Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The terrorists who killed 15 people on that horrible day had hate in their hearts, and guns in their hands. The tragic events at Bondi demand a comprehensive response from Government. As a government we must do everything we can to counter both the motivation and the method. We must deal with the motivation of hatred, and the firearms—the method—the attackers used to devastate so many lives.

This Bill delivers on the Government's commitment to address the methods of the attack.

The Bill provides a framework for ensuring Commonwealth intelligence can inform firearms licence decision-making in states and territories. It provides the foundations for the largest buyback of firearms since Port Arthur, nearly 30 years ago, and strengthens laws for the importation of firearms.

The Bill forms part of a comprehensive package of reforms, including the renegotiation of the National Firearms Agreement led by National Cabinet, and the Bill brought forward by the Attorney-General to further criminalise hateful and extremist conduct, and ensure that those who seek to spread hate, division and radicalisation are met with appropriate penalties.

It comes as a shock to most Australians that Australia has more firearms now than we had before Port Arthur, nearly 30 years ago. Many people were also surprised to see that it was possible for a visa holder to have a licence, and that the information held by our intelligence agencies was not integrated into the firearms licencing decisions.

A critical question that I've often been asked during this debate is if this national reform package had already been in place, how many firearms would the Bondi gunmen have held. Would it be six? Would it be five? Would it be four? The answer is zero. 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 didn't have a firearms licence in any event—had he tried, any intelligence holdings with respect to him would have formed part of the licencing decisions.

No one is pretending that dealing with guns deals with everything that happened at Bondi. But it does deal with the method, and we must deal with the method.

Buyback Scheme

The Bill will establish a framework for a National Gun Buyback Scheme to support proposed reforms to national gun laws. The Buyback would purchase surplus and newly restricted firearms, and reduce the now more than four million registered firearms in Australia. A buyback is essential to compensate state and territory firearms owners for surplus or newly restricted firearms, and ensure that restricted guns don't end up in the hands of criminals and organised crime groups.

The sheer number of firearms currently circulating within the Australian community is unsustainable. Research by the Australia Institute last year highlights over 2,000 firearms are stolen or diverted to the illicit market every year—that's roughly one firearm every four hours.

The less legal firearms in the community, the less opportunity there is for them to fall into the wrong hands, including potential violent extremists and serious and organised criminals. The National Gun Buyback Scheme will help get firearms off our streets.

Commonwealth Intelligence Sharing

The Bill will also lay the foundation for a new Commonwealth background checking framework to inform decisions to issue or renew firearm licences by the states and territories.

The model would leverage AusCheck's existing role in providing background checks to other sensitive licensing frameworks.

Intelligence held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission would be shared securely and underpin firearms licensing decisions.

With these changes, the licencing system will combine with AusCheck and the National Firearms Register to make sure we're using the best information we have. When someone seeks a licence or renewal, AusCheck will make sure that our intelligence holdings are utilised.

When new persons of interest come to light for our intelligence agencies, they will be able to readily check if the person of interest is also a firearms holder. This means our intelligence agencies will get the best information they need. And states and territories, when deciding if someone is a fit and proper person to hold a licence, will have the best possible process before a licence is issued.

Details of the regime's operation, and how assessments are used in licencing, will be negotiated with states and territories.

Customs restrictions

While states and territories predominantly regulate firearms, the Commonwealth regulates the importation of them at the border.

There will be a range of measures introduced through customs regulations. These tougher, more robust regulations will protect the safety of the Australia community by ensuring only those with legitimate needs can import restricted firearms.

The regulations dealing with wearable ammunition equipment such as vests will not be dealt with today. There will be further consultation on this measure.

Criminal Code offences

At the time of Port Arthur, and the original National Firearms Agreement, there was no such thing as 3D printing, let alone 3D printed guns. The Bill updates Australia's Criminal Code to deal with this new technology.

The Bill will create new offences for using a carriage service to send electronic materials, like 3D-printing blueprints, used to manufacture firearms and explosives, or possessing or controlling this material through a carriage service.

These measures respond to feedback from the firearms community, including defences to ensure it does not capture those who seek to share material that assists with firearms maintenance, safety training and information on ammunition packing, and provides narrow defences for possession and use of 3D printing blueprints by those who are licenced to manufacture and modify firearms and firearms parts.

Other Customs amendments

The Bill also strengthens regulations that prohibit the import or export of goods that contribute to the spread of hate, extremism and promote the use of violence against persons and groups.

National Firearms Agreement

The measures in this bill complement the Government's ongoing work with states and territories to modernise and strengthen Australia's firearms laws. This includes the agreement by National Cabinet to develop options to:

Conclusion

In the wake of the tragedy at Bondi on 14 December, we as a parliament have a responsibility to act decisively to make sure Australians can be safe and feel safe. We must do everything we can to counter both the motivation and the method of the attackers. We must deal with both the hatred they had in their hearts, and the guns they had in their hands. This Bill is a critical step towards addressing their methods.

I extend my thanks to staff across the portfolio for their incredible work in developing this Bill. I also extend my thanks to the members of the public, advocates, community representatives and industry groups who have engaged in consultation to inform the measures I am introducing today. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to rise on behalf of the coalition to start debate in the Senate on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. As the Senate would recall, the legislation that we're currently debating was, in fact, part of a broader package of laws all jammed together, all tied in together, as an omnibus bill. These laws, for the most part, deal with gun laws—a framework to set up a gun buyback scheme; a system to enable Commonwealth intelligence agencies to share information around background checking for state and territory law enforcement agencies, which are the responsible bodies to issue licences for firearms in this country. It expands that background check arrangement; it expands the importation controls and new tests; it expands customs import and export prohibitions relating to extremists and hate linked materials, symbols and weapons.

One of the big concerns we had about this legislation in the first instance was that it was legislation jammed in with other legislation relating to matters to deal with the antisemitism crisis we face in this country, to deal with how we might proscribe and manage hate groups in this country, how we might deal with individuals under these laws who, of course, are spreading hate, inciting violence, are seeking to do terrible things to unpick the social fabric of our country that are not in our national interest, to deal with people who hate this country, who do not want democracy to succeed, who do not feel that the way we live in this country is indeed the way that it should be. They want to change everything. So to have this set of laws jammed in together was a huge concern for us.

I will also point out that these laws were slapped down on the table by the Prime Minister, by his government, and he said, in doing so: You've got a week to look at this. The parliament will be coming back—and here we are—and you've got to get it right by then. You've got to go through the 150 pages or thereabouts of legislation, you've got to read the 350 pages of explanatory memorandum—all of it very complex, all of it impacting existing laws across our statute book, all of it having impacts on things that many of us have raised concerns on towards freedom of speech and the like—and you've got to get it all done within the week. This is a truncated process off the back of legislation having been tabled that no-one outside of government had any input into prior to the legislation being made available to the public on Tuesday of last week—seven days ago.

At 9.00 am on Tuesday last week, the government released this legislation, or a draft version of it, for public consultation. Of course, since then, the legislation has been taken out of the omnibus bill they'd tabled, because they did see the writing on the wall. They realised, of course, that in its form then and the approach being taken—'Take it or leave it; we've drafted legislation, and you're going to have to pass it, or we'll blame you for the failure of this legislation'—was not going to work. As anyone tuned into this debate might realise, the Australian Greens political party have offered their support to the government to pass the firearms component of this legislation and the related customs element as well. They saw fit to pass this; they were able to do that in short form. I'm not sure what interrogation was had into this legislation, but they've reached that conclusion anyway.

The coalition does support elements of the legislation. If we start with, of course, the provision regarding expanded background checks using intelligence holdings, it's frankly baffling that today we don't actually have that in place, that that is not a standard form, that a police or law enforcement agency—whoever the licence-issuing authority in any state or territory is—doesn't, as a matter of course, go and interrogate the holdings of intelligence information or seek to understand whether there is any information held by national intelligence agencies. It's the fact that here we are in 2026 and that's not actually happening. To that end, it is a good move to have that arrangement in place—that we are actually able to ensure that level of information, which was, as at today, unavailable to agencies who are making decisions, is important.

It has also highlighted the very slow-going nature of the National Firearms Register. As I understand it, there are some jurisdictions—and this is the reason we don't have a national firearms registry—that still have a paper based registry. It's not electronic, it is not online, it's not even an Excel spreadsheet! It is an antiquated system, which, of course, makes one wonder how it can be properly administered, especially when there are quite a number of people in our community who do have firearms and who are law-abiding citizens. But how do you manage this kind of system if it's in a book or on a bunch of scraps of paper? Who knows how that operates? But it does show that the government does need to speed up.

We, of course, do have some concern around unintended consequences of the expansion of importation controls and the new tests contained in this legislation. We are concerned about the impact of changes to the types of weaponry, the types of ammunition that can be imported and for what purpose, and the arrangement that a firearm licence holder would have to go through to get to them and to comply with the law. My colleague the Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, Senator McKenzie, will be moving amendments on behalf of the opposition to deal with some of the concerns we have. We think it is important, given the rushed nature of the legislation here, that we do get the balance right, that we do make sure that this does not improperly impede law-abiding gun owners and licence holders from being able to continue abiding by the law.

Some of those concerns, of course, relate to what changes these laws might have on the ability of an individual to continue to earn an income. You've got individuals out there who draw an income from controlling vermin who will have an array of firearms as part of their toolkit to be able to do the job they need to do. A colleague, Senator Colbeck, showed me a picture last night of an individual who manages property at a place called Barrington in Tasmania, where, in his scope, there were hundreds of wallabies destroying the pasture for his livestock. That is an impact on business, so that person legitimately needs a range of weapons which have a range of fixtures—and there's a range of ammunition related to it—which will be caught up and impacted by this legislation. Some of those things, as I say, will be dealt with under the amendments to be moved by Senator McKenzie, who ordinarily would have led debate on this—

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Old wallabies, young wallabies, so you need different wallaby guns.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm not sure what Senator Shoebridge is worried about there, but I was just giving a voice to some of the concerns that have been raised in a very reasonable fashion. Indeed, I'm sure that I'll be able to interrupt Senator Shoebridge's contribution on the subsequent bill, which, of course, will be very interesting to hear.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Interjections are always disorderly. Senator Shoebridge!

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Praise the lord, yes. Look, if we could please just stick to the issues at hand here, the other concern that the coalition had in this was the suggestion that dealing with gun laws was going to be a silver bullet to deal with issues related to antisemitism. The first response of this government after Bondi was to announce that there would be a review of and changes to gun laws. That is not the cause of what happened here. The gun laws we have in this country were not what caused the event in Bondi on 14 December last year. Yes, firearms were used. They were a weapon, along with homemade bombs. As we know by the proliferation of terrorist activity across the globe, there are a range of weapons that people use beyond firearm, sadly. Indeed, there was an impassioned contribution by another colleague of mine, Senator Liddle, around perpetrators of domestic violence and how there are a proliferation of weapons used there. To suggest that the terrible terrorist event perpetrated by Islamic extremists, the worst terror attack on our soil in our history, would be fixed by changing the gun laws in the way we do is, sadly, a misnomer. So we took issue with the fact that the government's first and only response for a period of time was indeed to change the gun laws and say: 'You know what? All will be well.'

As we know, as history has shown and as the Prime Minister was forced to concede, there was a need for a royal commission. Everyone was calling for one. The world united to have that beyond a response in the form of firearms legislation amendment. You had the victims' families calling for a royal commission. That's much more than just changes to gun laws. You had business leaders, community leaders and not only the opposition but others in this party calling for a royal commission. They finally did it, beyond firearms legislation amendments, and indeed there was much more required.

An omnibus bill landed on the table of this parliament—not even this parliament but the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security—of 150 pages which included the racial vilification provisions which the government said were necessary to tackle antisemitism in this country. But, again, as some of the witnesses to that inquiry said, the changes proposed under racial vilification in part 5 of schedule 1 of the bill as it was originally slated were the biggest changes to laws governing speech in this country for more than half a century. That is a serious step that parliament would take and requires more than seven days of rushed consideration on laws that have such a dramatic impact on freedom of speech.

It is pleasing, though, that the laws have been separated, and we are dealing with the firearms laws and the customs laws separately. I will also indicate that the coalition were supportive of the provisions of the schedule relating to customs, which were originally, I believe, in schedule 3 of the previous bill. But we do have a myriad of concerns relating to the firearms provisions. I have given voice to those elements we support, and I'm sure other colleagues, including Senator McKenzie, will go into greater detail around the provisions that we actually have real issue with, including through the amendments that the opposition will be moving and including a second reading amendment Senator McKenzie will move.

We do want to deal with genuine issues, including the illegal manufacture of firearms, and with some of the issues around unintended consequences relating to electronic files. There are people out there who access information about how to reload ammunition. They need to genuinely understand how to do it properly so that they don't cause injury or harm to themselves or others. But, under these laws, what they do to try and reach a safe outcome will be deemed illegal. These are the unintended consequences for the representatives of shooting bodies and of farmers' and graziers' associations across the country, as Senator McKenzie and others will, I'm sure, talk about and give voice to.

