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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2057 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

a lax approach to the acquisition, ownership and use of weapons, many of which are totally inappropriate in private ownership; yet we have allowed people to freely acquire them and freely use them. Always behind that is the threat that something like what happened at Port Arthur will happen, simply by virtue of the fact that these weapons are readily available to anybody who wants them.

We now see the backlash, as Ms Follett pointed out. People are putting this spurious argument that we Australians have a right to bear arms. There is no such right whatsoever in Australia. People bear arms only in accordance with a law, which, I suggest, until now, has been a little too lax. The spurious argument is that you are invading my civil rights because I cannot have a military-type automatic weapon to do with as I wish. It is not a question of civil rights; it is a question of licence. It is a spurious right which the majority of Australians have now indicated they do not support. The decisions made by the Ministers are correct and we have moved quickly in this parliament to put those decisions into effect. I would urge parliaments elsewhere in Australia to do the same, and to do so quickly and not allow a public debate to develop which brings up a significant opposition on spurious grounds.

I have heard some interesting comments. Again, Ms Follett has alluded to them. A prominent leader of the gun lobby said at a public meeting, "We are not going to be pushed around by the Government". Does this man not understand that once a law is in place he is obliged to observe that law? If he disobeys it - I think our Attorney-General made this point in debate earlier in connection with our legislation - he will pay the penalty that that law imposes.

I agree with Ms Follett that some of the statements that are being made by some of the leaders of the gun lobby are not only totally irresponsible but also amount to criminal acts. In my view, they are inciting people to commit criminal offences. It used to be that the parliaments of this country and the community were responsive to that kind of threat and people who made that kind of statement publicly were committing a criminal offence. They did not wait until they had actually incited the crime; the very fact that they were out there saying that these things were criminal offences was sufficient. We seem to have become very tolerant about that, just as we have about the use of weapons.

There is a lot of emotional response to the kind of appeal that says, "We have an inherent right to bear arms", which we do not, and, "This is an infringement of our civil rights", which it is not. A lot of people are persuaded to that countercampaign without knowing what they are talking about. I wonder how many people who have come out publicly in recent weeks and said, "Yes, we support this notion of the right to bear arms and this is an infringement of our civil rights" have actually seen what a military automatic weapon does to the human body? We saw an example of it, but most people have not actually seen the results; they have only read about the number of people killed and the number of people who received massive injuries and wounds in a few short minutes at Port Arthur.

People have no conception of the firepower inherent in modern automatic military weapons. These weapons are horrendous. They are meant to be. They are meant to fight wars with. If anybody thinks they are going to take one of these weapons and go out and shoot a rabbit, I have news for them. By the time they have fired two or three quick rounds at a rabbit there is nothing much left but fur. In fact, animals much larger

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