Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

And it was a very courageous decision. Of course, it was highly controversial amongst owners of guns in the community, who rightly said that they had not committed these crimes and had lawfully owned these weapons. To take these weapons off the street involved an enormous amount of political courage from the Prime Minister and his cabinet at the time. Members of parliament had to go out and talk to people about why they believed it was necessary to crack down on these sorts of dangerous weapons. I think it is fair to say that, despite the controversy at the time, those gun laws have been incredibly successful in reducing our gun related homicide rate. They have also reduced the suicide rate in Australia. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun related murders and suicides fell sharply after those laws were introduced 1996. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered a rather astonishing total of 13 gun massacres—a massacre being a gun crime with more than four victims—causing over 100 deaths. I note there has not been a single massacre since 1996. Those figures probably provide some salient lessons for our friends in America. I do not think that any Australian would deny that today our country is safer as a consequence of the coalition's bold changes to gun ownership laws.

The coalition knows that organised criminal syndicates now seek to import their illegal guns from overseas. Sadly, I do not think this fact is sufficiently acknowledged by the present government. Indeed, the minister refuses to acknowledge the extent of the problem, even with evidence of illegal guns slipping through our borders and coming into New South Wales, as was the case with the Sylvania Waters post office in Sydney when in March last year 220 Glock pistols from Austria were imported via a gun dealership in Germany, using falsified documents. This was not discovered by the federal law enforcement agencies which are tasked with policing our borders. It is important to make the point that it was the New South Wales Police that discovered this significant importation of pistols. This highlighted the devastating effects of Labor's cuts on our border protection agencies, in that the Federal Police no longer had the ability to pick up such a significant importation of illegal firearms.

The cuts have meant a significant reduction in the higher rates of cargo inspections that were occurring under the previous government. When we left office in 2007, 60 per cent of air cargo consignments were inspected by Customs and Border Protection. Labor's significant cuts to the Customs cargo-screening budget has meant a staggering 75 per cent reduction in the percentage of air cargo inspections conducted under the coalition. We have seen a similar decrease in sea cargo inspections.

Labor's cuts have resulted in a $22 million funding cut to the Australian Crime Commission—the agency which, to my disappointment, is not more heavily involved in policing unexplained wealth. The astonishing number of 144 personnel have been taken out of the Australian Crime Commission. It is not a large agency, so that cut represents about 20 per cent of its personnel.

Labor say they want to be taken seriously on law and order issues. You cannot be taken seriously when your record since coming into office has been to cut the Australian Federal Police, to savage Customs and Border Protection and to savage the Australian Crime Commission. Labor have demonstrated year after year a blatant disregard for tackling organised criminal activity by targeting these key Commonwealth law enforcement agencies for vicious cuts. The Australian Federal Police has been subjected to a $265 million cut since the Labor Party came to office.

See this speech in context