The families of Lindt cafe siege victims Tori Johnson and Katrina Dawson have spoken for the first time of their horror at learning that police were waiting for a hostage to die or be seriously wounded before storming the cafe in December 2014.
Angus Dawson, brother of Ms Dawson, told ABC TV's Four Corners on Monday night that "the idea that we had to wait for somebody to be killed or seriously injured before the police would act was staggering."
Ms Dawson's mother, Jane, slammed the strategy as "outrageous - these are people that they should be protecting. They shouldn't wait for them to be impacted on in any way. They should be saving them from death or serious injury."
Mr Johnson's mother, Rosie Connellan, likewise said she was stunned police had no plan to rescue the hostages until a crisis erupted.
"I'll never be able to understand how you can make a calculated decision that you wait for someone to die," she told the program.
And she revealed lasting anguish at accepting police advice not to respond to her son when he sent a message at noon saying how scared he was.
Ms Connellan said "when he sent that message to say he was a hostage and he was very scared, I went to the police and I said can I answer him. And they said no you better not. And I just wish I had. And I will live with that forever".
Cafe manager Tori Johnson was forced to his knees by gunman Man Haron Monis at around 2.06 am on December 16 and executed at 2.13 am, triggering the police assault.
Katrina Dawson died shortly afterwards, fatally wounded by fragments from the high-powered rifles used by the NSW police commandos.
Coroner Michael Barnes is to hand down his formal report on the handling of the siege on Wednesday, after a marathon 18-month inquiry.
The Dawson family have also attacked the decision by NSW authorities to allow Monis out on bail after he had been charged with a string of sexual assaults against women and with being an accessory to the brutal stabbing murder of his former wife.
Ms Dawson's father, Sandy Dawson senior, told the program that "we just couldn't believe" Monis had been allowed to walk free.
"The fact that the DPP didn't oppose bail was extraordinary," Mr Dawson said. "What was even more extraordinary was they tried to have any consideration of bail excluded from the inquest. When a lot of the documents came in from the DPP they were very heavily redacted, so we couldn't seem them, our legal counsel couldn't see them."
The family is also highly critical of a police psychiatrist (whose name has been suppressed) who told police commanders Monis was not a bona fide terrorist but rather just "grandstanding."
Angus Dawson said, "it just seemed like we were in the twilight zone where we had the Counter Terrorism unit in charge and yet we had the psychiatrist declaring that the perpetrator wasn't a terrorist. I mean what was going on?"
Monis, who was armed with a sawn-off shotgun, also claimed that he had a bomb in his backpack and police have highlighted this as the reason why they delayed ending the siege.
But former Lindt chef Paolo Vassallo, who escaped six hours into the siege, insists he never told police that wires were sticking out of Monis' backpack, as one officer claimed.
He says after he escaped he spoke to police but that they did not pass on the information he gave them. "It kills me, it really does," he told the program.
"They should have used that as an opportunity to gather as much information of what was happening inside the cafe and they didn't". The psychiatrist dismissed Paolo as "babbling" and " highly excited".
Former hostage Louisa Hope, who along with her elderly mother Robin was wounded by shrapnel as the siege reached its explosive climax, also expressed shock at learning no rescue was planned until there had been loss of life or serious injury inside the cafe.
"The first time I head that evidence I was sitting calmly in the courtroom and inside my head was exploding," said Ms Hope, who has yet to fully recover from her injuries.
"I can't fully express how shocking that news was to me."
Rosie Connellan paid tribute to her son Tori, saying "he just made you feel like you were the only one in the world when you were with him. He as able to convey that just by the way he looked at you".
Four Corners also interviewed a number of staff who were trapped in the cafe by Monis, among them 19 year old waiter and part time university student, Jarrod Morton-Hoffman, Harriette Denny, Joel Herat and Fiona Ma.
Ma told the program, "You think you are just a moment away from dying, that's what I thought."
Angus Dawson says he "still can't describe the anguish" of losing his "little sister".
