Burglars caused more than $20,000 of damage when trying to rip copper wiring from the floor of a heritage-listed naval station building.
The four men, James Gary Taylor, Wayne Robert Blundell, Bradley Clyde Booth and Brendan Palmer, 31, all pleaded guilty to aggravated burglary in company and damaging Commonwealth property by joint commission.
The Belconnen Naval Transmitting Station, established in 1939, was integral to naval communications during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and played a significant role in defending the Australian mainland.
The Commonwealth heritage-listed site in Lawson is owned by Defence Housing Australia and the station was decommissioned in 2005.
About 4.10am on May 5, 2024, a ute containing the four men drove into the site through a hole in a surrounding tall fence topped with barbed wire.
The burglars entered the site equipped with torches, rope, powered saws and a pry bar to steal copper wire from buildings.
Shortly after, one man reversed the ute through the garage door of the Main Transmission Building Garage Workshop and the other three used their tools to expose cables below the floor.
The men then connected the cables to the car by rope and tried to rip them out by repeatedly driving the vehicle out of the garage.
They caused extensive damage to the walls, floors and underflooring cabling of the building with the total value of restoration works coming in at $20,760.
The restoration work also impacted the heritage value of the site.
On Tuesday, June 2, Justice Verity McWilliam handed Palmer a one-year-and-seven-months imprisonment.
He was to be released on a recognisance release order with conditions of good behaviour and to complete a residential rehabilitation program.
Taylor, Blundell and Booth were each previously handed a recognisance release order by the ACT Supreme Court with a security of $500 and conditions including to be of good behaviour.
According to the judgement, at age 17, Palmer sustained a significant back injury while playing semi-professional rugby league for the Canberra Raiders.
This ended his dreams of a professional sporting career and he began using cannabis to manage his injury, before moving onto daily use of methamphetamine.
On Tuesday, Justice McWilliam said that while Palmer had been unsuccessful in remaining abstinent in the past, he "has expressed a renewed motivation to extinguish drugs from his life".
She said the successful completion of a residential rehab program "may be the catalyst for the offender to change the trajectory of his life".
