Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

This is the advice I have: if the national reform package had already been in place, the gunman would not have been eligible to hold firearms at all. The father would have been ineligible because he was not a citizen. The firearms that they were using would not have been available to them. And the son, who did not have a firearms licence in any event, had he tried, any intelligence holdings with respect to him would have formed part of the licensing decision. Senator, this is one of the many reasons why you should be voting for it.

Now, no-one is pretending that guns deal with everything, and the gun buyback legislation is only one aspect of what the government is doing and what the parliament is doing. As the Prime Minister said, and I referenced earlier, the gunmen at Bondi—the murderers at Bondi—had hate in their minds and guns in their hands and we need to deal with both. And it is a matter of great regret that you have chosen not to deal with— (Time expired)