With that, I'm pleased to have kicked off debate in the Australian Senate around these laws. Obviously, the position is clear: we don't support these matters as they stand today. There are elements of the bill we are supportive of, but we are not supportive of it in total. Unless amendments can be agreed to, we have real reservations around this, and the coalition will not be supporting this legislation.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. Thirty-seven days ago Australia was shaken by the worst terror attack on our nation's soil. It was meant to be a day of celebration, love and joy, but in mere moments it turned into pain, grief and tragedy. There were 15 innocent lives lost and many others injured. As they were celebrating Hanukkah with their loved ones at Bondi, they faced an act of antisemitic terror that defies comprehension. Now, more than ever, we need unity across our nation and a parliament that is prepared to act to strengthen our national security and social cohesion without weakening the values that define us as a country.

Rabbi Mendel Kastel, who lost his brother-in-law in the attack said:

I think it's time that people actually step up and say, 'You know what, we need to step forward and say we are with the Jewish community, we care about you, we're here to support you.'

Rabbi Ulman, who lost his son-in-law, Rabbi Schlanger, urged communities to say strong. He said:

We have to step up now. They're looking to us. Now is the time to unite, and forget petty things.

To them, and to all Jewish communities across Australia, we say clearly and without hesitation: We are with you. You deserve more than words. You deserve action. That means confronting both how this atrocity was carried out and why it happened.

The terrorists at Bondi had hatred in their hearts and minds and guns in their hands. Right now there's a record number of over four million firearms in Australia. There are more guns in this country now than there were at the time of the Port Arthur massacre. Just like the Howard government then, we can't address this horror without confronting how this violence was carried out. Dr Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz, a Jewish Australian, public health expert and senior research fellow at the University of Wollongong, said:

Our legislation has long been the envy of the world, but time and distance has done its work and we are no longer as safe as we once were. It is vital that we take the lessons of Bondi to heart, and ensure that future generations of Australians are as protected as we have been for decades.

That's what this bill seeks to deliver. We'll introduce some of the most significant changes to our Commonwealth gun laws in decades.

We're making sure that firearms can only be imported by Australian citizens. We're strengthening licensing and background checks so that national security and criminal intelligence can be used when someone applies for, renews or holds a firearms licence. We're tightening the rules around importing dangerous firearms and related equipment, including straight-pull weapons, high-capacity magazines and speed loaders—the same kinds of tools used by the Bondi terrorists in their horrific attack. On top of that, we are also introducing a new public safety test for firearms and weapons imports which will allow the minister to block items that pose a real risk to the safety of the public before they ever reach our shores.

We're making it a serious crime to use the internet to access or share instructions for making guns or explosives, including digital blueprints used for 3D-printed weapons. And we're establishing a national gun buyback—the largest since the Howard era—to reduce the overall number of firearms in the community. These laws support the National Cabinet commitments to make Australian citizenship a condition of holding a firearm licence, accelerate the rollout of the National Firearms Register, limit the number of firearms any one person can own and limit open-ended import permits so every firearm brought into this country must be individually approved. And it's not just guns. We're also shutting the door on the import and export of violent extremist material—hate symbols and the goods that contain such things.

I want to be very clear about something else. These laws are not about putting blanket bans on guns for farmers or sporting shooters or law-abiding Australians who have legitimate reasons to own guns. These laws are aimed at stopping extremists. Extremist beliefs, combined with access to firearms, are what turn hatred into deadly action. We've seen this again and again. We saw it last year with Dezi Freeman in Victoria. We saw it in 2022 in Wieambilla in Queensland, where Gareth, Stacey and Nathaniel Train shot three police officers and a neighbour in cold blood. And now we've seen it again in the terror attack at Bondi Beach.

All of these changes could have made a practical difference at Bondi. If this national reform package, including the hate crimes bill and the gun law reforms, were in place, the gunmen involved in the Bondi attack wouldn't have been eligible to hold firearms at all. They would have had none at all. The father would have been ineligible because he was not a citizen, and the firearms would not have been available to them. The son, who is facing charges, who didn't have a firearms licence but had tried—any intelligence holdings with respect to him would have formed part of the licence decisions. He wouldn't have had the gun. The means is not the only issue but is such a vital one that we must deal with it.

Just today in a statement, the families of Constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, who were murdered by those extremists at Wieambilla in 2022, spoke out in support of our stronger gun laws. The families that lost those constables in just 2022 said this:

We fully support the federal government in its plan to tighten guns laws and promote the national gun buyback scheme.

…   …   …

All the Australian population must play a role in shaping firearm legislation in Australia.

…   …   …

Instead of the 'bickering' between parties, and across law enforcement agencies, we hope they will come to their senses and work together for change.

That's the victims—those families and many others. I want to quote David Meagher, brother of Peter Meagher, a former police officer who lost his life at Bondi:

Gun reform alone will not solve hatred or extremism, but an antisemite without a gun is just a hate filled person. An antisemite with a gun is a killer.

These laws would not have erased the hatred in their hearts but they would have made it vastly harder for that hatred to be turned into mass murder. How could anyone in good conscience vote against these measures? We owe it to the families grieving, we owe it to the Jewish community, who are hurting, and we owe it to every Australian, who deserves to feel safe in their own country. I commend this bill to the Senate.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In 1996, in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy, state and federal governments came together to take decisive action on gun laws in Australia. They united to remove semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from our community. In total, more than 700,000 guns were surrendered and destroyed. It is devastating that we are here needing to pass these laws because of another mass shooting, this time at Bondi, but the loss of 15 innocent lives demands action.

There are now more guns in our community than there were in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre—almost double the number recorded in 2001—and at least 2,000 new firearms are lawfully entering the community every week. The Bondi tragedy was made possible by gun laws that are no longer fit for purpose. The Greens welcome today's long-overdue gun law reforms. The Greens have consistently called for limits on the number of guns in our suburbs and clearer restrictions on the most dangerous weapons.

We welcome the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, and we welcome the fact it was separated from the government's proposed changes to the Migration Act and new powers for the home affairs minister—which the Greens remain opposed to, in solidarity with the community. In its original form, the hate speech bill drew criticism from legal experts, faith groups, academics and the wider community. The vast potential for unintended consequences, the unanswered questions about the impact on political freedoms and the exclusion of many groups from its protections made the bill impossible to pass, or to reform with amendments, in the extremely tight timeframe enforced upon it by the government.

After close consultation with gun safety advocates, the Greens confirmed we would back the important gun safety reforms. But we could not support the other parts of the bill, which scapegoat migrants and create wide-ranging, divisive, one-sided laws. We were originally willing to see if the laws could be amended and fixed, but, with every passing moment, fresh concerns were raised by academics, faith leaders and experts about the vast consequences of rushed hate speech laws. We now see that the hate speech laws have been made even worse, with a last-minute deal stitched up between the government and the opposition. The original bill was rushed and lacked time for legal experts and stakeholders to review it. These changes in the last 48 hours are even more hasty, more dangerous and even less scrutinised. The government has chosen to join the coalition's race to the bottom. Far from narrowing these laws, the amendments that Labor have agreed to in this dirty deal with the coalition expand the reach of an already unreasonable crackdown on free speech. There are real questions about the constitutionality of this expansion.

These expanded laws will also allow the government of the day to capture conduct retrospectively—a terrifying overreach. A process that was looking rushed last week, with only days to consider the bill, is now looking downright dangerous, with the parliament legislating a bill that is still warm from the photocopier. Giving the home affairs minister power to ignore procedural fairness and ban or criminalise organisations is a blank-cheque power grab. These are Trumpian powers that remove the usual checks for good decision-making. These changes are bad, and the Greens stand with the community to oppose them.

Hate and hate groups raise very real problems, but there are existing powers to ban Neo-Nazis and other groups that promote or incite violence. We have repeatedly asked why those powers have not already been used against Neo-Nazis, and we have not had adequate answers. Allowing the government to proscribe organisations is a serious step and needs to come with safeguards and protections, including procedural fairness. Currently, the minister can refuse or cancel someone's visa if their presence poses a risk or they would generally represent a danger to the Australian community or a segment of the community. The bill would change the threshold for the ability of the minister to cancel a visa from the existing threshold of 'would pose a risk' to 'might pose a risk'. This broadens immigration's powers to impact almost anyone, dramatically increasing the minister's powers within an already opaque system.

The legacy of the appalling violence at Bondi cannot be the undermining of civil and political rights. All laws that can be used to weaponise racism and hate against everyday Australians who follow their conscience and speak out when they see wrong carried out here in Australia or overseas. We need to ensure that these laws cannot be weaponised to shut down legitimate political protest. Criticism of Israel's actions, just like those of Russia, China, or Australia, should not be criminalised.

The firearms bill that we have before us at the moment is an opportunity to take dangerous weapons off our streets. It is critical that it's not bound up with rushed legislation that would divide people by religion, prevent them from critiquing governments and their human rights abuses, including Israel's genocide in Gaza, or allow the home affairs minister to ignore procedural fairness in banning or criminalising organisations.

We consider the national gun buyback and information sharing amongst national, state and territory law enforcement and security agencies the bare minimum of what's required to ensure that we never see a tragedy of this magnitude in Australia again. Many gun laws are state based, leaving us with inconsistent implementation of rules across the country. What we need now, as we saw after Port Arthur, is a national commitment to change. A patchwork of laws just creates opportunities for people to shop around for the weakest of jurisdictions. A patchwork of laws makes police monitoring of gun ownership and licensing more difficult.

Information about a person's criminal history and any previous screening that made them ineligible to own a gun in one state is not necessarily shared with other states when they move. A history of domestic violence, an affiliation with hate groups, animal cruelty—none of that will necessarily prevent them from getting access to firearms in other jurisdictions. The changes proposed in this bill allow AusCheck to manage a background checking scheme for gun licensing and improve data sharing with ASIO and the Australian Crime Commission. That is a welcome move towards better transparency and more robust decisions. Regular reviews of eligibility should be conducted to ensure that risks can be reassessed as circumstances change.

Restrictions on the types of guns that can be imported have not kept pace with changes in technology. We welcome the public safety test for imported firearms and the proposed restrictions on fast-loading weapons and accessories that enable mass killings. It's difficult to conceive of any justification for such weapons. Terrifyingly, there's also been a rise in 3D printed weapons—homemade guns that often escape safety regulations and, without registration, escape notice. Two high-powered 3D-printed guns were seized by police in a raid in Tasmania just last weekend. New offences in this bill targeting materials for the home manufacture and modification of weapons will go some way towards addressing this.

One key reform from Port Arthur—which still hasn't been actioned—is a national firearms register. The Greens and, in particular, my colleague Senator Shoebridge have been vocal about the failure to deliver this register for many years. Work on creating the national register was largely dormant following Port Arthur until renewed calls followed the fatal shootings in Wieambilla in 2022. Again, action was prompted by tragedy rather than getting ahead of it.

In the absence of a national register, Senator Shoebridge established the toomanyguns.org website as a tool to see how many weapons are in a local area, revealing the sheer scale of gun ownership in our suburbs, but because of the limited transparency nationally, there's currently only comprehensive data available for NSW. Australians should have the right to know how many guns are being held by people in every state and territory. The Greens welcome the government's new commitment to fast-track implementation of the national register and have it operating this year. We will continue to call for the register to include public access and regular reporting.

Despite its urban location, Bondi has 190 guns in the 2026 postcode, with one gun owner possessing a shocking 24 registered weapons. In Matraville, one firearm owner has 295 registered guns. No sensible firearms laws would allow massive private arsenals to be amassed like this. This is a serious weakness in Australia's firearm laws that is being exploited and putting the public at risk. Nobody needs 295 guns.

The Greens accept that there are people in the community who have a genuine reason to own a gun. Farmers on rural properties often require firearms for euthanising injured stock and additional, different firearms for controlling invasive animals. Target shooting at a registered gun club is also a long-recognised and legitimate sport. Members of a shooting club, Olympic and other competitive shooters, and farmers may reasonably be able to establish the need for a number of guns to address their different needs. Those legitimate needs should be reflected in any firearms reforms. That has long been the Greens's stance. But there is simply no reason to have dozens or even hundreds of guns.

The Greens will work across state and territory parliaments to ensure that communities are safe from gun violence, with fewer dangerous weapons, limits on gun numbers, robust background screening, implementation of the buyback scheme and comprehensive data sharing. It is reprehensible that Liberal governments in Queensland, Tasmania and the NT are refusing to contribute to the cost of a national gun buyback. We need a uniform, national buyback scheme, and people in those states deserve the protection of a national buyback. Federal Labor should commit to paying the full cost of that so that we can have a national approach. Let's not let politicking get in the way of doing a good thing to keep people safe.

