopters are on the scene.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
International correspondence with Ends and Eye Insurance, Peace of Mind
for New Zealand Business. Murray old Ossie corresponders with US hems,
very good afternoon, Heathers. Still not track this guy down, No,
and look, conditions are dreadful. It's raining, absolutely bucketing down
down there. It's very very cold. There's a cold front

(00:21):
whipping through wins, you know, strong enough to blow a
dog off a chain. And it really is very tough going.
And the follow they're looking for. I mean, you've got
literally hundreds of police, you got dogs, you've got helicopters,
you've got coppers on motorcycles. I dare say police on
horseback as well. It's that sort of country if you
can imagine the toughest part of the West Coast, in

(00:41):
the down South or maybe the Coramandel, and it's that dense.
And here's the thing. The guy they're looking for, he's
des philby You also known as Desi Freeman. We get
it because he is a man who was He's not
a fan of the law. He says he got sovereigns,

(01:02):
does not obey police, does not recognize governments. He knows
this country very very well. He's been living in a bus,
very primitive, off the grid with his wife and two children.
They are accounted for. They went to see police I
think Tuesday, not a Wednesday morning. So he's been on
the run, of course ever since he shot well, the
allegation is that he shot dead the two police officers

(01:22):
and wounded a third. And he knows the area very
very well. He's a good bushman, knows the country, can
live out in the in the rough, in the field,
so that you know, this hunt will go on until
they find him. Do we know yet what the police
were turning up to talk to him about. Yes, it
was in relation to allegations of some sort of underage

(01:44):
child sexual activity. That the allegation is he was involved
with this in these sexual offenses against at least one
child under the age of sixteen. So we don't know
anything further beyond that. That's what was released, right, you know,
in the immediate aftermath of this, of this tragedy down there.
I mean, it really is a hell of a shock wave,

(02:06):
not just through Victoria. I mean, you know, it doesn't
happen every day and day, right, the two police officers
doing their jobs get shot dead and they don't go home.
It is very, very shocking, and people have responded accordingly.
You know, to be down there in Victoria, you basically
you just can't believe what's happened. I mean, you heard
just Center Allen there. She's absolutely shocked the call. Yeah

(02:28):
too right now, See Britney Higgins has lost her defamationation.
She has You know, this is just a slow motion
drama that's played out of the men. She was attacked
six years ago in the office of Linda Reynolds, who
was a minister in the Morrison government. She was attacked
by Bruce Lherman, her colleague. They were both staffers for
miss Reynolds, and that was definitely proven. It was found

(02:52):
to the satisfaction of the Federal Court last year that yes,
she was raped by Lherman. But the the thing here
is that Britney Higgins and Brittney Higgins then alleged in
a series of social media posts that basically her boss
and the boss's chief of staff, both women, basically tried

(03:15):
to persuade her to play it down. The suggestion was that,
you know, look, let's not take this too far. Okay,
we've got the federal election coming up and so on. Well,
Forlinda Reyndolds, who was the Minister of the Morrison. That
was absolutely intolerable. She said, under no circumstances would I
walk away from what happened to that young woman. Never

(03:36):
and the same for a female chief of staff. You're kidding.
Neither of us did anything of the sword, and that's
now been proven. She sued Higgins for defamation and has
been and has been vindicated in the Supreme Court in
Western Australia. Basically, what happened, I mean Higgins was raped, yes,
and the Federal government in a one day hearing paid

(03:58):
her two point four million dollars is without getting any
evidence whatsoever from Senator Reynolds. And so she's now going
after the Commonwealth saying, well, hang on a second. All
that did, all that did was reinforcing the public eye, Heather,
that I'd done wrong. And what now is going to happen.
It's a minimum three hundred and thirty five thousand Australian
dollars and damages that they have to be paid by

(04:20):
Higgins toward too rentals, but her legal bill, Heather could
be in the order of one and a half to
two million dollars. They have to have sold their house
in France that they bought with that payout, and you know,
the saga just drags on and on and on. But
a comprehensive victory for Linda Rendols and her chief of
staff is going through a separate avenue. But she also

(04:42):
is going to be claiming some sort of compensation. That's
the apparently what's going to happen. Thanks for talking us
through that. It's Murray Old's Australia correspondent. For more from
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