Natasha Stott Despoja (SA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Justice and Customs, Senator Johnston, to a question without notice asked by Senator Fifield today relating to hand guns.

Like other colleagues in this place I would like to recognise the tragic events in Victoria yesterday and put on record my condolences for Mr Brendan Keilar, who died in spite of what seems to have been a heroic effort. I also acknowledge that there are people who are still critically injured.

In his comments Senator Johnston said that some commentators had suggested that the government was culpable in relation to the events yesterday, and I have it on his assurance that he was not referring to me. Coincidentally—I am not sure whether it was prescient or whether it was just spooky—I did make a contribution to the debate yesterday morning with a newspaper article on the issue of gun law reform. I was not suggesting government culpability, but I was talking about the need for us to re-examine the effectiveness of gun laws in Australia today. I do not want people in this place, or commentators more generally, to feel that we cannot open the lid and debate the issue of the effectiveness of our national gun laws—by ‘national’, I mean Commonwealth legislation that may be relevant and, obviously, state and territory legislation, which is in many respects most relevant—because I think there are still some outstanding issues in relation to gun law reform.

I am certainly one of the first to acknowledge that the federal government does not have the necessary constitutional power to enact laws in relation to the possession of firearms, but there is a precedent for action that we are all aware of—the events of 1996 in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre and the legislative and policy efforts of 1996 and 1997. It was a time of extraordinary collaboration and unity among all political parties, the states and the territories and other interest groups. Many Australians—and pretty much all of us in this place have gone on record acknowledging the efforts of the Prime Minister and others—supported the 1997 national firearms agreement and the guns buyback scheme.

The government’s contribution in establishing and implementing the amnesty and the compensation schemes was fundamentally important. The facilitation of the collection of some 640,000 firearms in an attempt to limit guns in circulation was significant and positive. The willingness of Australians to pay an additional tax in order to see that come about should be acknowledged. Certainly the states and territories have tightened laws—for example, by banning automatic and semiautomatic firearms and pump action guns, with minor exceptions; by establishing firearms registry systems; by providing a cooling off period for shooters; by developing new minimum criteria for granting, refusing and cancelling licences; and by enabling arrangements for the storage of firearms. But how effective have these measures been?

One issue that I put on record yesterday and wish to examine in this place in more detail at some point is the effectiveness of the collection of statistics. There is poor statistical reporting and a lack of long-term studies on guns, so we cannot determine how effective some of these schemes have been or what more we need to do. We know the research database is limited. We know that statistics on the numbers, availability and distribution of firearms in Australia prior to 2001, licensed and unlicensed, are patchy or simply do not exist. We know that the Institute of Criminology has been unable to publish numbers by state and territory in recent reports because the institute relies on state and territory firearms registries within each police department to publish data. Even the research that is available sends mixed signals that relate to whether there has been a reduction in murders and suicide as a consequence of fewer guns—in fact, a British Journal of Criminology study has suggested that firearms agreements do not have any effect on the number of deaths and death rates. New South Wales and Queensland reported this week that they have failed to dent the gun tally, with gun ownership continuing to climb. These issues mean that this is a subject worthy of debate. I think it is time for it to go back on the agenda of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General and the Australian Police Ministers Council, which would enable a scoping audit to ensure each state is complying with the spirit of the 1997 agreement. I realise time is limited, and I hope we will have this debate. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.