The Greens are pleased that the federal government has, under pressure from the Greens and gun safety advocates, decided to take the advice to establish a firearms safety council. This council will provide independent advice on the status of gun regulation across Australia, develop national best practice standards informed by expert advice and promote transparency, integrity, harm prevention and public education. We thank the government for agreeing to do that extra good thing.

Even before Bondi, the community had been calling for action on gun control. Polling by the Australia Institute showed that around 70 per cent of Australians think gun laws should be strengthened to make it harder to get a gun. The tragedy of Bondi means we must not ignore those calls any longer. This moment is beyond politics. Our resolve to act is a test for our common humanity, and I hope that all of parliament will join together to ensure that no-one can walk the streets of Sydney or any Australian city with a high-powered gun. I'm proud, on behalf of the Greens, to support these gun law reforms today.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the over a million law-abiding firearm owners in this country need protection from the dirty deal done by the Greens political party, who have always sought to demonise hunters, sporting shooters, farmers, feral-pest managers and environmentalists for doing what they should lawfully be able to do.

They've found a willing partner in a prime minister that sought to demonise law-abiding firearm owners in the wake of his flaccid, weak response to an Islamic terrorist attack on our shores. What was his first response? It wasn't to call out Islamic radical terrorism or extremism, which has now found terrorising expression on one of our most iconic landscapes. No, that wasn't the Prime Minister's first call. In fact, he is still yet to say those words, and the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026, which we'll debate later today, doesn't even mention it.

Yet here we are, literally driving the bus over a million lawful Australians, who are going about their business, enjoying their sport, working hard et cetera. I am just so thankful that they have risen as one. They have said no to unfair gun law changes. That is why I seek leave from the chamber to table a non-conforming petition.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I understand leave is granted.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you so much. Over 65,000 Australians have signed up to say, 'No, we are not the problem here, Prime Minister, and you need to stop saying we are.'

The National Party and the coalition are opposing these laws, and we don't make an apology for that at all, because we know it's not the gun that saw 15 lives lost and Jewish Australians targeted on 14 December, when Australia was confronted with a brutal and senseless act of violence at Bondi. Innocent people going about their lives in a place that should have been safe and ordinary were murdered. Families were shattered—

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator McKenzie, just a moment. I understand the agreement that was arrived at was that you would have a bundle of the petitions on the desk, and the rest would remain on the trolleys.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The agreement was that I would table a non-conforming petition.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The agreement with the clerks was that you would have some on your desk and the others remain—

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That wasn't agreed.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm sorry, Senator McKenzie, that is what I am requesting. Please put the rest back on the trolley. You're not in a debate with me, so put the rest back on the trolley. They need to be removed from the floor for safety.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sure.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Not by you, because you need to continue your—well, you've got other senators there.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're happy to do our own heavy lifting.

Our nation was reminded once again that the forces of hatred, extremism and radical violence are not abstractions; they have real victims, real names and real consequences. The coalition's message has been very clear and consistent: antisemitism, terrorism and hate-fuelled violence in all their forms must be confronted, condemned and defeated.

Making law-abiding firearm owners your scapegoats is very convenient. It allows the Greens to do something they've wanted to do for a long time, but it does not get to the heart of the issue. You've heard a lot from the Labor Party about what the real issue is. The reality is that the coalition called for a royal commission after the Bondi attack so that we could understand how this Islamist had firearms in his home. He should never have had access to firearms under existing laws. We need to find out who knew what and when, and why these firearms weren't removed before 15 innocent Australians had to pay the ultimate price.

This bill seeks to instigate a national gun buyback. We have state and territory governments who have made it very, very clear that they do not see this as an appropriate response.

I'm happy for these to stay in front of me, if you don't mind. We've got the other 60,000 signatures behind us and not being out in front of everyone, so I think we've found an agreement.

I will be moving amendments on behalf of the coalition. These amendments are required to make the proposed buyback more consistent under 1996, a buyback where an agreement was struck on 10 May 1996 that all state and territory jurisdictions agreed to a process to create and amend firearms legislation in so much as this would, for the first time, create consistent and agreed processes that would manage all elements of firearm legislation across Australia, with the states and territories being responsible for various firearm acts and the Commonwealth responsible for changes to the importation and end-user certification. That actually reflects our Constitution.

For the first time since 1996, the federal government has decided to abandon the process that we all agreed to over 25 years ago and which had made us the envy of the world when it came to strict gun laws. They were strict gun laws that still allowed lawful Australians to participate in their sport, farmers to practice animal husbandry, environmentalists to ensure that feral pests were managed and Olympians to win gold medals—of which we're all very proud, but you can't do that if you're not getting young people through the pipeline of this great sport. The advice I have is that if you really want to participate in all of the firearm disciplines available you'd need more than 50 different guns. That's like banning your three iron, your putter and your wedge while trying to get your handicap under 20 in golf.

After two meetings of the state and territory attorneys-general and police ministers, the proposals of the Albanese government were comprehensively rejected by the majority of the signatories to the National Firearms Agreement. Instead of accepting the result of the process—state ministers saying, 'Well, thanks very much for your advice, Mr Albanese, but we've got it from here,' which has been the system for 30 years—the Albanese government has chosen to use the powers of the federal government to prohibit certain firearms by denying import certification, leaving Australia in a situation where a firearm that had previously been approved will now be banned. You're leaving us in a situation where things that have been prohibited by the federal government are still able to be legally owned and purchased in the majority of Australian states and territories. These guys, helped by the Greens, actually don't know how this works.

The National Firearms Agreement, sadly, is an agreement in word only. By trashing this most important agreement, which was arrived at thanks to the leadership of John Howard and Tim Fischer, the future of firearms management in Australia has now been set back many years. Instead of being the envy of the world, we are now the laughing-stock. Real leadership would dictate using the National Firearms Agreement as the agreed pathway forward, and accepting the outcome of that process. And if the majority of states said, 'No, thanks,' then that, I'm sorry, Prime Minister, is how government works. It's how our Constitution works. But here we are, debating a bill which has several flaws, and that is why I will be moving amendments on behalf of the coalition.

With regard to these amendments, there is no detail around this buyback. Which firearms and equipment would be banned by the states? How many guns can a person own? Is there going to be fair market compensation paid to lawful firearm owners? Are the many dealerships that operate around the country, who have millions of dollars worth of stock sitting on the shelves right now that will be unable to be sold or used, going to be fairly compensated? Our Constitution requires for that to happen federally. The amendment sheet that will be circulated will also provide that compensation be available for those business losses.

I will also be moving amendments that require states and territories to give notice by 3 March 2026 if they are going to participate in this gun buyback or not, because when it comes to the state of Victoria and the state of South Australia, both of them are going to state elections. Firearm owners in those states need to know is Jacinta Allan going to throw hundreds of thousands of law-abiding firearm owners, including her husband, under the bus before the election? Is Premier Malinauskas going to tell South Australian firearm owners what he's going to do before his election? Firearm owners deserve transparency on this so that they can put their vote behind the National Party and the Liberal Party, who support their lawful right to hold firearms and to participate in our society lawfully.

Amendment sheet 3595 will seek to delete the proposed ban on assisted repeating and straight-pull repeating firearms. These are not semiautomatic weapons and in most states are subject to a genuine reason process. You can't just walk in and buy one. You've got to have a genuine reason. Senator Little and I were talking about how you don't need a repeating rifle if you're hunting deer. But if you're out hunting feral pigs you do, because one shot and they're all gone. Anyway, it just shows a complete misunderstanding of how firearms are used appropriately in this country.

The amendment on sheet 3597 will prevent a costly administrative and bureaucratic burden on compliance agencies. Currently, licensed gun importers can bring in bulk firearms under a B709DA permit; Labor's bill will require individual permits per item. That's a problem not only for the importers but for Home Affairs and the state agencies which are going to have to assess all these permits. We support the measure that seeks to prohibit the downloading of instructions from a carriage service for 3D printing of illegal and unlawful firearms, but there doesn't seem to be a clear defence for lawful firearm owners to seek information from the internet relating to reloading and spent ammunition or to access to manuals for firearms that the person owns legally.

We need to have a merit review process when it comes to adverse criminal intelligence assessments. Currently, that isn't in the bill. I will be moving an amendment that provides clarity that the provisions in the bill do not effectively ban the import of pistols, which I'm told will have severe and unintended impacts on the elite competition and sport shooting that goes on in clubs right around the country in a very safe and secure environment.

The government originally proposed to impose restrictions on worn equipment, such as shooting vests and cartridge belts—and I'd like to give a huge shout-out to SSAA, and to Beretta Australia, who provided me with a shooting vest yesterday. I was able to say that you're not allowed to have clothing that would allow you to have more than 30 cartridges. There go your Olympic vests! You need to be able to carry over 50 cartridges. After putting that up on the internet, guess what? The government has changed this because firearm owners are saying that this is nonsensical. So thank you to the government for doing that.

The failure to properly distinguish between legal firearms, which are used safely and securely, and the acts of terrorists will demonise over a million people. The petition I'm tabling today involves over 65,000 law-abiding Australians who are standing up to the Labor Party and saying no. I want to make it very, very clear that the coalition supports the firearms registry process. We don't know why we're still waiting for it to be implemented! The government has been in charge of this process for over four years, and yet here we are announcing it as if it's something new. The reality is they didn't put money towards it and that is why it hasn't been seen as a priority. Let's make sure that we can do better next time.

We know the Labor Party's dirty deal with the Greens is a step back. As I have outlined, it is in contravention of the National Firearms Agreement that we all signed up to in 1996. For the Prime Minister to say that he's 'just like John Howard', shows what a mockery this is. John Howard and Tim Fischer took on their own constituency—took on the farmers and took on the sporting shooters, who are typically coalition voters—in an effort to address the mass shooting at Port Arthur. This Prime Minister has failed to take on his own constituency in the Labor Party and in the Western Sydney suburbs. That is the cause of this shooting event.

I move:

Omit all words after "That", substitute "the bill be referred to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 2 March 2026".

This amendment requests that this legislation goes to a Senate inquiry in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee for four weeks. We need to have the chance for firearm owners to have their say—the National Rifle Association, SIFA, SSAA, the Shooters Union, the Australian Clay Target Association, Target Pistol Australia: all these. Gympie Pistol Club would also like to have a say. Let the people, the experts and our agencies have input into this firearm legislation so that it's not actually harming the people it's supposed to protect. (Time expired)

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

Fifteen innocent lives were tragically lost at Bondi Beach. They were gunned down by two terrorists. One of the shooters had a firearms licence, and he was legally in possession of six weapons. Australia's current firearms laws entitled that gunman to own an uncapped number of guns. This bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, will stop that. He was not an Australian citizen, and this bill will stop non-citizens from holding a firearms licence. This bill will also stop the importation of rapid-fire guns.

These are sensible reforms in response to the Bondi massacre. They will protect our community and protect our law enforcement. These are important reforms for Queensland, where we have lost far too many police officers to criminals and murderers in possession of guns. As someone who has spent most of my career working alongside police, today I say their names: Constable Matthew Arnold, Constable Rachel McCrow, Senior Constable Brett Forte, Detective Senior Constable Damian Leeding, Constable Brett Irwin, Senior Sergeant Perry Irwin, Senior Constable Norman Watt. Each one of them was a Queensland police officer murdered by a person with a gun while doing their job. I say their names as a reminder that the gun debate is not an attack on law-abiding gun owners. It is about reducing risk. It is about safety. It is about protecting Australians and our law enforcement.

You see, the idea that Australia is safe from guns is a myth. The events of 14 December at Bondi are a shocking and painful reminder of that truth. The reality is that there are more guns on Australian streets now than when John Howard's original gun buyback scheme—

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Chisholm, on a point of order?

Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We listened in silence to Senator McKenzie's speech. I'd ask the same for Senator Mulholland.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Indeed, Senator Chisholm, and senators should be in their seats if they must heckle.

Corinne Mulholland (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge that we're on Ngunnawal and Ngambri country, the sovereign custodians of the land, and sovereignty was never ceded to this colony.

I welcome strengthened gun laws, but, if we're serious about gun safety, accountability can't stop at just civilian firearms. Oversight, tracking and transparency must apply to all guns, including those issued to police, prison guards, security guards and defence personnel. I intend to move a second reading amendment in my name, which calls on this parliament to implement robust and nationally consistent oversight of firearms. The public has a right to know what firearms are imported into this country and who imports them, how they are stored and used and what happens to them at the end of their life cycle.

International evidence shows that firearms can and do move from police stockpiles to criminal markets when oversight is weak. Australia should be learning from that, not pretending it can't happen here. We already know that stolen firearms are the biggest source of illegal guns in this country and that most guns used in crime are stolen guns. A recent report by the Australia Institute shows that approximately 2,000 firearms, 2,000 guns, are stolen each year, averaging one every four hours. Recently, firearms were stolen from police in Townsville. We've also seen evidence presented in court cases that shows that weapons stolen from army facilities have been used to commit serious crimes, including murder and armed robbery. These are some of the few cases we know about, but there is no consistent public transparency about these incidents.

