He said a “specialised taskforce” was equipped with military weapons and regarded as “the most violent group of them all”.

He alleged the Australian government had ignored official AFP member witness reports of PNG government sanctioned ‘ethnic cleansing’, murder, rape and corruption, because of political interests.

He said Australian taxpayers’ money had fallen into the wrong hands with the “corrupt” PNG government groups using earth moving equipment funded through Department of Foreign Affairs aid programs to carry out some of its crimes.

The source said he saw an entire village flattened by a taskforce using Australia-funded bulldozers in mid-2014; forcibly removing, displacing and killing the villagers who had purchased the land and built homes there some 30 years earlier.

“They just came in to the Butibum village area one day and said ‘the (PNG) government that sold you that land was corrupt and we’re not going to honour those titles … the land is now the (current) government’s’ and gave them eviction notices,” the source said.

“I was there when the next day they turned up with 12 bulldozers that were meant for roadworks, flanked by military officers carrying machineguns.

“The (bulldozers) still had the Australian contractors’ stickers on the side as they bulldozed houses into piles ... they bulldozed the whole village; I’m talking 70 houses in Lae.

“They killed some of the villagers who wouldn’t get out of the way.”

The AFP and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade denied any prior knowledge of the alleged incident in the Butibum Village area.

The AFP member told news.com.au he had witnessed mass murder on several occasions and heard countless first-hand accounts of PNG police raping nationals and never being held to account.

The source said he saw men, women and children tortured and killed “for nothing”.

“It’s worse than West Papua,” the source said. “There’s no other way to describe what they’re doing than ‘ethnic cleansing.

“They just kill anyone who opposes the government. “The PNG government treats their own people absolutely horrendously, with police murdering people and raping women.”

He said the image of two highlanders who had been shot by a taskforce at point blank range for daring to venture into town in search of a job was forever seared into his memory.

Another two who escaped from the victims’ vehicle were captured, “dragged back” and also killed.

“They were violent and we had to be careful … if we intervened we would have been killed,” he said.