History
Various state and territory police forces maintained 'tactical' or 'emergency' squads known by varying names consisting of police trained to use specialist equipment and weapons as far back as 1945. These sections consisted mainly of detectives and had limited capability and funding. The 1978 Sydney Hilton bombing, where a CHOGM event was being conducted at that time, saw the formation of SACPAV (Standing Advisory Committee on Commonwealth/State Co-operation for Protection Against Violence). Prior to this, Australia had no formal mechanisms to respond to terrorism. SACPAV provided national consistency across all jurisdictions and made several recommendations including that all states and territories maintain a specialist police unit trained for counter-terrorist and hostage rescue situations. These units were initially known as 'police assault groups' in line with the Australian Defense Forces nomenclature with their recently created (at the time) tactical assault group. This saw the formalisation of many states' tactical units with the standardisation of all police groups in respect to training, equipment and the desired level of response.
Read more about this topic: Police Tactical Group
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