Why Australia has more guns than ever
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Daniel James and you're listening to 7am.
What prompted the recent national gun buyback in Australia?
In December last year, in the wake of the Bondi terror attack, Anthony Albanese promised the biggest national gun buyback since Port Arthur. He wanted the states and territories to agree to new gun laws by March and legislate them by July. But that first deadline has passed and the national response is fracturing. Queensland and the Northern Territory are refusing the buyback. Tasmania is rejecting a cap on the number of firearms a person can own. and a national register is not expected to be running until 2028.
What are the proposed changes to Australia's gun laws?
The Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism has also weighed in, saying Australia should waste no time implementing the buyback. So today, 30 years after Port Arthur, we're returning to our January episode, when Nicole Johnston speaks with Ebony Bennett from the Australia Institute, on why Australia has more guns than ever, and why reform is still so difficult. It's Sunday, May 3.
Ebony, thanks for speaking with me. Can you lay out for me what the government's proposing?
Well, after the Bondi massacre last year, National Cabinet met and agreed to a number of gun law reforms. And now the government is implementing a bill that will hold up its end of the bargain on there. And that includes things like Limiting the number of firearms that any one individual can hold, as well as limiting the open-ended kind of firearms licensing that we've seen in the past. Obviously, the National Buyback Scheme and things like accelerating the work of standing up a National Firearms Registry. The government will establish a National Gun Buyback Scheme to purchase surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms The largest buyback since the Howard government initiated one in 1996. So in 1996, we saw the banning of semi-automatic and automatic weapons.
And again, we'll see many more restrictions introduced of the type of firearm that we used in the Bondi massacre here. And the Commonwealth's part of that in this legislation will be, for example, restricting the importation of reloading rifles and shotguns into Australia.
How did past gun reforms impact gun ownership in Australia?
Australia's gun laws were last substantially reformed in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy. The terrible events at Bondi show we need to get more guns off our streets.
Now, in the aftermath of the Bondi attack, one of the most shocking revelations was the fact that the older gunman, Sajid Akram, that he had six legally registered guns, even though he was living in the city and his son had been investigated by ASIO. Why was that able to happen and how do these laws go about addressing that?
Well, it's not exactly clear as yet how that happened, but obviously it's evidence that our current gun laws as they stand aren't working as intended. It appears like the New South Wales authorities may not have had access to that intelligence from ASIO or the fact that one of those perpetrators was known to ASIO in the way that he was. And this legislation will introduce provisions that mean that all of those licensing authorities at the state and territory level will be able to access that kind of intelligence from Commonwealth agencies like ASIO and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, for example.
If we could talk about the last time that we had major gun reform after Port Arthur, what changes did John Howard make and how do we know about how they actually made the country safer?
Yeah, the National Firearms Agreement was historic and landmark legislation and it's obviously still hugely popular with the public today. The Prime Minister John Howard tonight detailed sweeping plans to reform Australia's national gun laws, which could mean the introduction of a one-off tax to buy back illegal weapons. John Howard, in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, gathered all the states and territories and the National Firearms Agreement did things like banning or restricting semi-automatic and automatic firearms, restricting the importation of those kinds of firearms. We need... to achieve a total prohibition on the ownership possession
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–0:09
2
What prompted the recent national gun buyback in Australia?
0:09–0:37
3
What are the proposed changes to Australia's gun laws?
0:37–2:27
4
How did past gun reforms impact gun ownership in Australia?
2:27–4:47
5
What challenges do current gun laws face across states?
4:47–7:21
6
How do gun ownership caps vary across different states?
7:21–8:17
7
Why is a national firearms registry important for Australia?
8:17–8:47
8
How has the number of legally owned guns changed since the 90s?
8:47–15:42
Speakers
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