A young police cadet borrows a mate's Ford wagon to take a trainee nurse to the academy ball. On the way home, a car comes up alongside on a dark road and a man holds a wallet out the window.
What happened next is the reason this submission exists. There was no help within reach, and there was never going to be. What stood between two young people and four men was an ordinary car jack held against a shoulder in bad light, and the fact that nobody could be certain what it was.
The film is told in pictures and text. It runs three minutes and forty-one seconds.
A deterrent that no longer exists
The bluff worked in 1978 because an offender could not be sure. That uncertainty was the whole of the defence — no shot was fired, no threat was made, and nobody was hurt.
The same bluff would not work today. There has been so much civilian disarmament that no offender would seriously believe an ordinary citizen might be armed. The deterrent that once protected a young man and his companion on a dark road has been legislated away — and the people it protected are not safer for its loss.
That is the argument the Hidden Shield framework sets out to answer: not by arming the public, but by making it impossible for an attacker to know where trained, vetted and accountable protection might be present.
Read the framework Support this strategyStatus of the submission
This film is not endorsed by the Royal Commission
In June 2026 this submission went to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. The Commission acknowledged receipt the same day and advised that it was reviewing the matters raised. That is not an endorsement. The Commission has not agreed with any part of the submission, and nothing in this film should be read as suggesting that it has. The submission is before the Commission for consideration; that is all.
The film also refers to Vincent O'Dempsey, who was convicted in May 2017 of the 1974 murders of Barbara McCulkin and her two daughters. Those convictions are a matter of public record. No claim is made that the men on the road that night were connected to him. Their identity has never been established, and the author does not assert it.
Written and directed by Lawrence Lyons, retired officer, Queensland Police. Assembled from a first-hand account contained in a submission to the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
This is a draft. A longer version is intended.