It has also been reported that a police issued firearm was allegedly used in the horrific domestic violence murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies, which raises serious questions about the management and oversight of police weapons. Police defence armouries remain largely opaque, which limits accountability and undermines our gun control framework. A national firearms register that excludes police weapons is incomplete. If the goal is public safety then transparency has to be universal. This also leads to the point that the armoury and strength of police in particular is used against the very people they are supposed to protect, whether it is violence against protests standing against genocides and war crimes or police deaths in custody.

A 2020 Deakin University study showed that, even though Australia has half the population size of the UK, it had more fatal shootings by police. Shame! Recently, there was the shooting of Kumanjayi Walker by Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe in Yuendumu and also the shooting of 29-year-old Yamatji woman JC, who was shot using hollow-point bullets. The bullets explode in your body; that's what a hollow-point bullet is. That's what the police use in this country. These bullets explode in your body. These bullets have been banned in international warfare by the 1899 Hague declaration. This is why one of my amendments restricts law enforcement from importing hollow point bullets to use against civilians.

We know that globally purchases of militarised equipment are creating a new profitable market for defence contractors rather than really putting questions of public safety first. In 2023, a study led by Brown University's Associate Professor of Political Science Rob Blair studied a militarised crime intervention in Cali, Colombia, and found little evidence to support the idea that military policing reduces crime. Safety cannot be found through violent, colonial institutions, more police, more cops or more prisons, especially for First Nations people.

On the hate crimes bill—I cannot support this bill. Racism, including antisemitism, is a real and serious problem in this country. But this legislation does not represent a good faith effort to combat hate and racism. It seems designed to: suppress legitimate criticism of the State of Israel; restrict protests and political expression, especially on the topic of genocide; and create hierarchies of who deserves protection and who does not. This parliament must genuinely commit to protecting everyone from hate and racism, not selectively and not in ways that undermine fundamental rights or erase the foundational racism against my people.

Expanding hate crimes law for a select few protected attributes and excluding religion leaves communities who continue to be affected by rising hate, violence and vilification at risk. There has been—and you don't see this in the newspapers, especially the right-wing Murdoch media—a 2,297 per cent increase in Islamophobic incidents reported to the Islamic Council of Victoria in 2025 alone, a 2,297 per cent increase! A recent incident in Melbourne saw an imam and his wife attacked, driven off the road and threatened with stabbing. There were 33 Aboriginal deaths in custody just last year, and since the horrific attack at Bondi we have shamefully seen attempts to blame the actions of two violent extremist men on the entire anti-genocide movement and on Muslim and Arab communities more broadly. No-one's talking about the violence of men in this debate. These false and dangerous claims fuel the very racism and Islamophobia this parliament apparently wants to address. In the words of Jews Against the Occupation '48:

To conflate the speech and actions of people motivated by deeply held convictions on justice and universal rights with the speech and actions of people motivated by racist hatred is not only wrong but dangerous. (To do so because the interests of a foreign nation, communicated via politically-motivated lobby groups, coincide with the desire by the state to clamp down on the democratic rights of people in our own country is cynical in the extreme.)

All the while, more than a year after the National Anti-Racism Framework was handed down, this government has still not provided a formal response to getting rid of racism in this country at a national level. You have not even responded to the work of the Race Discrimination Commissioner. You say you want to fix the problem in this country. Believe me, hate arrived on these shores over 200 years ago. My people have been subjected to hate all of that time. You haven't provided anything back to the antidiscrimination commissioner, let alone committed to implementing any part of it, which says that everyone should do racism training in this place. We know that we have racists in this place who inform the legislation. Instead, we are presented with rushed legislation, with a deal done with the Liberals—the coalition—on the hate crimes, a deal done with the Greens on the guns, so the crossbench have no say in any of it. It was a deal done during late night meetings and conversations, and back room discussions, so it's stitched up. The human rights committee is meant to scrutinise legislation but it didn't even come to us, so you haven't even followed your own colonial procedures here, which you tell me to do all the time. You didn't even follow proper process.

So anyway, here we are, with rushed legislation that is very dangerous to everyday people out there, that dangerously expands state power, that is riddled with legislative inconsistencies and that undermines fundamental principles of the rule of law and due process. We don't have a bill of human rights in this country either, so human rights in this country are not protected—people's human rights! Despite removal of the racial vilification offence, the bill as a whole continues to pose a risk of discriminatory enforcement and disproportionate impact on Muslim people, Palestinians, First Peoples and other racialised or marginalised people. For example, it grants sweeping new authority to the Minister for Home Affairs to cancel or refuse visas with minimal safeguards. So the minister can just say, 'Yes, we heard what that one has been saying. Cancel his visa. Forget about the family, children, connection here. He can go.'

This is a government with a long record of cruelty towards migrants and refugees now using the language of antiracism to further undermine fairness, due process and accountability in our immigration system. This bill also treats religious instruction as a risk factor, lending legitimacy to Islamophobic public, political and media narratives that justify heightened scrutiny and over policing of Muslim communities. I see here the same white Australia policy that criminalised, killed and punished my people for practising culture, for gathering and for speaking our languages. If this parliament truly wants to confront hate, it must do so by addressing racism as a whole.

This is a racist country. Australia is a racist country, no doubt about it. But we're not addressing that here, are we? If this parliament wants to confront hate, it must do so by addressing racism, by protecting all communities and by defending democratic rights, including the right to protest and speak freely. Protest is important. Protest is part of democracy—peaceful protests. We've got nothing by standing silent and idle. Who are we waiting for to do it—the government? We have to protect protest. Anything less is not justice; it is shallow politics dressed up as protection. As Chelsea Watego says, it's another day in the colony.

Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Thorpe, we already have a second reading amendment before the chair. Your amendment that you wish to move will need to be foreshadowed now and moved later on in the debate.

Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Okay.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This legislation, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, is bad. It's rushed. There was no consultation with affected Australians—one million constituents, one million Australians who didn't get a say—and there was definitely none done with firearm related researchers and academics who are saying this legislation will not work. It will not achieve the outcome of reducing illegal firearms. This is instead a very expensive stunt to distract from the Prime Minister being forced kicking and screaming into a royal commission and to respond to the tragedy of the Bondi massacre.

What an outrageous, discriminatory and dumb statement to say there are too many guns in Australia. This demonstrates the anti-gun agenda of Labor and the Greens, and their lack of understanding of different sorts of firearms; apparently, all guns are the same. Senator McKenzie gave us some great examples of why we have a need for different firearms—as well as for different golf clubs! Their lack of understanding of why Australians need and enjoy firearms—worse; this is a government who seeks to deny Australians the very basic right to choose what firearms they own for their enjoyment. Of course there are more guns in Australia; there are nine million more Australians than there were at the time of Port Arthur—Australians who enjoy competitive shooting, clay target shooting and hunting, and many Australians who use guns for work, such as farmers, graziers and pest contractors. To be clear, there are fewer guns proportionally now than after Port Arthur—less! Australia has some of the strongest firearm laws in the world. They are strict and they have been shown to work.

This bill before us today does not build on what works; it risks punishing the wrong people for the wrong reasons. There was no input from legal experts or criminologists. Their subsequent submissions, that have been sent to me, show that the rate of firearm related crime is less. The rate of crimes with knives, cars, fists and hands is increasing. Perhaps next time, the government will introduce legislation that would limit the number and types of knives that can be owned by Australians—well, of course not; that would be ridiculous, but not much more ridiculous than this massive overreach. The Australian Institute of Criminology has data that demonstrates these laws won't work. They are simply an attack on everyday Australians who enjoy guns—one million Australians. Maybe it's not the sport you enjoy, but that does not make it wrong.

Let us be clear about the rushed nature of this legislation—the legislation that would have prevented the importation of clothing and equipment used by competitive shooters and clay shooters. Senator McKenzie has talked about it. Olympic vests—that had to be changed once the member for Hunter pointed out how ridiculous that was. What about those Australians who reload their ammunition? Sometimes it's for cost; that's what my father did in drought years. That's what Australians who want to be really accurate with the sort of missile and the powder they use do. That's the fun of being an expert at something. That's the joy of competition. But we won't have that in Australia.

This bill also allows us the use of AI to assist with decision-making on intelligence findings. That contravenes a recommendation of the robodebt royal commission, but it's in the legislation.

So let us be clear about who lawful firearm owners are in this country. At last count—this is a couple of years ago—there were 943,000 licensed firearm holders nationwide, including farmers, professional pest controllers, sporting shooters and collectors. Forget the stereotypes. Lawful gun owners aren't hillbillies, blasting away; they are white-collar professionals, tradies, police officers, veterans and military personnel—and I would like to add senators to that list—who take the responsibility of gun ownership very seriously. They are also the people who volunteer for the SES. They help at community groups. They're mums and dads and grandmas and grandpas.

There are more than four million registered firearms, each tracked, regulated and subject to strict licensing conditions. In Queensland alone, there's over 224,000 licensed owners. For the Queensland senators in here, these are the people we come to represent. In New South Wales, there are more than 252,000, Senator Cadel. In Victoria—Senator McKenzie will know this—there are 236,000 Australians who are licensed for guns. These Australians are not criminals. They're not extremists. And they are not responsible for terrorism or hate-motivated violence. They go through stringent police checks, and they will tell you the hoops that they are required to jump through to purchase, to store and to use firearms. Yet, under this bill, they're just collateral damage in what amounts to a policy response driven by fear and not fact. They are Australians, whom we should be here to represent and defend and protect.

At last week's parliamentary hearings, the department made some absolutely extraordinary admissions. When asked whether it had conducted any research into gun buyback schemes overseas, its answer was no. When asked if it had modelled whether this bill would reduce gun crime, its answer was no. When asked if the buyback scheme would reduce the number of illegal firearms in Australia, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission said it was highly unlikely.

That matters because Australia has an estimated 260,000 illegal firearms circulating in the criminal black market and being used by organised crime groups and illicit drug barons. But this bill does nothing to address that. It will not stop gangland shooters. It won't stop criminal trafficking networks and standover men. Perhaps the government could turn its mind to that, rather than undermining ordinary law-abiding Australians. It will not prevent terrorists from accessing illegal weapons. Instead it targets firearms that are already licensed, registered and securely stored.

Expert evidence tells us this approach is fundamentally flawed. Dr Samara McPhedran, an internationally recognised firearms violence researcher and former member of the Queensland police weapons advisory panel, has shown that, over nearly 30 years in Australia, legal firearm ownership has increased. That's a good thing. Firearm homicide and misuse have declined. There is no demonstrated relationship between levels of legal gun ownership and firearm violence. That evidence directly undermines the core premise of this bill. More legal firearms have not meant more crime. If anything, Australian data shows the opposite.

Industry groups are also sounding the alarm. The Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia has made it clear that legal firearm owners and businesses are not the problem. This bill lacks evidence. It lacks detail. It lacks fairness. Poorly designed buybacks can actually increase safety risks, not reduce them. Unlike the 1996 buyback, this bill provides no guarantee of fair market value, provides no certainty for small businesses and shifts massive financial risk onto the states. The federal allocation of around $1 billion falls dramatically short of industry estimates, which suggest costs could exceed $15 billion. That shortfall will be pushed onto taxpayers or, worse, onto compliant businesses and volunteer-run clubs that simply cannot afford it. Clubs like the Ipswich and District Rifle Club have said plainly these reforms do not address criminal misuse or hate motivated violence but impose significant burdens on lawful sporting communities. Even Labor's own member for Hunter warned on Christmas Eve that when you rush things through it has unintended consequences. Yet here we are, rushing again. What was the urgency? Could this have not waited two weeks for it to be properly considered?

Let me be very clear on one final point. This bill dangerously links lawful firearm ownership with antisemitism and terrorism. That linkage is wrong. It is unsupported by evidence, and it unfairly vilifies Australians who have done nothing wrong. I urge critics of gun ownership in this country, especially those opposite: visit your local shooting club. There you will find men and women with a total commitment to safety and the law. Cowboys aren't tolerated. Education is paramount, and there is constant reinforcement that breaking the rules is totally unacceptable. We should also bear in mind those who own businesses supplying lawful firearms, accessories, spare parts, ammunition and hunting gear. The lawful firearms and shooting sector represents a multibillion dollar, highly regulated industry contributing between $2.8 billion and over $3.5 billion annually to the Australian economy and supporting tens of thousands of jobs, many in regional Australia.

