A senior Lindt Cafe siege negotiator admits he underestimated gunman Man Haron Monis, and has spelled out a litany of flaws in his crew's equipment.
The police officer, identified only as "Reg", told an inquest into the December 2014 siege that a specialist negotiations truck which "would have made the job much better" has been out-of-action since 2011.
Instead, negotiators were forced to work from a cramped gaming manager's office at a nearby leagues club, with no whiteboards, no live feed of the siege and only one fixed-line phone.
The officer said all of these facilities and more would have been available inside their truck, which was badly damaged three years earlier and never repaired or replaced.
The detective senior sergeant said the dedicated truck was still unavailable to this day, and it was now his job to try and source a new one, subject to funding.
Negotiators were forced to rely on a landline which could only handle one call at a time.
If hostages phoned in when the phone was in use, which they did, their calls were diverted to police elsewhere in the NSW Leagues Club building.
Counsel assisting the coroner, Jason Downing, pressed Reg on whether he should have found a solution to the problem when it became obvious during his 14-hour team leader shift.
"I am not pretending to be a technical genius myself, but wouldn't one solution have been to make calls on a mobile and leave (the landline) free?" Mr Downing asked.
"It makes sense, yes," the negotiator replied.
It has also been revealed that hours of recordings and transcripts of calls made by hostages in the early stages of the siege have gone missing.
Reg was unable to explain what has happened to them, accepting they may have been taped over or never recorded in the first place.
"We've spoken about it and we don't know what happened," he said.
The negotiator also admitted he didn't read criminal and psychological profiles on Monis, which were both made available to his team before 6pm, saying he delegated the task to another officer.
"It was for them to peruse those documents, taking anything of value, and pass it on as they see fit," he said.
Asked why he didn't read the documents, the negotiator replied: "I was busy doing other things, sir."
Later, counsel for slain cafe manager Tori Johnson, Peggy Dwyer SC, pressed the negotiator on whether he'd underestimated Monis by the time the siege had stretched into the night.
"Thinking back now, yes," he replied.
Negotiators were never able to make direct contact with Monis.
Officers ultimately stormed the cafe shortly after 2am on December 16, 2014, after Monis shot Mr Johnson dead from point-blank range.
Barrister Katrina Dawson was killed in the raid, which also left Monis dead.
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