Page 923 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 March 1991
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Mr Deputy Speaker, to conclude, I thank the members of the house for this historic passage. I believe that the country will have a model Bill to build on and that my successors probably will be able to point to this statute over coming years as being the genesis of, hopefully, uniform weapons controls throughout our nation.
The development of the Bill has been very lengthy. For those interested in some history, I believe that I should put into the record a couple of points about its origin, just so that there is no suggestion that the Alliance Government is point taking.
I will go to 1980 in the Territory. It was at about that time, on my advice, that the review of the Gun Licence Act 1937 was commenced. It was a routine review. There was no pressure for the review at that time and no real priority was accorded to the task. In the mid 1980s sporting shooting organisations started to get involved and extensive submissions were received. Of all the community groups with which we deal, I am sure we have been impressed by the comprehensive nature and the articulateness of this lobby - the reasoned part of the lobby. We are greatly indebted to them for the decent and sensible approach they made to this legislation.
In 1987, the dreadful Hoddle Street and Queen Street massacres occurred in Melbourne. They were the first such incidents in Australia and resulted in national outrage. The Prime Minister, Mr Hawke, as we recall, hastily convened a special Premiers Conference to consider Australia-wide controls on the possession and use of weapons. Sadly, we are still looking at it, and hopefully we can be the precursor to it.
In 1988 the Australian Police Ministers Council developed proposals for legislation to control firearms. Each of the State Labor governments expressed support for very strong controls, perhaps the most significant of which was a complete ban on all semiautomatic weapons. Of course, the ACT, in accordance with Commonwealth Government priority, then elevated this legislation to a higher level of priority and moved to introduce legislation as recommended by the Australian Police Ministers Council, including the semiautomatic ban. I digress here to acknowledge that that has been achieved through the initiative of my colleague on the other side of the lake, Senator Michael Tate, in a generic statement the Commonwealth made recently on the importation of firearms which, in effect, bans the importation of semiautomatic weapons and restricts their use. Our legislation then restricts the residue of a certain type of semiautomatic weapon to competition use only.
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