Terrorism is driven by ideology, not sporting rifles locked in safes. If the government is serious about community safety, the evidence is clear about what works: targeted policing; disrupting trafficking networks, including at our international borders; seizing illegal firearms; and investing in intelligence and counterextremism capabilities. That is where resources should go, not into a poorly designed buyback that won't reduce the number of illegal guns. This bill should be amended, paused for proper consultation, rejected or anything but rushed through and passed today because legal, lawful firearm owners are not the problem. Criminals are, terrorists are and our laws should focus squarely on them. These laws are a sellout on law-abiding Australians under an unholy alliance between Labor and the Greens. They are not supported by science, they are not supported by data and they are not supported by ordinary Australians who just want to live their lives. I urge you to reject this legislation as I will.

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I speak in support of the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, and I do so not only as a senator but as someone who has lived through what major firearms reform looks like when it moves from this place into practice. I was a police officer during the last gun buyback scheme that followed Port Arthur nearly 30 years ago. For those who remember that period only through the headlines, it's worth recalling what that meant on the ground. During the buyback police officers just like me worked at front counters, which are normally known as non-operational spots, but we were handling surrendered firearms every day. We did not always know whether those firearms and weapons were loaded. We also didn't know how they had been stored. We didn't always know the emotional state of the person standing on the other side of the counter, whether they were angry, distressed or unwell or whether they were simply having the worst day of their life.

That is what the police did back in those days. We wore our tactical accoutrements during that period not to escalate situations but because the risk demanded it. It is a good reminder that gun laws are not theoretical to first responders. They are lived by police, paramedics, emergency service workers, at police station front counters, in rural sheds, in roadside stops and in people's homes. When those laws are fragmented, outdated or incomplete, it is police and the paramedics who absorb the risk first.

Australia learned a hard lesson at Port Arthur, and the response was decisive, it was national and it was, in fact, bipartisan. It worked. Firearm deaths fell, mass shootings stopped and lives were saved. But, nearly three decades on, we are no longer in the same conditions or facing the same level of risk. There are now more than four million firearms in circulation across Australia. That's more than at the time of Port Arthur, when close to one million licences were held. In several states the number of registered firearms alone exceeds one million.

This is not an argument about responsible ownership. It is about scale and saturation and about what happens when the scale collides with moments of crisis. As firearm numbers rise, so does the likelihood that weapons are lost, stolen, poorly secured or accessed by people they were never intended for. Again, for police and paramedics, those risks do not stay theoretical. They show up in call-outs every single day, in split-second decisions and in situations where errors have permanent consequences. My good friend and colleague Senator Mulholland has already articulated that in her home state of Queensland.

Firearms rarely stay confined to their original context forever. They, in fact, move between households, between relationships and sometimes into those moments of crisis. It is also critical that we are honest about the relationship between firearms and family and domestic violence. Domestic violence call-outs are among some of the most unpredictable and dangerous situations first responders attend. They are emotionally charged, fast moving and often unfold behind closed doors. But when a firearm is present, or even suspected to be present, the risk to victims, responding officers and children in the home escalates immediately. The presence of a gun changes the dynamic entirely. It compresses time, limits safe options and removes those margins for error. This is not an abstract concern. It is the reality that first responders confront repeatedly.

In 2023, in Floreat in my home state of Western Australia, Jennifer Petelczyc and her daughter Gretl were murdered by a man with a history of family and domestic violence. He was looking for his former partner and his own daughter before he took his own life. Subsequent reviews identified clear warning signs in the period leading up to those deaths about his escalating behaviour, feared expression, observed by those close to him, and ongoing access to firearms. As the number of firearms in circulation grows, so does the chance that weapons remain accessible, despite signs like this. Again, they may be poorly secured or drawn into moments of coercion, instability or loss of control. Jennifer and Gretl's case is not an anomaly; it is a pattern encountered again and again by police and paramedics across this country.

This is why firearms reform must be understood as a domestic violence prevention measure, not merely a matter of crime control. Reducing overall firearm numbers, strengthening licensing decisions and ensuring intelligence is considered when risk emerges are interventions that prevent harm before it becomes fatal. Gun laws are not only about what happens behind closed doors; they are about how risk escalates when hatred, grievance and instability are combined with access to weapons, whether that violence occurs in a home or in a public space.

The Bondi Beach terrorist attack on 14 December 2025 was the most devastating expression of that risk. Fifteen innocent people lost their lives in an attack motivated by antisemitism and carried out in a place meant for community, celebration and belonging. In response, we are right to say we must deal with both the motivation and the method; that is the why and that is the how. This bill does exactly that. It recognises that firearms policy must be fit for purpose in a changing risk environment, one shaped not only by volume but also by technology.

We now live in a world where weapons do not always arrive in a crate. Sometimes they arrive as a download. Digital blueprints for firearms and explosives can now be accessed online. Components can be ordered separately. Firearms or critical parts of them can be manufactured using 3D printers outside regulatory oversight. For first responders and investigators, this represents a profound shift in the risk. An unregistered, unserialised and untraceable firearm does not just breach the law; it defeats prevention, frustrates investigation and enables repeated harm.

That is the reality this bill responds to. It addresses not only the physical imports but the digital pathways to violence. It introduces targeted offences related to the use of carriage services to access and possess material that facilitates the illicit manufacture of firearms and explosives. These offences are carefully framed and proportionate, with clear pathways for licensed manufacturers, law enforcement, public officials and legitimate academic and scientific research. This is not about criminalising lawful activity; it is about interrupting a pathway to harm that is already being exploited—the same preventive logic that applies at the border.

Our borders are often the last opportunity to stop high-risk firearms, parts and accessories before they enter our communities. When those controls fail, the consequences are not borne by systems; they are borne by people. That is why this bill tightens controls on rapid-fire weapons, high-capacity magazines, belt-fed firearms and serialised components and sound suppressors. It removes open-ended import permits that allow bulk imports with minimal oversight, and it introduces a clear public safety test so that the items posing an unacceptable risk can be stopped before they enter into circulation.

This bill also establishes the legislative framework for a national gun buyback, building on the approach taken after Port Arthur. This is not unprecedented or ideological; it is a proven public policy, one for which Australia has been praised internationally. By compensating the voluntary surrender of surplus, newly restricted and illegal firearms, the buyback supports state and territory reforms and reduces overall exposure to harm. Fewer guns mean fewer opportunities for diversion, misuse and escalation.

Finally, this legislation strengthens the way firearm licensing decisions are informed. It allows for security and criminal intelligence to be considered while also preserving state and territory decision-making authority. As someone who has been a police officer, I can say this plainly: a clean criminal record does not always equate to low risk. Intelligence exists to identify emerging threats, and ignoring it does not protect civil liberties; it endangers lives.

This bill is not about punishing lawful firearms owners; it is explicitly protecting legitimate, occupational and sporting use for farmers, pest controllers, professional shooters and competitors. But access to firearms is not a right; it is a responsibility, one that must be assessed in light of public safety, changing technology and also lived experience. When our firearm laws fail, it's not the politicians who face the consequences first; it is the police responding to the calls, the paramedics treating the injured and the emergency workers managing the aftermath. It is the families and the communities living with the irreversible loss. It is all Australians right now mourning the 15 lives taken at Bondi. People in this place made the hard choices before when the stakes were high, and now it's time for us here in this place to do it again.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Just over a month ago, two hateful, violent men killed and shot 15 people in an appalling antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach, just a few miles from my home, in fact. That appalling attack happened with guns that were obtained legally. Indeed, those two hateful men between them had access to six firearms legally obtained and signed off on under our national firearms laws. We need to stop and reflect on that, and those who are opposing this legislation should stop and reflect on that fact. The appalling fact that our gun laws have failed in this instance needs to be part of a national response to this appalling antisemitic attack in Bondi. The Greens are glad that we've been able to work with the government to ensure that legislation that will establish a national firearms buyback, legislation that will ensure that security agencies and police around this country will be able to share in real time the security information they have about individuals before they're given a gun licence and before they're given guns, will become lawful, essential and necessary after the legislation passes. We're also proud to be supporting legislation that stops some of the most dangerous weapons being imported into this country and available for acts of violence.

But we won't be supporting—and we've made it clear to the government we will not be supporting—their raft of other proposed changes, to ban people and organisations whose core values are about supporting human rights and opposing genocide, to target groups who have been saying clearly that our government should do all it can to stop the genocide in Gaza. We know that there are millions of Australians right now deeply anxious that not this legislation but the legislation that will follow it about proscribing organisations and putting people in jail for their thoughts, far from making them safe, will be threatening them, their friends, their families and their communities for the crime, in the eyes of the Labor Party and the coalition, of opposing a genocide and standing up for global human rights.

I want to return to this legislation. This is legislation to support the national firearms buyback, to allow that information-sharing to happen and to stop some of the most dangerous weapons and components coming into this country. I want to start by thanking the Australian Gun Safety Alliance, the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, Gun Control Australia and the Public Health Association of Australia for their advice and legislation, because this legislation, unlike the other legislation being rushed through this parliament, has been a long time coming. It has been the subject of detailed submissions and repeated calls from civil society saying, 'Ensure that our national firearms laws are meeting the moment.' National gun buybacks are not novel; they've happened before. They have taken weapons out of homes that should never have been in homes. They've reduced the number of firearms in this country. They have saved countless lives. As a Greens Senator, I feel sure that this national firearms buyback will also save countless lives.

The advice of those community organisations has been consistent, it has been principled, and it has been focused on gun safety. Unlike the coalition, the Greens aren't taking advice from firearms manufacturers like Beretta. We're not taking donations from firearms importers and sellers like NIOA. We don't follow the lead of the global arms industry like the coalition does. And we definitely don't import toxic concepts from the United States, Trumpian US concepts, like the right to bear arms, when we're talking about firearms. Firearms are not a right in this country; they are a privilege. When we have the coalition come in here and try and equate firearms laws with vehicle safety, or guns with motor vehicles, it shows how they have so lost touch. They don't understand that, unlike motor vehicles, the purpose of guns is to kill. If the coalition can't understand that basic principle, and if they're not troubled by the fact that those two hateful men on Bondi Beach had access to more than six legal firearms, and that New South Wales police didn't have access to security information from the AFP and other policing agencies when they gave a firearms licence and firearms to one of those men—which wasn't shared in real time—they should review their consciences and they most definitely should review their politics.

The Greens are deeply concerned by those gaps in our firearms laws, and we've been concerned about gaps like that for well over a decade. I also want to note the extensive work by the Australia Institute on tracking the number of firearms in this country and looking at the gun control settings that have allowed the rapid growth of lethal weapons in our community.

I also want to thank my team, my chief of staff and others, who have for years now been tracking gun numbers in New South Wales. We have seen a disturbing rise of firearms in this country since Port Arthur. I say that as a former state MP and now as a senator. We have continued to press for data—initially from New South Wales but now also nationally—about the number of guns in this country. Appallingly, only New South Wales provides that data—and only New South Wales provides that data because my office, over a number of years, took them to court to produce that data so that we could see the number of guns in suburbs and so that people had a sense of whether or not they were living near private arsenals.

That data, that is now found in toomanyguns.org, shows that as of 2016—when we first began getting that data—there were 850,000 registered firearms in New South Wales. But the data that's now been released, as of June 2025, shows that there are more than 1,026,000 registered firearms in New South Wales—and that doesn't include collectors or dealers. There are private arsenals in our suburbs where people hold almost 300 firearms. There are multiple individuals in suburban Sydney who hold over 200 firearms and dozens who hold over 100 firearms. Why do our firearms laws allow private arsenals to be held in our suburban centres in this country?

Thankfully, after pressure from the Greens and gun safety advocates, some of those loopholes have been closed in New South Wales. But the coalition is still fighting this in Queensland, still pushing so that it doesn't get adopted in South Australia and still basically silent in Tasmania. The Northern Territory coalition have said that they don't support caps on firearms.

This is about community safety, and the coalition comes in here, armed with donations from the firearms industry, to oppose community safety laws. They make specious arguments about needing dozens of weapons to shoot wallabies. The most extreme case was when they related it to somebody who wants to compete in every single shooting sport in the Olympics, and said that that's why these gun caps don't work. Take a reality check about what's going to make our community safe. A gun buyback and sensible gun limits in our suburbs and cities are definitely taking a step toward safety.

I acknowledge that this is a moment where we can take practical steps to take guns away from people who should never have got them and to allow for the sharing of real-time security information. When police in one state, or the AFP, have information about people who are taking part in hateful ideologies, that can be shared with police in real time before those people get gun licences and firearms.

I say again: How is it that One Nation and the coalition oppose those law changes? How is it you could oppose the sharing in real time between our security agencies about whether people are engaged in hateful extremist ideologies so they can ensure that they don't get a firearm? We saw the effect of it in Bondi. With all of the politics and all of the hateful language directed against the Greens in this debate, take a moment and reflect on the coalition opposing those law changes here. It shows their politics, and it shows that they take funds from the firearms industry, and it shows that they'll never partner with the community about gun safety laws. What a change from 1996, when the coalition actually had some backbone and actually did good work. I am no friend of John Howard, but I will acknowledge that, at that point, the coalition showed the leadership that's been missing in the last four weeks on this.

