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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 (Hansard) 16 May) . . Page.. 1404 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

There are legitimate reasons for owning guns and we have to continue to recognise that. Our law today deals with some very powerful weapons. The view is widely held, and it has now been agreed, that there is no reason why people should be holding them, except in a very few limited cases which I understand from Mr Humphries he does not expect to apply in the ACT. We should all support this legislation, not just today by voting for it, but also by acknowledging the spirit of the legislation. I hope that people in the wider community will also continue to support not just the letter of the legislation banning this or that particular weapon but also the spirit underlying that, to make sure that the legislation is as effective as possible in addressing the community safety issues that gave rise to its creation.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General) (5.32), in reply: Mr Speaker, I want to thank members of this place for their support for this legislation and the package it represents. I want to thank them not just for the support they have given around the chamber today but also for the very clear support they gave before the meeting held last Friday at which this agreement was reached. It was, I think, extremely important to be able, in a minority government situation, to go to that meeting and confidently state what the ACT would accept or not accept with respect to the changes in gun laws, knowing that in bringing such a package back to the ACT Assembly I would receive support for doing so. I thank members for giving strength to my arm on that occasion and for the support they have again shown for today's legislation.

Mr Wood described this Bill as an enormous step, and indeed it is. In my speech in regard to the package of last Friday, I mentioned that gun reform in Australia has been a little like a man who has taken two or three tentative steps in recent days and then suddenly sprinted 100 metres. That is how far we have gone. Indeed, I would suggest that even one month ago a debate on legislation as draconian as this, and as draconian as the other elements of this package yet to come forward, would have been simply unthinkable. Members of this Assembly would not have accepted the changes coming forward, at least in some quarters of this chamber.

Ms Follett: Your side, maybe.

MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps so, but it is a measure of the great tribute we wish to pay to the memories of those people who were killed at Port Arthur that we are all prepared to accept, unanimously, I believe, the recommendations of that group.

I, like Ms Follett, heard the comments made at Gympie last night, and I must say that I was disturbed by those sentiments. It emphasised to me that we have a very long road to go down before we have put to bed the changes that that meeting on Friday foreshadowed. I think the comments made at Gympie were no flash in the pan. They are likely to represent a very serious response to that package, and I say to members that almost certainly a there will be time when we will look out those doors and see groups of people, perhaps large groups of people, protesting about the concept of removing the right to bear certain guns and requirements to register and to store guns in certain ways. Those people may be very vocal and very influential, or appear to be so, in some communities around Australia. I hope and I trust that that is not the case in the ACT.

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