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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2063 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

"Well, I do not actually have an automatic or a semiautomatic weapon", or, "I used to use it but I do not use it any longer, and I have surrendered it", or, "I know somebody who uses it but I do not have it myself". In all those cases that I spoke to nobody ever presented me with a strong reason for having those weapons in a civil society. None of the people concerned were farmers. All of them were people who had various other sorts of urban-type jobs, urban-type occupations, and lived in an urban setting for the most part, but they all felt that there was some need to draw the line here.

The best reason that was advanced to me for needing a semiautomatic weapon was that one individual was in the habit of hunting wild pigs in, presumably, remote parts of the ACT - hopefully not in our national park because it is not allowed there. Occasionally in the forest, if you are hunting a wild pig, you can be confronted with, perhaps, a wounded boar with tusks and it may, in its rage, charge you. In those circumstances apparently it is handy to have a semiautomatic weapon to fire off a few rounds to stop this charging wild pig. I put it to the individual who cited that reason that in a civil society which had experienced atrocities like the one at Port Arthur it might actually be in the public interest that they have to eschew the privilege of hunting wild pigs, or take the risk when they hunt wild pigs that their weapon will not be enough to stop a wild pig. That individual conceded that perhaps that was an argument to think about further.

Mr Speaker, I think there has been much hysteria in this debate, much misinformation, and much deliberate falsification of what goes on; but I do not believe that any serious intellectual argument has been mounted yet for us not to enact the legislation that we have enacted, or for taking it further and putting in place, as we soon hope to do, our arm of a national scheme for registration of guns and gun owners which I think will protect the Australian community.

I finish with one final warning, Mr Speaker. I heard on the news this morning that the South Australian division of the Liberal Party had taken the exceptional step of refusing to allow a large number of people - I think the number of 500 was mentioned - to join the Liberal Party in South Australia. They were apparently part of what has been called a branch stack of the South Australian division of the Liberal Party.

Mr Wood: You do not know anything about that, do you?

MR HUMPHRIES: I know nothing about that for such purposes, Mr Wood.

Mr Hird: Or any purpose.

MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps not. Mr Speaker, let me say, on a very serious note, that there is a real risk about the activities of some gun owners who are singularly determined to stop this legislation. I would say to all members of this place who belong to parties that they should exercise a little bit of care as they look at the way in which their party is operating in the immediate future. I have no doubt that some gun owners will attempt in other places what has been attempted in South Australia, and perhaps also in the ACT. Given that we are a small jurisdiction and that our parties are relatively smaller, it presents, perhaps, an easier target. If the people who turned up at that meeting

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