The Iemma Government has put the future of its power privatisation legislation into the hands of its political enemies in the Coalition, and now it is doing dirty deals with the Shooters Party to scrounge the redneck vote.
In the NSW Legislative Council today, Shooters MPs Roy Smith and Robert Jones will be pushing their Firearms Amendment Bill which amends the Firearms Act 1996 brought in following Martin Bryant’s massacre at Port Arthur.
The government helped the Shooters to jump the legislative queue and bring on their Bill last week and will be offering it support in both houses. Why? Because Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa will deal with anybody – except the NSW branch of the ALP – to get their power privatisation legislation through parliament.
Giving his second reading, Smith said: “The proposed amendments to the Act and regulations will streamline and improve the operation of the system for the legal use and registration of firearms for law-abiding citizens within the State of NSW by removing some of the necessary (sic) impediments to legitimate sport shooting, hunting and collecting, without any adverse impact on public safety. These amendments have been drafted following extensive consultation with the Ministry of Police, the Firearms Registry and approved sport shooting, hunting and collecting clubs over a number of years.”
Indeed, they have. Smith, president of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia, NSW branch, from 1992 to 2007, has been lobbying for the dilution of the gun laws for over a decade, and now he’s a rifle shot away from victory, courtesy of the Iemma Government.
According to Roland Browne, co-chair of the National Coalition for Gun Control, the Shooters’ Bill is “a significant threat to public safety” and breaches both the 1996 National Firearms Agreement and the 2002 Handgun Agreement decided by the Commonwealth, States and Territories.
Browne added: “The Shooters Party has nothing to contribute on the public safety front. Its agenda is to achieve weaker gun laws to allow proliferation of firearms. This is to the financial advantage of manufactures and distributors of firearms. The Shooters Party Bill is ultimately about profits for the multi-million dollar firearms industry.”
The four Greens MPs will mount a campaign to stop the Bill today but it will be carried by the combined weight of the ALP, the Shooters, the Rev Fred Nile, the Nationals and most of the Liberals.
Greens MP Lee Rhiannon said current legislation would be “drastically watered down” by the Shooters to allow gun training for minors, easier access to shooting ranges for unlicensed persons; allow firearms to be sent via the postal system; and expand the use of self-loading and pump action shotguns for clay target shooting.
Interestingly, the Planning Department is sitting on an application for the massive expansion of a shooters’ complex in the southern highlands near Bowral. How soon before the minister, Frank Sartor, decides whether to support local objectors or ignore them and let the project go ahead? Watch this space.
Readers should be reminded that the Port Arthur murders exposed a dramatic failing in Australia’s mental health system, as well as a failure of local policing, prior to the event. Individuals such as Roland Browne made it a “gun problem” and since 1996, massive amounts of time and money has been thrown at gun laws, which have done nothing to improve public safety. Meanwhile mental health services are still starved of funding and support. Almost 50% of murders are committed by people with a serious mental health condition.
Social Engineers, such as Roland Browne (who appears to be the only member of Coalition for Gun Control), have tried for many years to stop young people taking up safe and healthy activities like shooting!
From my own experience, teaching young people about individual responsibility, self-discipline and control via the shooting sports helps them develop into better citizens. The US Justice Department research also found that children who participated in shooting and hunting as a family activity, had a significantly lower incidence of drug abuse, crime and other anti-social behavior, later in life, compared with those who were deprived of that experience.
The fact that the shooting sports are extremely safe, teach positive life skills and should be more readily available to young people, should be viewed against the NSW Education Department’s booklet “Choosing to use”, (about experimenting with drugs) which has now been withdrawn.
If gun ownership and shooting sports were a bigger part of young people’s lives, perhaps we wouldn’t even have a “drug problem”!
Isn’t it much better to teach children to shoot, rather than to “shoot up”?
Paul Keating famously warned against standing between a premier and a pot of money. Iemma once again shows how our our modern politicians have no moral compass. With Dilemma “the end justifies the means” What is the end in this case? Filling the coffers with paper from the sale of the people’s assets to finance the re-election of the Labour Government. Who the hell do you vote for these days? They are all content free, morally corrupt and incompetant and will do a deal with anyone who will get them what they want.
This shows how little the Greens care for our natural environment. Pests such as Foxes, Pigs and feral cats are decimating our wildlife, all the Greens can do is try and make firearms which are used to control pests harder to get.
Making small changes to the current laws which will allow police to free up resources will give them more time to catch criminals. Why should laws which have no public safety benefit be retained. Would you rather police were out catching criminals with illegal weapons, or checking up on licenced gun owners who have already passed police checks and have no criminal record.
I also find it disappointing that whoever write this article thinks Robert Jones is a member of the Legislative Council. I have never herd of him and think this is a poorly written article giving only the Greens warped view.