Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are more guns on Australian streets now than when John Howard's original gun buyback scheme took 650,000 guns off our streets in 1996. One in 30 Australians holds a firearms licence according to research by the Australian Institute. There are now more than four million registered firearms in Australia—an average of four guns per licence holder.

Here is another myth that we need to confront: the majority of the guns are in rural communities. They're not. The overwhelming majority are in the suburban streets and cities of Australia. This legislation clearly exempts farmers who need guns for legitimate purposes like pest control and livestock management. This is about keeping Australians safe from people who stockpile weapons in our suburbs to kill others, like at the Wieambilla siege in the Western Downs of Queensland, where police constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold were gunned down and killed along with a neighbour Alan Dare. Another officer, Randall Kirk, was injured by the gunfire. The shooters were fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists, and one of them was a registered gun owner. Days before the siege, he was able to buy ammunition in Queensland using a suspended gun licence from NSW. Obviously, we need to close this loophole to ensure we have a truly national firearms register with live data linked to intelligence agencies.

In 2024, Queensland Police launched Operation Whiskey Firestorm in response to 3,290 firearms offences across Queensland. The purpose of the operation was to get licensed gun owners to properly secure their firearms. Why? It is because hundreds of guns are stolen from suburban homes in Queensland every year via break and enters, and they end up being used in violent, murderous crimes. Fortunately, the majority of gun owners audited were found to be compliant. I commend the many responsible gun owners in Queensland for how seriously they take this responsibility. But there were still almost 110 gun owners who the police found with guns stored under beds and in cupboards, leaving them susceptible to theft or misuse—not to mention the fact that in this country a woman is killed every nine days by a current or former partner, and it's estimated that around 10 to 15 per cent of those homicides involve firearms. So we cannot talk about guns without talking about the domestic violence and safety risks these present in our communities. Queensland saw upwards of 3,000 firearm offences in 2024 alone.

We don't need to wait for someone else to die. We need to act now to make necessary change and we need political courage, and nowhere is that more important than in Queensland. Queensland has the second highest number of registered firearms in Australia with one million guns in circulation. As a Queensland senator, I feel enormous disappointment that our LNP state government is refusing to participate in the national buyback scheme. I have to ask myself why.

Last month, Courier Mail revealed that within hours of the Bondi massacre occurring gun lobbyists contacted the LNP government and urged them to resist gun reforms. To the Queensland Premier and to the Queensland police minister I say that you cannot be tough on crime and soft on guns.