Page 3792 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 October 1990
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and excellently run communities where real problems are carefully being looked after. I hope very much that we will all support this Bill and all it stands for.
MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General) (11.08), in reply: Mr Speaker, I thank the members of the chamber for their comments. By way of further explanation - and particularly in view of the Leader of the Opposition's reproach to me personally for the delay on the Weapons Bill - let me say that I think the Leader of the Opposition has always strongly supported consultative action.
When we tabled the Bill we said that it was an exposure draft of the Weapons Bill. It is a large Bill. I mentioned that there were 700 representations. They were not all the gun lobby. Most of them came from a variety of very informed sources, particularly the sporting shooters and the ACT pistol groups, and, indeed, there were a number of very complex issues to do with ballistic matters, such as access to spare barrels.
The meetings I have had with these groups - and there have been several to date - have gone, in a very orderly fashion, through up to 53 amendments to that Weapons Bill; so we will probably do an overall reprint of the Bill. As the Leader of the Opposition says, that is one of the reasons for the delay. There always has to be a balance between consultation and legislative action. I believe that we have found the right balance. I do say that I am hopeful that the consultative process, which is coming to an end, will mean that a couple of residual matters, that I am resolving with the Australian Federal Police, may be settled.
Members will appreciate that this creates a whole new regime in the Territory in an area where there is a surprisingly high level of public interest. Members may be surprised to hear that there are something like 30,000 weapons in the Territory. That was a figure given to me during this debate - 30,000 weapons fitting the category of the definition in the draft Bill.
That is a huge quantity of firearms and it is an issue that we are morally obliged to tackle. There are very responsible sporting groups involved in this area; there are very responsible competitive shooting groups; there are significant ties with the defence related interest groups, and these are very significant concerns addressed to me by the Australian Federal Police.
Certainly I do not at all apologise for the delay during this exposure stage. As Mr Connolly himself appreciated with the planning Bills that we have put down for exposure, this is an informed, articulate community. The nature of the submissions and the lengthy details of the submissions, analysing issues such as rim fire and centre fire and spare barrels, have involved the Government in very complex negotiations.
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