Page 786 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 12 March 1991
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Territory and distributed dodgers, but did not have the guts to say who he was. It was an anonymous meeting. There was a telephone number that identified the meeting. If you rang that telephone number you got a recorded voice propagandising on this issue, but, again, not identifying himself.
At that meeting, I have reason to believe, a number of false, misleading and mischievous statements were made about this legislation. As a result of that, a number of good and decent citizens of this Territory, who are recreational shooters, have been alarmed and concerned because they have been misled in a deliberate fashion by a person who is prepared and determined to make cheap political gain out of this. I put it that it is not Mr Stevenson's concern for these recreational shooters that is behind this; it is his concern with cheap political points.
What he has done is very, very mischievous. He is deliberately trying to foment a campaign of fear; he is telling people that there are things in this Bill which are simply not there. He is giving bizarre and strained interpretations to provisions of this Bill which are leading, as I say, good and decent citizens of this Territory to believe that it is a fundamental assault on their rights, and that is not so.
Following this meeting on Friday night we have received quite a large number of strange documents entitled "Will and Testament", which seem to recite divinity, the Queen and the Governor-General, and draw to our attention some faults in this legislation. I have also received a large number of telephone calls. I have not responded to people who have sent me this form letter distributed by Mr Stevenson, but I have responded to the telephone calls because I think it is appropriate, when any citizen of this Territory contacts a member, even if they are putting a point of view that the member disagrees with, that one have the courtesy to speak to them and find out their point of view. I am sure that members across the chamber would agree with that. What has struck me in those discussions with people - these are Territory citizens who are involved in the sport of shooting and who own guns - is that they have had a number of common complaints, common concerns, common fears, stirred up at this meeting on Friday night and which are uniformly, in my view, baseless.
It is not the role of the Opposition in this chamber to defend this Bill clause by clause; that is the role of the Attorney-General, and I am sure that after members have spoken he will, in summing up, go through that. But I do want to make a point tonight, as I have made to a number of people on the phone today and yesterday in relation to these common recurring themes. I should say that when I have spoken to people they have been, by and large, quite satisfied and quite relaxed by my calming of their concerns, and they have been most upset to learn that they
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