Gun controls first proposed three decades ago will take months to introduce, says Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, as he faces a political test from Coalition MPs who declared the reforms a distraction from the government’s failings on antisemitism. Source: SMH.
Experts warned this year that the rising numbers of guns would lead to tragedy, and called for tighter controls to reduce the 4 million legally owned firearms in the community.
A National Firearms Register was first proposed in 1996, following the Port Arthur massacre in which 35 people were killed, but the states only agreed to create one in 2023.
After the Bondi terror attack, the nationwide record of all firearms will now be fast-tracked, as Mr Burke said it “beggars belief” that someone living in suburban Sydney required six guns.
Now questions are being asked about why governments have not made faster progress over the past three decades to modernise clunky state-based regimes, where paper and pen registers or inaccessible records can prevent effective information sharing between intelligence agencies and police forces.
The National Firearms Register was slated to be operational in 2028, and Mr Burke conceded yesterday the federal element of it would take until the second half of 2026 to complete.
National Cabinet also agreed to examine sweeping changes to existing laws, including limiting the number of guns an individual is permitted to own, restricting the types of guns deemed legal, and making Australian citizenship a prerequisite for gun licences.
The federal Opposition was sceptical of the proposed gun reforms and attacked Prime Minister Anthony Albanese over his response to recent antisemitic incidents.
Nationals leader David Littleproud said gun law reform was a “distraction” from the Government’s failure to tackle the rise in antisemitism.
“The existing gun laws work – it is how they are used … This isn’t a gun problem, it’s an ideology problem,” Mr Littleproud said.
Former Liberal prime minister John Howard, who led the 1996 gun reforms, dismissed the Government’s push to reform gun laws following the Bondi terror attack as a “big attempt at a diversion” and blasted the Government for failing to combat antisemitism.
But he refused to say if he thought the laws needed to be reformed further.
FULL STORY
Gun-law loopholes to take months to close in national firearm crackdown (By Mike Foley, Nick Newling and Brittany Busch, Sydney Morning Herald)