I do note that there are concerns raised by groups including the National Farmers' Federation and that there are questions still to be answered about the gun buyback. We want to ensure, and we'd like a commitment from the government, that fair value will be paid to ensure that the gun buyback will be as effective as it possibly can be and take as many guns that shouldn't be in circulation out of circulation as it can. We'd ask the government to make the commitment in the course of this debate.

I also want to credit the Gun Safety Alliance for pressing for another essential reform. One of the reasons we're in this mess is that there is no body, no organisation, in this country whose job it is to futureproof our firearms laws—to see whether or not there are gaps that need to be fixed. There is plenty of lobbying from the firearms industry trying to put new gaps in our laws, but there's no way, in this country, that that sits together with the national government and state and federal governments to plug the holes and check for community safety. So I am glad that, in the course of these negotiations, the Greens have secured a clear commitment from the government—in writing, from the Minister for Home Affairs—to establish a national firearms safety council that will do that work, bring together those gun safety advocates from the Gun Safety Alliance and community representatives and ensure that we are regularly reporting to parliament not just to make our national gun laws safe for 19 January 2026 but to futureproof them going forward.

I also raise concerns that I think are valid about the potential proliferation of 3D-printed weapons. I want to thank the Minister for Home Affairs's office for their engagement around their firearms offences that deal with the issue of 3D printing. I note that these federal laws will allow some 3D alteration printing to firearms as long as they comply with the licence and class of weapon that's been obtained. These are areas of hard regulation. The National Firearms Register, or any national laws, needs to ensure that there is immediate constant reference back and communication back to the state registries and territory registries about any such alteration. This parliament, and the national firearms safety council, needs to keep a close and continued surveillance on 3D-printed weapons.

I finish with this: two hateful men with a hateful ideology are dangerous and need to be addressed by our parliaments and need to be addressed by all of us, collectively, if we can, but two hateful men with access to multiple firearms—if they've got access legally to multiple firearms, we have an obligation to act. The Greens are proud to always support the community on gun safety. We're proud to talk down and oppose those whose primary interest comes from the firearms lobby. And, in what is otherwise a toxic mess of a week in this parliament, we're proud to support legislation that will take those important steps for gun safety across the country.

James McGrath (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a Liberal National Party senator for Queensland, I know these gun laws are bad laws, and I won't support them. These gun laws punish millions of Australians. These gun laws punish millions of innocent, law-abiding Australians. These bad laws are punishing millions of law-abiding Australians who use guns for work, for recreation or for sport, or who just like to collect guns. We know that Labor are traditionally soft on crime, but today we learn that Labor are hard on law-abiding Australians, but the real dangerous weapons are antisemitism and radical Islamic extremism.

Islamic extremists have used knives. They've used cars, trucks, bikes, planes. But Labor didn't call for bans then, did they? These gun laws are a classic but sad overreach by a left-wing government that will punish innocent Australians as a diversion from their own failure to deal with antisemitism. Remember, the Bondi massacre did not start at 6.42 pm on Sunday 14 December; the Bondi massacre started on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, where an ugly mob of Islamic extremists gathered and shouted, 'F the Jews! Gas the Jews! Where's the Jews!'

And what did this Labor government do about Islamic extremism and the rising tide of antisemitism? It did nothing, and over the past two years Jewish Australians have suffered a cancerous tsunami of antisemitism. Jewish schools have to have high fences and security guards. Jewish school students hide their school uniforms when on public transport. Universities have become madrasahs of hatred. Synagogues are firebombed. Businesses are boycotted. Artists are cancelled. Homes and cars are attacked. Even last night, young Jewish Australians were abused on the streets of Melbourne. We wonder how this has come about. People shout out: 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' People in this chamber have said that phrase. And we wonder how and why Bondi happened, when antisemites, including those in this chamber, have given a green light to such conduct and such behaviour!

The Prime Minister won't say sorry to Jewish Australians. He won't say sorry to Australians for failing in his No. 1 duty of keeping Australians safe. But he will, as a diversion, punish millions of innocent, law-abiding gun owners. I say to all the Queensland gun owners, gun clubs, shooters, whether for your recreation, sport or safety or because you like to collect guns: the LNP is standing up for you. Thank you for reaching out. I especially want to mention Matt Crossley and Laurie Choate for your counsel and your advice.

My colleagues in this chamber will move a series of amendments to try and improve these bad laws, but because of the dirty deal between Labor and the Greens, the amendments won't get up, so a bad law will pass and, sadly, debate will be guillotined because of the said dirty deal. We will vote against the bill because this bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, punishes innocent Australians when, in fact, what the government should be doing is going after radical Islam.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Part of the Bondi massacre horror was the realisation that the great Australian 'she'll be right, mate' has failed us. We've watched the growing pro-Gaza demonstrations openly calling for violence against Jews and anyone who supports them. We've watched Islamic clerics preach hate against Western civilisation and call for jihad—violence against unbelievers. Many Australians thought: 'She'll be right, mate! This is Australia. This will sort itself out.' It did not.

For many years, the left-wing commentariat, politicians and media accused those who sought to raise the alarms around rising antisemitism and Christianophobia with the crime of 'threatening social harmony'. The very elastic crime of racism has now been extended to describe as racist anyone who defends Australia and our way of life. Many Australians have been guilty of shooting the messenger, while the message itself—the hatred and radicalisation—went unchallenged. We were told that highlighting radicalisation, rather than the radicalisation itself, was the problem. Well, now look. Look!

Australia will not be a safe and tolerant society again until the evil encouraged to fester in our beautiful country is cast out. It is an evil that has become an 'ecosystem of poison', as Labor's Mike Kelly so aptly described it recently. The Bondi massacre was not Islamic-on-Jewish terror imported from the other side of the world. The gunmen did not stop to ask if the victims were Jewish before executing them. We must call Bondi what it is: a radical Islamist attack on all Australians.

Why were the Labor Party, the Greens, the teals and the globalist Liberals so blind to the growing threat of Islamic terror in this country? As recently as 16 May 2023, Prime Minister Albanese denied the reality of Islamic terrorism when he said:

… the strongest threat that has been identified for our security has been right-wing extremism.

This statement from the Prime Minister and quisling bureaucrats is misdirection. Fascists and white supremacists are a strawman argument; their numbers are tiny and their influence non-existent, yet the Prime Minister knowingly and deliberately uses them to divert Australians' attention away from radical Islam.

The Greens are advocating an extension to the hate crimes legislation to cover hate against LGBQ+, transgenders and anyone else who does not worship their religion of the sky god of warming. Okay—I threw in the climate. But, once censorship laws such as those the Prime Minister is pushing are introduced, the inevitable outcome will be the deplatforming of political opponents. The Greens' call to extend the hate crimes provisions are designed to confuse the issue, to create multiple moving targets and to allow the government to pretend it's doing something without ever taking action against the real problem: Islamic terror.

One only has to look at the history of Islamic terror attacks against Western civilisation to see strong measures are needed now. In the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972, there were 12 dead. In the Bali bombings of 2002, there were 202 dead, including 88 Australians. In the second Bali bombings, 2005, there were 20 dead, including four Australians. In the London bombings, 2005, there were 52 dead. In the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, 2015, there were 12 dead. In the Brussels Airport bombings, 2016, there were 32 dead. In the Nice truck ramming, 2016, there were 86 dead—and no calls for a truck buyback. In the Berlin Christmas market truck ramming, 2016, there were 12 dead—no truck buyback. In the Pulse gay nightclub attack in Orlando, 2016, there were 49 dead. In the Manchester Arena bombing, 2017, there were 22 dead. In the Hamas attack in Israel on 7 October 2023, there were 1,180 dead. In Moscow's Crocus City Hall bombing and stabbing attack in Russia in 2024, there were 145 dead. And now there's Bondi, which was not the first Islamic terrorist attack in Australia. There was the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney in 2014, with two dead; the car ramming in Bourke Street, Melbourne in 2017, with six dead—no car buyback; and the stabbing of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel in 2024. Islamic terror is here—right here—on Australian soil, and it's been here for 25 years. All these terrorist attacks were predicated on a hatred of Western civilisation and a fundamental belief that Islam will rule the world and nonbelievers will convert or die.

ASIO can't warn against what it can't see. ASIO's budget is now over a billion dollars a year, double what it was five years ago, and it's not enough. Australia must decide: does it further increase ASIO funding or does it start sending people home who have demonstrated hatred for Australians?

At ASIO, there are 230 potential terrorists being monitored while they participate in deradicalisation therapy at the taxpayers expense. Here's One Nation's deradicalisation therapy: boarding passes, immediate deportation and remigration, never to return. While ASIO were busy mollycoddling violent extremists, they missed the Bondi shooters travelling to a known Philippines terrorist training ground for an extended stay before returning and committing their terror. ASIO missed that the father of a suspected terrorist purchased three guns on the same Thursday night in September 2023 from the same New South Wales firearms dealer.

ASIO missed that hate preacher Wissam Haddad holds a current New South Wales firearms licence. Haddad led Sydney's Al Madina Dawah Centre where Naveed Akram, one of the Bondi shooters, studied. Akram's father had a gun licence for six guns in New South Wales. How did none of this trip a red flag for New South Wales police, Home Affairs or ASIO? A royal commission must determine if this was wilful ignorance to protect a demographic that's much more likely to vote Labor than conservative.

Australia is not the country it was when I was growing up. The destruction of social harmony started when successive governments let in people who came to live apart from us and not to assimilate with us. Those who betray the hospitality we show them must be required to leave. Those who wage war crimes against Australians should be charged. As an example, ISIS brides travelled overseas to conduct war against Australia and against our armed forces.

ISIS bride Zehra Duman spoke on social media in 2015 and demanded that the faithful, 'Attack the UK, Australia and the United States. Kill them, stab them, poison their food'—your food. This is who Minister Burke knowingly and secretly enabled and helped to be smuggled back into our country. They perpetrated criminal activities and should be prosecuted instead of making work for ASIO by needing to be followed around.

Under our Westminster system of government, the buck for these failures stops with Prime Minister Albanese and Premier Minns. The terms of reference for the royal commission—if we ever see them—must allow scrutiny of how these failures occurred. This is no doubt why the Prime Minister refused for so long to call a royal commission: to protect himself and his ministers and to hide the truth.

Today, the Senate is voting on legislation which could've been brought in on a regular sitting day later in the year. What we are not voting on is the enabling legislation for the royal commission, to first get the data and the facts. This is what royal commissions are for—to inform bills like this. The Albanese government is putting the cart before the horse and burying the facts. Prime Minister: Australia is watching this royal commission. Do not cover up anything. If the cards are not allowed to fall as they may then it'll be your government that will fall.

One Nation will oppose this rushed dog's breakfast bill and the second bill coming after it later tonight. There are processes to produce good legislation. This government has made a mockery of them all. The atrocious, shoddy legislation reflects contempt for our democratic process and for the people of Australia. The hate provisions for the Commonwealth Criminal Code that Labor introduced in 2010 and subsequently amended to make prosecutions easier have never been used—not one prosecution.

Australia does not need more laws which take away the right to free speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement and freedom of protest. We need the government to start policing the laws we already have. Whether people are Christian or another civilised religion, there can only be one set of laws, which are laws based on our Christian, Western heritage. There can only be one allegiance in our community and it's to those laws. Tolerance has been weaponised. Labor, the Greens, the teals and now the Liberals have elevated tolerance to be the end itself. The thing being tolerated became irrelevant.

Speaking about Islam has been made prima facie racism, yet criticism of Christianity and Judaism is encouraged as being the religions of white skinned people and of colonisers. White skinned people are being demonised by the left-wing lobby groups and by other white skinned people, like Greens Senator McKim, who said yesterday that Australians will not be safe until we've eliminated Islamophobia. In 'Greens-land', apparently there's no radical Islam and the terrorist attacks I listed earlier never happened. It's this illogical, suicidal empathy that's led us to this moment.

The list of terror attacks I read used guns, bombs, knives, cars and trucks. Guns are a strawman argument. 'Look over here at these evil guns and don't look at the person wielding the gun.' Failing to act against radical Islam will lead to Australians losing their lives. Australia does not have a gun problem; we have a radical ideology problem. One Nation strongly supports the right to own and use firearms lawfully and responsibly. This Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 penalises legitimate law-abiding gun owners. The poor wording shows a failure to understand how guns are used on farms and in sport. This is what happens when city based antigun groups are consulted and gun owner associations are not. The bill proposes to limit the use of carriage services. This is pitched to limit the use of the internet to access blueprints and use 3D printers to print guns. This is already illegal under state law.

