Police have revealed the caravan, found in the northwestern Sydney suburb of Dural in January containing the addresses of Jewish institutions, was a hoax cooked up by organised criminals as a distraction from their own activities.
Dr Michael Zekulin, a terrorism researcher at the Australian National University, said the con showed other malicious actors could do the same to carry out a terrorist attack.
"It highlights mainly that there was a blind spot here," he told AAP.
"It's good there is able to have a lesson learnt here, that law enforcement uncovered something, but it doesn't negate that somebody acquired explosives undetected and was able to put this together."
As authorities across the country rushed through stronger protections against hate speech in a bid to crack down on escalating violence, Dr Michael Zekulin said for governments, it was a "lose, lose" situation.
"It's pick your poison here," he said.
"The optics of being seen to do something is that people feel safe, the flipside is you do nothing and something happens.
The terrorism researcher said the tension between security laws and civil liberties had always existed, with one method to address it through "sunset clauses" where rules expire after a certain amount of time.
Fourteen people were arrested in relation to a raft of anti-Semitic attacks after raids by the NSW Police and Australian Federal Police.
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