The Offence of Using a Carriage Service to Make a Hoax Threat in Australia

New South Wales police charged a 23-year-old woman with 14 counts of use carriage service to make hoax threat last Friday, 29 May 2026, after officers executed a warrant on Bundjalung land at a residence on Murwillumbah’s Hall Drive, following a multiagency investigation into bomb threats targeting schools that commenced early last year, finally apprehending its alleged culprit.

Tweed/Byron Police District detectives commenced the investigation, after a hoax bomb threat was made against a school in Murwillumbah in March 2025. And following further threats towards schools across NSW, the investigation was broadened, so as to involve the NSW State Crime Command’s Cybercrime Squad, the Australian federal police and the NSW Department of Education.

Thirteen bomb threats were made towards schools across NSW between March 2025 and May 2026. Detectives also inquired into two bomb threats made against airports, one in NSW and the other in Queensland, which were considered linked to the spate against schools. And following the raid, which saw multiple electronic devices seized, the woman was taken to Tweed Heads police station.

The 23-year-old Murwillumbah woman has further been charged with one count of use carriage service to threaten serious harm and another involving possession of an unregistered firearm. And she was scheduled to appear before Bail Division Bail Court 1 on 30 January 2026.

Making false threats by phone or internet

Section 474.16 of the Criminal Code Act 1995 (Cth) contains the offence of use carriage service to make a hoax threat, which carries up to 10 years prison time.

To prove that the woman perpetrated any of the 14 counts she’s been charged with, the prosecution will need to show beyond a reasonable doubt that she used a carriage service to send a communication and that she had “the intention of inducing a false belief that an explosive, or a dangerous or harmful substance or thing” had been or would be left in at a particular place.

Section 7 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth) defines a carriage service as “a service for carrying communications by means of guided and/or unguided electromagnetic energy”.

Such communications can involve using a landline phone or a mobile, in order to make voice calls, send text messages or to communicate via messaging apps. Using a carriage service also includes internet transmissions, which can involve sending emails, using social media platforms or even exchanges over online dating apps.

The offence of use carriage service to make hoax threat sits under division 474 of part 10.6 of chapter 10 of the Criminal Code and contained within this division are 17 separate substantive criminal offences involving the unlawful use of carriage services.

Defences against using a carriage service to make a hoax threat

Self-defence is one of the defences that is available against a charge of using a carriage service to make a hoax threat. This statutory defence is contained under section 10.4 of the Criminal Code. If a court finds that a defendant perpetrated their act in self-defence, then they’re not considered criminally responsible for the crime they’ve been charged with.

But it is difficult to see how the 23-year-old woman allegedly making bomb threats might raise this defence.

Self-defence arises when a person considers the conduct that they’ve been charged in respect of was necessary to defend themselves or another person from harm, or to prevent their own or another individual’s unlawful deprivation of liberty.

Self-defence can also be argued in terms of when the defendant was protecting property or was attempting to prevent or end criminal trespass. But it cannot be argued in respect of protecting property or disrupting criminal trespass if the force used actually caused death or serious injury.

Given the right circumstances, the defence of duress seems a more plausible defence to argue against a charge of use carriage service for hoax threat. Sitting under section 10.2 of the Code, duress involves an accused arguing they carried out an illegal act in order to avoid a threat made against them, as there was no other way to avoid it, and the wrongdoing was reasonable given the threat.

Another clear defence that could be raised to the types of crimes the 23-year-old allegedly took part in is the defence of mental impairment, under section 7.3 of the Criminal Code. This defence made out means that the defendant was not criminally responsible for the offences they’ve been charged over because they were suffering mental impairment.

There are a number of ways that the defence of mental impairment can be said to have led a defendant to commit an illegal act, these include the individual not having understood the nature and quality of their conduct, or they did not understand that what they were doing was wrong, or that the individual who’d been suffering mental impairment could not control themselves.

There exists an automatic presumption against a person arguing the defence of mental impairment actually having been in that condition, and their defence team has to prove to the court that they were in such a state to the civil standard of the balance of probabilities, which, if accepted, means they were most likely suffering the impairment.

The Criminal Code recognises mental impairment can include “senility, intellectual disability, mental illness, brain damage and severe personality disorder”.

Fake threats to blow up a plane

In terms of the 23-year-old Murwillumbah woman’s spate of crimes having potentially involved making a hoax bomb threat against two airports, another notorious bomb hoax incident that occurred on 26 March 2019, involved a Newcastle man in his late 30s placing a phone call to Mumbai International Airport, and claiming a bomb was onboard a flight then bound for Singapore.

The man’s only apparent link to the specific flight that he’d targeted was that a relative of his was onboard. And while the claim was ultimately deemed a hoax, prior to that understanding, the threat had resulted in significant delays to a number of airlines in Singapore, while that nation’s air force had been deployed to respond to the incident.

Singaporean authorities working together with the AFP traced the call back to the man’s address on Awabakal and Worimi land in Newcastle, and he was later arrested and charged at Sydney Airport.

The man appeared in Downing Centre Local Court on 5 February 2021, after he’d pleaded guilty to one count of use a carriage service for hoax threat. The then 40-year-old was sentenced to 2 years prison time, with non-parole set at 12 months.

“These matters are not taken lightly,” said Matt Parsons, then AFP Sydney Airport Police Commander. “Hoax threats cause a substantial loss of resources and time for the airline, the airport.  It also jeopardises the safety of members of the public, airport workers and the authorities who need to investigate the incident thoroughly.”