Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

On 14 December, two individuals undertook a cowardly act at Bondi Beach. Their aim was to terrorise and to murder Jewish Australians as they gathered to celebrate Hanukah. From the moment that the first gunshot was fired, so many lives were changed forever. I won't repeat in full what I said in my condolence speech yesterday; however, I will emphasise this: such attacks leave scars that will last generations. They leave an empty chair at the dinner table. They leave wounds on bodies and hearts. They leave moments and memories that will never be able to be made. It is a cruelty to lose those we love to acts such as this, acts that should have never taken place. We must not let the actions of these two men define entire religious, ethnic and racial groups.

As politicians, we have a responsibility to act. We must strengthen our laws so that what happened that Sunday can never happen again. It is our responsibility to counter racism and hatred in all of its forms. And in this moment of deepest grief, we must be shoulder to shoulder with one another. The Australian Greens supported the recall of parliament. We supported the establishment of a royal commission to identify what went wrong and what must change, whether in our hate speech laws, our gun laws, our intelligence agencies. We owe it to the victims, their families and the whole community to make sure that this never happens again.

I will turn my contribution now to the need for gun law reform. We must close the loopholes in our gun laws that allowed these terrorists to legally access rapid reload weapons. Many of us look at the gun violence pandemic in the United States in horror. We are rightly proud of Australia's gun laws. We are rightly proud of the reforms that were enacted nearly 30 years ago, in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre. And because gun violence is not so widespread here, some people assume that our laws must already be strong enough. The reality is that, as of December 2025, there are more guns in Australia than there were before the buyback of 1996. In the postcode 2026, where Bondi is located, there are 370 registered firearms. One individual has 24 registered in their name. There is no acceptable reason or justification for someone living in the inner city to own 24 firearms—none whatsoever.

That is why the Greens will support the changes in this bill. We support tighter controls on what can be imported. The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 places restrictions on the importation of assisted repeating and straight-pull firearms, on magazines of more than 30 rounds, on firearms suppressors and speed loaders.

We support better background checks. Moving federal firearm checks into AUSTRAC is progress. This will enable agencies and police forces to share relevant information in relation to background checks. One of the clear failures in the Bondi attack was that the gunman was known to ASIO but the information could not be used in federal firearm checks.

We support a national buyback scheme, as the amount of firearms in this nation is, as I said, now higher than it was at the time of the Port Arthur massacre. We have a saturation of rapid-reloading rifles and shotguns. This reality goes against the goals of the post Port Arthur action. It is the alarm bell ringing to tell us that urgent action is now needed.

But, even once these changes have been made, we cannot be complacent. Firearms manufacturers have a long history of finding ways around strong gun laws. In the past they have changed the reload mechanisms just to dodge the restrictions. Their motivation is profit, not public safety. We need to stay vigilant to safeguard these changes.

In 2023, in my home town of Perth, a 16-year-old accessed his father's gun cabinet. He took two legal rifles and ammunition, drove to a school car park and fired three shots, two of which hit the building. That incident showed that gun laws must evolve to stay effective. After that, Western Australia strengthened our gun laws. The Greens (WA), led by Dr Brad Pettitt MLC, voted in support of these stronger and tougher laws.

I want to see changes made today, because public safety matters. A community free of gun violence matters. I also want to be clear that these laws should not punish responsible, legal gun owners who have a genuine reason for owning a firearm. Western Australia is home to some of the most threatened species on the planet, including the numbat, the bilby, the western ground parrot and the northern quoll. These animals are not only losing their habitat; they are being hunted to the brink of extinction by feral predators. Licensed landowners, professional pest controllers and conservation minded hunters have an important role to play in protecting these species against feral predators. These laws must be strong so that they can protect the community while also allowing legitimate conservation and land management work to continue.

We owe it to the community to make sure that we are safe from gun violence and that the attacks that we saw in Bondi can never happen again. This bill will make it harder for illegal and legal firearms to fall into the wrong hands, while making sure that those who have a legitimate reason for a firearm can still access them. It is commonsense legislation, and we must now get it done.