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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2058 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

than rabbits suffer the same fate, and human beings suffer the same fate. I suggest that people who argue, without knowing the facts, that somebody ought to have the right to be able to go and acquire a military-type automatic weapon and go and use it to shoot rabbits, or go and use it to shoot people, simply need to take the trouble to find out the kinds of weapons they are talking about. These are horrendous weapons. They are not meant for people to have in their closet to go and shoot rabbits with, or foxes, or kangaroos. In fact, they inflict massive damage on animals as big as elephants, rhinoceroses and the like. It is a spurious argument, and people are persuaded, I am afraid, by people who are long on rhetoric but, dare I say it, short on intelligence.

I support entirely the approach taken by the Ministers, which has now been enacted into law in this Territory. It was a sensible thing to do, and I believe that it reflects the majority of public opinion. We hear people out there saying, "There are millions of Australians who do not like this because they own weapons". I would like to see the real statistics. I know lots of people, and I have known through my life lots of people who have never owned a weapon, who do not want to own a weapon, who have never had one in their house and do not intend to. They, I believe, are the majority of Australians.

I have had weapons, and I have had them in my home, because at one stage, as part of my military service, I belonged to a rifle club. That was part of my service as a military officer and the need to remain proficient in the use of arms. Thinking back on it now, I was crazy to have the thing in the house. I did not really need it there but I used to take it home after I had been out shooting. In retrospect, I have to ask myself why I did, because it was a potential hazard and I should never have done it. At the time you do not think about that. I suggest that there are a lot of people not thinking about that now, and I think they need to.

Mr Speaker, it is great that an issue such as this can be dealt with with bipartisan support and that, at least in this parliament, we can move so rapidly to put into effect sensible decisions taken by sensible people in a national forum such as the Ministers council. I am astonished that parliaments elsewhere seem to be struggling with that dilemma. For me, it is no dilemma at all. I would urge them to move quickly. In fact, they have already procrastinated for far too long. I would urge those other parliaments in Australia to move now, quickly, to close this gap and get these weapons out of our system. We will never get them out entirely. It is true to say that there will always be people who will get access to these weapons irrespective of what laws you have imposed, but once you have the laws in place you have the power to deal with that. Without the law you have no power. The sooner we have the laws in place universally across Australia, the better this community will be; and it will put an end to these spurious arguments about what people think their rights are.

MR MOORE (12.14): Mr Speaker, the Australian debate on this issue has been very interesting. It seems to me that there have been numerous articles in the Canberra Times and other elements of the media which have presented the gun owning lobby as being, as I read in a letter to the editor, salt of the earth types and so on. The image that is being built up is one of very sensible people who are very keen to hold onto their automatic and semiautomatic weapons. I taught for quite some years in country schools.

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