Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1223 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

He openly admitted that his philosophical position was to deregulate whenever possible, rather than regulate. That is a view shared by many, including most of the Ministers at the meeting; but it is clear that firearms must be tightly regulated. Tighter regulations may not prevent a recurrence of the Port Arthur tragedy; but, if those regulations make it more difficult for such an incident to happen, and even if they save just one life, then the Australian people will rightly say that they were a justifiable necessity. That is the position the ACT Government has adopted on the question of firearms control and, I think it is fair to say, a position both sides of politics in this place have adhered to over a long period of time. To his great credit, the Prime Minister's approach was one of a genuine attempt to resolve the issues. He did not bully the States; he said that his aim was to work towards a cooperative approach.

The Premier of Tasmania argued a strong case for the need to tighten gun laws. It is well known that Tasmania has had the weakest of all Australian gun laws and, following the Port Arthur massacre, it was clear that Tasmanians expected their Government to change that. The Tasmanian Government is one like our own, Mr Speaker. It is a minority government, and they quickly recognised the need to keep all the parties together on this issue. Perhaps one of the most chilling and yet telling events of the day was to hear from the Tasmanian Commissioner of Police, John Johnson. Mr Johnson is a former Canberra police officer. It was in this city that he worked for many years until only relatively recently. I think many Australians recognise the enormity of the task performed by Mr Johnson and his colleagues in recent weeks. That recognition extends to well beyond the police. It includes ambulance officers, doctors, nurses, and the many who assisted in the Port Arthur incident.

My purpose is not to dwell on what happened at Port Arthur. Members have already had their chance to comment on that this morning. My purpose is to tell the Assembly where the nation goes from here. The recent Australian history of gun control is like a man who has taken two or three steps down a path and then last Friday sprinted 100 metres. The Commonwealth last Friday put up a detailed 11-point plan, which was adopted with relatively minor changes. I should point out that some of the changes actually strengthened what the Commonwealth proposed, while only one could be said to weaken it.

I wish to address each of the points, for the information of members. First of all, bans on specific types of firearms were agreed. All jurisdictions will move as quickly as possible to ban the sale, resale, transfer, ownership, possession, manufacture and use of firearms which are banned from import. That is the following types of weapons: Semiautomatic centre-fire rifles designed or adapted for military purposes, or a firearm which substantially duplicates those rifles in design, function or appearance; non-military-style self-loading centre-fire rifles with either an integral or detachable magazine; self-loading shotguns with either an integral or detachable magazine and pump-action shotguns with a capacity of more than five rounds; self-loading rim-fire rifles with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. The only exemptions for such weapons are military use, police use or other authorised government use.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .