Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the government, I oppose the motion for disallowance of the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Amendment (Firearms and Firearm Magazines) Regulation 2015. I need to outline what has happened here so that everybody can understand it. In the wake of the Martin Place siege the government has undertaken to review the national firearms agreement, an agreement that is almost two decades old and that was struck between the Commonwealth and the states after the Port Arthur massacre, where an enormous number of Australians were killed by a deranged criminal. The states and territories got together under the leadership of then Prime Minister John Howard and resolved to change the way we deal with guns in Australia. As a result, the national firearms agreement was born, which restricts ownership in Australia of various categories of firearms and restricts ownership to people who really have a legitimate use for them.

Because that agreement is almost two decades old, it is appropriate that we have a review. Since that time there have been some technical advances in guns that we need to take account of. One of the concerns expressed to me by the states and territories at the time was around the importation of the Adler lever action shotgun, which was going to be imported in quite large numbers. Whilst we have a conversation with the states and territories about where that gun should appropriately be classified, I took the view that it would be silly to allow thousands of those into the community and then have to retrospectively do something to buy them back, for example. It made a lot more sense to restrict their import whilst we had this conversation, given that I knew this conversation was going to be concluded in the not too distant future.

The Law, Crime and Community Safety Council, made up of police ministers and attorneys-general, will be meeting in Canberra in November. Collectively, we need to make a decision about what we are going to do with the national firearms agreement. My goal, overwhelmingly, is to make sure that we keep the NFA intact. That means, of course, that I want all states and territories to move concurrently with the Commonwealth and have a common view about what we do with this particular type of gun.

States and territories will come to Canberra with their own views. What we then need to do is make a collective decision about lever-action shotguns that have a magazine capacity of over five rounds. I have had some informal consultations with state and territory police ministers. I think we will probably get to an agreement where we are all of the same mind, but my overwhelming objective in all of this will be to keep the NFA intact. That is very important for Australia.

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