David Littleproud (Maranoa, National Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Let me make this clear. The National Party and the coalition will be opposing this bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. This is nothing more than a cheap political diversion. It's a diversion from facing up to the real problem in this country, which is radical Islamists. They are taking hold and causing harm on the streets, as we saw in Bondi. It is not the gun owners of Australia that have done this; it is radical Islam that has done this.

One element of this bill that we will support is the ASIO checks. In fact, we supported a national gun register, which was agreed to nearly two years ago. It could have already been in place if those opposite had put it in place. Instead, what they are trying to do is demonise legal-gun owners for something that was not caused by them. We do not have a gun problem; we have a radical Islam problem.

The gun laws in this country actually worked, because there was an order by the police that saw perpetrators of that evil act in Bondi on a watchlist. They should not have had their licences in place. If I have a domestic violence order against me in this country, my gun licence and my gun are taken away. This has been a failure of process, not a failure of gun licensing. The fact is that authorities did not act and take away the licence and the weapons as they should have.

This legislation goes further. It has implications for the types of firearms that are imported and which are already covered under state legislation. In fact, the overreach we are talking about here will affect some of the pistols that are coming into this country for sporting shooters. Some of the weapons that the member for Hunter would use to become an Olympian again—he isn't here at the moment for some reason—would be revoked under that import order. We would also see weapons that are used by primary producers to undertake the pest management that we need absolutely revoked, so this is not going to the heart of the problem. But this is not just about farmers. This is about the people in metropolitan areas as well, the lawful gun owners that actually do a lot of the heavy lifting, the pest management, for farmers. These are the people in Newcastle and the Illawarra that the member for Bendigo talks about. They are lawful gun owners who come out to farms and do that work of pest mitigation. They do that because farmers do not have the energy and the time to be able to do that. These people own a number of guns and are able to undertake that.

You cannot own a gun in this country just because you want one. You have to pass a fit-and-proper-person test and wait 28 days. You can't just say, 'I want a high-calibre weapon.' You have to demonstrate a necessity, and you have to be able to prove that. You have to go through training. You actually get inspected every 12 months about that weapon. So the licensing arrangements that we have in place for the weapons and the calibre of weapons that are approved have been proven to work. This is a diversion, a cheap political stunt by this government, who want to divert attention away from the nation's real problems and onto the lawful gun owners of this nation. We are also going to take away the imports of accessories, so those sporting shooters will not be able to have their Olympic vests that can hold 50 cartridges. There has been no consultation on this.

Then we get into the use of a carriage service whereby, if someone—an innocent Australian gun owner—were to download instructions on how to place a scope on their rifle, they would be in breach of this legislation. This is a desperate overreach by a government looking for a political diversion; it's demonising lawful Australians. Do you honestly believe you want to spend a billion dollars—Queensland, New South Wales and Tasmania don't want to—buying guns back? Are you that naive that you think the criminals and the terrorists will be the ones that will hand them back? That is not going to solve the problem we have in this nation. You are impinging on the rights of lawful Australians that—it's been proven—have been doing the right thing; they have been respecting the law. We are trying to solve a problem that is not there.

You are taking away the attention from the real problem in this country and from what caused the tragic events at Bondi. If you do not have the courage to look at yourselves in the mirror and to look the people of this country in the eye and say, 'It is not guns that are the problem; it is radical Islam that is the problem,' then all you are doing is diverting attention and taking away the rights of lawful Australians, whether they be on farms or in metropolitan areas, who have done the right thing by this country, have abided by the law and should not have their rights taken away. That is not the Australia that we deserve to hand over to the next generation. But that's the gutless nature of this government, which hasn't got the courage to face the problem. It will not own up to the problems that have been allowed to seep into this country for— (Time expired)

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