This bill elevates the description of illegal material to mean whatever the hell the government decides is illegal. It could include a legal owner downloading the manual for a gun or educational YouTube videos on how to pull down, clean and reassemble a gun or on the science of a gun, like how the striking pin works, and how to detect change, damage or wear to machine parts which may render the gun unsafe. Merits review of a refusal to grant a gun licence under this bill is eliminated. Appeals would now have to be undertaken through the Federal Court, which is, what, a $20,000 minimum? The Administrative Review Tribunal system is working just fine, so now the government are fixing a problem that doesn't exist so they can use a spurious argument to take guns off anyone they dislike.

As Minister Watt raises on gun numbers, let me assist him. There are more guns in Australia now than there were in 1996 before the Port Arthur buyback because our population has increased. The number of guns per person today is now fewer than in 1996—fewer—and the number of guns owned per person is fewer. Honesty is important, Senator Watt.

One Nation supports the right for Australians to participate in sports involving firearms, to use firearms for hunting or recreational shooting, to collect antique and historically significant firearms, and to use firearms in rural areas for pest and stock management. One Nation seeks to end discrimination against legitimate firearm owners and users, ensure all stakeholders are fairly consulted in the development of firearms laws and regulations, and make existing laws fairer. We seek to improve community safety by cracking down on illegal firearm use with stronger penalties if firearms are used in committing crimes.

The buyback scheme is a blank cheque, which, industry sources we spoke to said could cost up to $15 billion. This is a tax on everyday Australians because it must be paid for with a tax. One Nation supports Castle Law—the right to use force, fatal force if necessary, in proportion to defend one's home and family from an intruder. Bring that legislation before parliament and One Nation will support it. The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Bill 2026 has been so badly rushed that critical passages are inconsistent to the point that a court is likely to refuse prosecution based on these inconsistent provisions. The changes on which the government and the Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, surrendered do not justify Liberals supporting this bill. The government said that creating a new offence of racial vilification was removed from the hastily redrafted bill, yet some elements are hidden in the revised bill. The bill still includes supremacy. Anyone who says 'Australian society is superior to Islamic Society' is off to jail for five years, 12 if you are a priest or a lay preacher. Will the government start rounding up hate preachers in the electorates of senior Labor ministers like Messrs Burke, Butler and Bowen for declaring the superiority of Islam over Christianity? Of course not.

Make no mistake, this bill continues the war on Christianity and the promotion of Islam that has been a feature of left-wing politics for a generation. I welcome the last-minute government amendment to include a clause attempting to guarantee freedom of political communication, even if that protection is already in the Constitution. It may make it less likely this bill would be used to ban political rivals including One Nation.

The bill still does not mention antisemitism, not once. It was never about protecting Jews; it was always about promoting Islam over Christianity. Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, has with the Labor Party to wave it through without due process, with onerous clauses that take away peoples freedoms, that will cost all Australians more in taxes and that will in the end fundamentally change the nature of Australian society without protecting a recurrence. Australians, your choice is now One Nation or no nation.

Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Stronger Families and Stronger Communities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 is a case study, I think, for this parliament on how not to legislate. Labor has taken a national tragedy and responded not with calm, precision or competence but with a rushed, poorly targeted and deeply flawed piece of legislation. It has been pushed through this parliament with inadequate scrutiny, truncated consultation and a 'take it or leave it' attitude that shows contempt for proper lawmaking. Australians deserve better than policy made on the run.

Let me be clear about one fundamental point that this bill deliberately obscures. Australia does not have a gun problem. What we have is a radical Islamist extremism problem, and this government has consistently failed to confront it honestly and directly. Every major terrorist attack on Australian soil in the past two decades has been driven by radical Islamist ideology. That is the uncomfortable truth the government refuses to name. Instead of tackling that ideology, dismantling the networks that promote it and stamping out the antisemitism it fuels, Labor has chosen an easier political target: lawful Australian gun owners. Farmers, sporting shooters, collectors, dealers and licensed competitors are being treated as collateral damage for the government's failure to act decisively against antisemitism and extremism when it mattered. This is unjust, and it's dishonest.

This bill uses the horror of the Bondi attack to justify sweeping firearms changes that would have done absolutely nothing to prevent that atrocity. Nothing in this legislation would have stopped the attack. Nothing in it addresses the radicalisation pathways that led to the attack. Nothing in it confronts the ideology that motivated the attack. Instead, it punishes people who already comply with some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Labor wants Australians to believe that confiscating more firearms, tightening imports and expanding bureaucratic control over lawful ownership will somehow make us safer. It will not. It simply diverts attention from the government's longstanding inaction on antisemitism, radicalisation and community safety.

This bill has been rushed. It is poorly drafted. It was originally so unworkable that Labor was forced to split the bill in two. That alone is an admission of failure. And yet, even after that embarrassment, the government persists in trying to ram through the remainder of this bill without proper inquiry or scrutiny. That's not leadership; that's panic.

Law-abiding Australians should not pay the price for the government's refusal to confront hard truths. Farmers should not lose tools essential to their livelihoods, sporting shooters should not see their disciplines strangled, and small businesses should not be driven under. Lawful gun owners should not be treated as suspects, because the government lacks the courage to deal with extremism at its source.

Antisemitism must be crushed wherever it appears. Radical Islamist ideology must be confronted, named and dismantled. Terrorist networks must be disrupted. Noncitizens who promote hatred or violence should be removed from this country without hesitation. But none of that requires punishing lawful, gun-owning Australians. This bill does exactly that. It targets the compliant instead of the dangerous, it expands bureaucracy instead of security, and it offers symbolism instead of any kind of substance.

Australians are entitled to safety, but they are also entitled to honesty. The honest assessment is this: you do not defeat terrorism by targeting farmers, you do not defeat antisemitism by confiscating sporting firearms, and you do not strengthen a nation by eroding trust in law-abiding citizens. For those reasons alone, this bill deserves criticism, scrutiny and resistance, and this parliament should have the courage to say that Australia's problem is not guns, it is extremism, and the solution lies in confronting that reality, not in avoiding it. For that reason I will not be supporting this bill.

Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the very poorly named Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026. If you'd called it the 'firearms and customs law bill', it would have been much more honest, but I do acknowledge that we are dealing with the horrific events, or the aftermath of the horrific events, of Bondi on 14 December and that there's a desire to make a connection. And, as I said yesterday, we must do everything that we possibly can in this place to ensure that Australia again becomes safe, and we'll pass some other legislation later in the day to do that.

But I can't support this legislation, because of the flaws that are in it. The fact that, frankly, the government wasn't prepared to work with the coalition to get bipartisan support for this legislation in the same way that John Howard did after the tragic events of Port Arthur in 1996 is an indictment of this government and a demonstration of the fact that they are about the politics and not the reality of the situation. I was a candidate in the 1998 election for the seat of Lyons, and I won't forget those lawful firearm owners who came to me (a) to put their perspective and (b) to place their trust in me as someone they intended to vote for despite the fact that we'd legislated for them to have tighter access to firearms. Now, I wasn't successful in that particular election, but I haven't forgotten the conversations nor the responsibility.

This legislation is a complete demonstration of the failure of leadership of the Prime Minister in managing this. The fact that the legislation was tabled a week ago—nobody had seen it. He hadn't come to the opposition, who had indicated for a considerable period of time since Bondi that we were prepared to work with the government as the Australian people wanted us to do to make some changes. The Prime Minister, despite calling for us to come together, has done nothing and failed to actually do the things that would bring us together. He mocked the coalition. He criticised the coalition, and, quite frankly, in calling for us to come together while not bringing us together, he was gaslighting the opposition, gaslighting the Jewish community and, in fact, gaslighting the Australian community—a complete failure of leadership. For him to now try and compare this legislation and some of its actions with John Howard, who actually did bring the country together, got bipartisan support and got the National Party to agree to the legislation in 1996, is actually quite offensive. It's quite offensive that he tries to appropriate the actions of John Howard in this debate because in this sense he has completely failed.

There are a number of measures in this legislation that we should have been able to agree on, and there are others that, with some improvement, could have formed some very sound legislation. But, of course, Labor thinks they know better, and I really wonder who they were actually listening to when they built this legislation. They clearly weren't listening to their own backbench because up until this morning this legislation prohibited a piece of equipment that Olympians use in Olympic competition. So who were they listening to? Who were Labor listening to in developing this legislation?

They tell us that this will have no impact on farmers and rural Australians, and they tell us that this will have no impact on sporting shooters. I don't believe them. Why should I? The evidence is completely to the contrary. Why would I? They don't even know what the impact is. They have no understanding. We hear it so often in the trotted out talking points that they run in this debate in relation to this matter. They have no concept of what tools are required by farmers to manage browsing on their farmers or the different forms of browsing, the different firearms you might need to deal with wallabies or wild deer or, as Senator McKenzie said earlier, wild pigs. So the artificial limitations on the number of firearms available are a limitation on the tool kit available to farmers and rural Australians in managing their farms.

They say that if you're not a citizen, you won't be able to get access to firearms. What about the non-citizen farmers? What about the Australian residents who run farms? I know some. They're not Australia residents, but they have the same problems as every other farmer in managing feral wildlife. That's not considered as part of this legislation. What about the non-resident Australian farming workforce that also assists? Senator Steele-John was talking about managing feral animals in parts of Western Australia. I'm sure some non-resident farmhands are assisting with that very important role. But they can't under this legislation, because they won't be allowed to have a firearm licence; they're excluded under the simple fix.

This government has no idea what it's legislating. They have no understanding of the unintended consequences of this legislation, so why should anybody trust them when they say it will have no impact on farmers? We know it will. What about those farmers who reload their shells? If they want to use a carriage device to find information about reloading the shells appropriately, so that they get the right amount of shot in the shell, that's an offence under this legislation. We're not sure about the impact of that. What if an Olympian finds out that, in the United States, there is a new technology around reloading shells that gives the Americans an advantage? Are they going to be impacted? This lot don't know; they can't tell us. And nobody was consulted; I was listening to the evidence at the hearings last week. They have no idea what they're legislating here, so why should we trust them? I don't believe them when they say nobody is going to be impacted, because they don't know themselves. So why should we pass bad legislation? It's a pattern that we've, sadly, grown used to with this government—a failure of leadership, a failure to bring us together, a failure of consultation and, in this circumstance, a failure to genuinely understand.

Here's a photograph, through a scope, of browsing pressure on a farm in Tasmania. There's hardly room to put a sheep or a cow on that farm in between the browsing animals. Farmers need to have the right tools to manage their properties properly. On that same farm, where all those wallabies are competing with grass that might be used for sheep or cattle, is a vineyard. The next day there are wild deer in the vineyard. There is a different firearm required for the wallabies to the deer, or perhaps the birds that might come in and take grapes off the vines at different times of the year. Farmers need to have the toolkit. I don't believe the government when they say this legislation won't restrict them, because it's clear to me that there are unintended consequences. The fact is that, until this morning, an Olympian couldn't have a jacket that would hold 50 shells—which is an Olympic requirement—because they were restricted to 30.

The buyback is another example of the failure of leadership of this government. As I said before, it's offensive that the government tried to appropriate John Howard's buyback in their arguments for this buyback. John Howard worked with the states, set up a process, made sure that appropriate payment for firearms was paid, supported small business—and then he paid for it all. He didn't just announce it and then say to the states, 'By the way, you're paying half,' without any consultation first—which is what this government has done. This government talks about us coming together and this being a time for us to come together—yet they have done nothing to bring us together, and they present us with this flawed legislation. I'm not surprised they've done the political deal they've done with the Greens, because they have no care for Australian farmers. And here we are with this bad and flawed legislation, which I cannot support.

It's a sad situation because, had the Prime Minister gone to the Leader of the Opposition in the days and weeks after the terrible events at Bondi and worked with her and other members of the parliament, we could have been standing in this place today with an agreement on legislation which we all understood and which did the job that we wanted it to do. It is a failure of leadership of the Prime Minister that we are not in that situation. It is a very, very sad situation for us to be in because, with genuine leadership, this legislation could have been so much better and it could have been something that we all supported. As I have said, there are a number of things in this legislation that we should be able to agree on—the background checks; some of the controls. But, because of the failure of leadership of this government, we're not in a position to be able to do that, and, therefore, I am not in a position to support the legislation.

David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026 and foreshadow a second reading amendment in my name and in the names of Senators Lambie, Tyrrell, Payman and Thorpe. I begin by, again, expressing my deep condolences to the victims of the horrific ISIS inspired antisemitic terrorist attack in Bondi that targeted members of the Jewish community. To the families that lost loved ones, to those who were injured and to a community that has been left shaken and grieving, our thoughts remain with you.

What occurred in Bondi was not just an attack on individuals; it was an attack on a community and an attack on the freedom to live, worship and gather without fear, and it has left a deep scar on our country. The men who perpetrated that atrocity should never, ever have been able to access firearms. Australians are united in the wake of that tragedy, and we must do everything in our power to ensure that this never happens again.

