A gun safety lobby group says Australia has failed to live up to one of the key promises made after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
Despite a resolution in the national firearms agreement adopted after that tragedy, Australia doesn’t have a proper national registry of guns and gun owners. Registries are still being enforced by states and territories.
“In 1996, every jurisdiction agreed to a minimum set of standards for the use of firearms,” Australian Gun Australian Gun Safety Alliance convenor Stephen Bendle told Crikey. said. “After more than 26 years, not a single jurisdiction is fully compliant with the national firearms agreement.
“We’re currently reliant on seven different systems from the states and territories. The Commonwealth has a system that tracks data on individual firearms, but it would be better to have one system that every police force uses, that every policeman can access, so they know who has a firearm, where they live, and what the risks are.”
Bendle said another problem was that the federal system tracks guns, but not gun owners.
The union representing federal police officers agreed a better national database was badly needed.
“It’s a no-brainer, but it keeps getting pushed to the side,” Australian Federal Police Association media and government relations manager Troy Roberts said. “What we’re hoping to see is a real-time database that police officers and law enforcement agencies can access to try and locate information.”
If an officer in the ACT did a traffic stop on a car with Queensland plates, he or she had to call interstate colleagues and have them check their records, rather than being able to access the information themselves.
“It’s ridiculous that today, we don’t have one system that all police officers across Australia can use,” Roberts said.
After two officers were among six killed in a shooting on a rural Queensland property last week, it appears there could be a political will to revisit the gun registry issue.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday he would be briefed on “practical ways” in which gun rules could be changed.
“On the issue of guns in the wake of the tragedy on the Darling Downs that occurred just a week ago, this tragedy is still, of course, the subject of ongoing investigations,” he said.
“My government will take any advice, particularly from police and law enforcement, about better ways in which we can have coordination and better laws to protect people. I am certainly up for dialogue with the states and territories about how there can be a better national consistency and national information that can serve the interests of police going about their duty.”
Albanese said the next meeting of national cabinet, in 2023, would have gun laws on the agenda.
A federal Coalition spokesperson said the opposition was keen to have a look at what Albanese might propose: “The opposition is supportive of enhanced data sharing to safeguard the community and will look at anything the government puts forward.”
It isn’t clear how the slain shooters in the Queensland tragedy obtained their guns but the state’s police force told Crikey whether they did so illegally or legally was still under investigation.
Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief executive Mike Phelan told senators last year that the existing national registry failed to capture accurate data because of difficulties in matching information coming from various states and territories.
While it causes me great pain I will acknowledge Howard’s staring down of the rednecks following Port Arthur was a brave act.
Yep, the one good thing he did.
Although Tim Fischer was the really brave politician regarding gun control.
Unfortunately, knowing human nature as I do, I predict that articles like the one above will appear from time-to-time in the media and there will subsequently be discussion, argument, prevarication and obfuscation. Then at some stage in the future, another ‘Port Arthur’ tragedy will come along and everyone will be ‘up-in-arms’ screaming “Why didn’t we do something earlier?”, etc. Then, with a bit of luck,(probably a lot of luck) some legislation will be passed restricting gun ownership in some way. In other words, it will be the same old story where the gate gets shut well after the horse has bolted.
As far as I am concerned there should be very strict and uniform gun ownership laws that apply nationwide (not confined to the states separately), with severe penalties for breaching those laws. (Although, one has to admit that ‘severe penalties’ for breaching just about any law these days are virtually non-existent.)
The LNP was never going to address it as the redneck gun lovers are their client base. Hopefully Labor has the fortitude to do something. Dreaming?
It’s probably worth noting that the article refers to a largely administrative issues related to information sharing between jurisdictions.
Gun possession has and remains strictly legislated and enforced, with very strong penalties for breaches. I hope that such community standards are enforced with the recent display by NSW police officers (https://7news.com.au/news/nsw-police/nsw-police-officers-caught-pointing-guns-to-head-in-bereal-social-media-post-c-9219189)
What will be the interesting part of the report into the Queensland shooting is what weapons the offenders had, how many, how they acquired them, and if legally, why did it not raise any flags? At least the police will be very much on side with this.
There are reports of one of them ditching guns when trying to cross the border during lockdown – this suggests he didn’t want them found.
In the US its difficult to restrict gun ownership, due to political and constitutional reasons. In response one Mayor is testing new approaches: an annual fee on gun-owning residents, with the revenues invested in violence prevention efforts; And from Jan. 1, gun owners are required to carry liability insurance to compensate victims harmed by the negligent or reckless use of a firearm. (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/21/opinion/guns-violence-prevention.html)