Before I turn to the substance of this bill, I want to acknowledge a broader truth. Trust in politicians and in government in this country is bad and is getting worse. Frankly, after what we've seen in the parliament in recent days, it's not hard to see why. Australians expect this parliament to act decisively, but they also expect us to act carefully and consult effectively, to actually collaborate and ensure that we are passing good laws. At its core, this bill seeks to do something that Australians overwhelmingly support—to prevent firearms from falling into the hands of terrorists and others who seek to do harm. That principle is totally uncontroversial. Australians want strong firearms laws. We want dangerous weapons kept out of dangerous hands. And they want governments at every level to work together to make that happen.

Over the weekend, I surveyed people here in the ACT, and nearly 1,000 people responded. Eighty per cent told me that they support or strongly support state and territory firearm buyback schemes backed by the federal government, and 93 per cent support or strongly support stronger import controls on firearms. That is overwhelming support for stronger action.

But the hundreds of thousands of responsible law-abiding firearm owners must not be treated as collateral damage in our response to terrorism. Farmers, pest controllers, sporting shooters, veterans, people who use firearms legally and responsibly for agriculture, for invasive species control and for recreation—these Australians are not the problem, and many of them are deeply unsettled right now. Many of them are angry. Many of them feel attacked by this legislation and by the lack of detail and time for consultation with people in that community. Because of the way that this bill is being rushed through the parliament, there has been minimal consultation. There has been limited scrutiny, and this has created a vacuum of information. In that vacuum, we've seen uncertainty, confusion and misinformation. I've heard directly from people who I represent here in the ACT who feel under attack, who do not understand what these laws will mean for them and who are struggling to get clear answers from the government. That is not how good laws are made.

Yesterday, I held two roundtables to hear from people across the spectrum on this issue. I heard strong support for the intent of this bill, but I also heard serious, very legitimate concerns. I heard from gun-control advocates who told me that without proper resourcing and enforcement legislative change alone will not deliver the outcomes that we need. I heard from community advocates that any reform of the regulation of firearms should also look at how we can continue efforts to stop family, domestic and gendered violence. I heard from organisations representing firearms owners who told me they have deep concerns about implementation, vague definitions, procedural fairness and uncertainty around compensation.

Many questions remain with this legislation. The farcical way that the Labor government has decided to deal with this legislation means there will likely be no Committee of the Whole. There will be no time to ask questions to clarify some of these concerns. It means that these questions will likely remain. Will buybacks offer fair market value for firearms and ammunition? What about ammunition? If firearms are bought back, what happens to the hundreds of thousands of shells of ammunition out there? What happens to the small businesses that may be forced to shut their doors due to changes at a state or territory level? What exactly is captured by terms like 'firearms and explosives manufacturing material' in the context of these new offences? Does it apply to farmers or to pest controllers who are reloading at home? It's very hard to get any clarity on that. Where is the funding for security agencies, law enforcement and Home Affairs to implement the scheme? I've been banging on about resourcing for the AFP for the last 3½ years. If this is important, we have to resource it. We have to resource it better. These aren't fringe concerns. They are reasonable questions, and too many of them remain unanswered.

Outside the legislation, questions are being asked about why it's taking so long to stand up a national firearms register. In the ACT, more than 4,000 gun licences are administered on a paper based system—a paper based system in 2026. One part of this bill that I do unequivocally welcome is the strengthening of information sharing and background checks. If we are serious about preventing another atrocity like Bondi, intelligence must flow more effectively between agencies. The federal government has a clear role to play here in the coordination between ASIO, the AFP, state and territory police, and firearms registries. The federal government also has an important role in strengthening import controls and in supporting nationally consistent approaches to buybacks. Stopping acts of terror requires preventing those who wish to commit acts of evil from accessing the tools to carry it out.

But support for the intent and the majority of the provisions of this bill does not excuse the failure of process. Ramming complex legislation through parliament without adequate consultation undermines trust. That is why, while I support this bill, I cannot ignore the serious deficiencies in how it is being handled. We owe it to the victims of the Bondi attack, the Jewish community and all Australians, including those who lawfully own and use firearms, to get this right. For that reason, I'll move a motion that, once passed, this bill be referred to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry to report by 2 March 2026. That inquiry will allow this Senate to hear from the community, test the legislation, identify unintended consequences and make any necessary amendments without delaying the urgent protections Australians rightly expect. I will also put forward an amendment to establish an independent statutory review of this legislation in two years time. I'm hopeful that these amendments, put forward in good faith, will help to improve public trust in these laws and in our political process.

Just over a month ago, we witnessed the worst terrorist attack on Australian shores in our history, targeting the Jewish community. It was an attack that shook our nation. I support this bill as part of the response to the attack, but there is much more that needs to be done to combat antisemitism and to combat all forms of hate, and we must never lose sight of that.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will be shorter than my allocated time here because I know that many people wish to talk, but I do want to address some things have that have been said. I would like to start by saying something that I know is controversial, but I mean it. If you were to seek to punish 813,000 Muslims in Australia after this attack, you would be called an extremist because you would be, fair and simple. But, if you want to punish 940,000 gunowners in this country for what happened, you are the Prime Minister. That is unfair. It is unfair that a group of people who have done nothing are being punished for something that they have never done.

What we heard in some of the things Senator Pocock said really crossed party lines and crossed everything. We hear about gun buybacks and we hear about the potential for the capping of state funds out there. If you went to Southern Cross Small Arms and bought a Taipan X for $1,800 yesterday or the day before this happened, do you get $500 back for it? You mentioned ammunition. If I go and buy a box of Barnes .416 Rigby ammunition, 20 of those—it's $20 a round—I have $400 in a single box of ammunition. So where does that go to protecting the people who have done the right thing? No-one should be able to group-punish. I remember in school, if someone did something stupid in school and we all got held back, we hated that kid. We are group-punishing again here, and it is unfair.

I do not blame the Greens for being consistent in their policy position of supporting these bills. They are consistent, they are where they are, and they want to do it. I blame the government for rushing this through—us being told that it was not for changing. 'We're not splitting this, and we are not changing this.' We are here. It has been split. And I can't keep up with the changes from the four different versions there were yesterday and the one that came in at 6.13 am this morning, where things like the importation of sporting apparel changed. There was a ban last night—and I think even this morning first thing—on belts, ammunition and clothing that can hold more than 30 rounds. My Levi's can hold 30 .22s in their pocket. My wranglers can hold 30 rounds of .22 in their pocket. Now that's changed. We are talking about the reaction of banning the importation of gel blaster beads as a reaction to our terrorist attack—gel blasting, which is a sport in Queensland, much like paintball, much like things like that. We're talking about banning gel blaster beads as a response to a terrorist attack. This is not fair. This is not a position where the government is trying to make the problem go away for Australian people; this is a problem where the government is trying to make the political problem go away for a prime minister. That is what this is about.

Coming back early to discuss, to be sensible, to do what this place does best—and we have seen it many times where we have worked together to get solutions that are important—has happened. To come back to be given a bill of 'take it or leave it' with no consultation and then change it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. We sit here with another bill coming this afternoon. I don't think anyone in this chamber is absolutely for or against either of these bills—they are nuanced, some of these positions—but we have to make a binary choice: yes or no.

On this ammunition bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill, I hear people getting up from the other side and saying, 'This bill will stop noncitizens getting firearms.' It will not. It has nothing about that whatsoever, but they want to pretend it does. It doesn't do that. That is a state basis because, as was said before, states and territories have the point on this. When we are talking about a buyback program that doesn't have the buy-in of all the states yet—we have a number of states saying they are not involved. It goes against the gun accord. It goes against all of these things. And it is wrong.

There are so many hunters up in the Hunter Valley, where I come from. I could name some of my friends who have weapons now who have to give them back. I talked about that Taipan straight pull, the Taipan X, from Southern Cross Small Arms. It is not a self-loading rifle. It is not a repeating rifle. It is a straight pull. It is potentially a pump pull. It is a good sporting weapon for recreational hunting and pest eradication. Now that is illegal in New South Wales and, not part of this, now you can't import it either. So, if I am a hunter, if I am a target shooter or if I am a sport shooter, I am limited in what I can get. There are still questions about all the weapons used in the Olympic events, especially the pistols, and being able to import all parts of these things. It is a positive thing that there is finally funding, after 3½ years, for the national register. That is a good thing—I don't pretend it is not—but we have had 3½ years to fund that.

To all my friends, to all those people out there and to the 64,000-odd people that we got in trouble for carrying the non-compliant petition for earlier today, I say to you: I am sorry that we haven't been able to stop this to make this better. There are definitely things that we support in it, like the ASIO checks and the national register, but there is some stuff in there that has just been in the bottom drawer on a wish list of a bureaucrat who doesn't like guns and wants to get them out. It is not the crossbench's fault. It's not the Greens' fault. It is not this side's fault. It is the Labor Party's fault for wanting the problem—a political problem—to go away quickly and not a policy solution. To the 940,000 registered gun owners out there: I am sorry for what is happening to you. It is being done unfairly, it is being done quickly and it is being done without due process. I will not vote for that. I cannot vote for that. You need to know who is to blame for that, and it is solely the government.

Steph Hodgins-May (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Gun reform is certainly not the whole solution to keeping us safer, but it is a crucial first step taking away one of the most dangerous tools used to cause harm. It is a step that I would have assumed uncontroversial in the wake of the tragic events in Bondi. That is why this bill, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, has the support of the Australian Greens.

Right now Australia's firearms laws contain serious loopholes that allow gun owners to endlessly recycle the same justification to accumulate dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of guns. No sensible regime should allow what are basically private arsenals of this scale to exist in our suburbs. It is entirely indefensible. A farmer needs access to a gun, sure—one gun, a few guns—for legitimate purposes. But 100 guns—why? To the opposition senators opposing these reforms, I ask a simple question: why does a farmer need 100 guns?

This isn't just about whether ownership is technically lawful; it is about scale, concentration and risk. It is also about the very real possibility of firearms being stolen or misused. Every year more than 2,000 guns are stolen. That is one gun every four hours. Most illegal guns come from thefts of legally owned firearms. To put it simply, the more legal guns there are, the more illegal guns end up in the wrong hands.

We cannot talk honestly about gun reform without recognising the warning signs that have too often gone unheard. For decades women and domestic violence survivors have warned us about the danger of firearms in violent homes. They've told us again and again that access to guns escalates threats into fatalities, yet our own gun laws have remained too weak and too fragmented.

We also cannot ignore the influence of the gun lobby in this country. Per capita it spends amounts comparable to, and by some measures even higher than, the NRA in the United States. Just like in the US, that influence has worked to stall reform and normalise dangerous levels of gun ownership in Australia. How many debates do we have to have in this place where major party and One Nation politicians argue positions against the interests of their own communities because of dodgy political donations? Fossil fuels, gambling, guns—take the donations away and then honestly tell me that you would oppose these reforms.

We are watching, in real time, the consequences of weak gun laws elsewhere: rising political violence, extremism becoming normalised and mass shootings being treated as inevitable. When Australians see mass shootings in America, we look at the lack of action from politicians in the pockets of the gun lobby and thank our lucky stars that we don't have politicians like that here. Well, we do. A mass shooting happens and we have politicians opposing gun laws while accepting donations from the gun lobby. Is this the Australian Senate or is this America? They are not values that Australians accept. That is not the future Australians want.

It is time our policy and our leadership catch up. The Greens have always consistently recognised that legitimate needs must be respected in gun law reform and that any reform must reflect that reality. But the Greens do not accept and do not believe the Australian public accepts that any one private citizen has a genuine reason to own dozens or hundreds of guns. The buyback contained in this bill will begin to right this course.

When I think about what happened in Bondi, I feel a deep mix of grief and anger. I feel grief for the lives lost, grief for the families and communities who will never be the same and anger—real anger—that once again we are here, after another act of devastating violence, asking ourselves what we could've done differently. I also feel an overwhelming responsibility, and the Greens feel an overwhelming responsibility, not to reach for platitudes or hide behind symbolism but to act decisively and seriously in a way that genuinely reduces the risk of this happening again.

If we mean what we say when we say, 'This isn't us,' then we must be prepared to take difficult, concrete steps, and taking dangerous weapons off our streets and out of our communities isn't radical; it's rational. It is the most basic act of harm prevention and it is an essential first step in stopping violence like what we witnessed in Bondi.

In Victoria, my home state, there are around 960,000 registered firearms that are owned by more than 236,000 people. These numbers are higher than before the Port Arthur massacre. As the daughter of a fourth-generation farmer, I understand deeply that there are legitimate reasons for firearm ownership in this country. Farmers participate in legitimate regulated activities, and no-one is disputing this. But I feel alarmed when I look at this data because what we are seeing goes far beyond legitimate use.

We know from Port Arthur what decisive gun reform can achieve. After that tragedy, Australia acted and it saved lives. Recently, our neighbours in Aotearoa showed that governments could act swiftly and with moral courage after an Islamophobic mass shooting was carried out by a white Australian. Those reforms sent a clear message: the tools of mass violence do not belong in our society. What a shame it is, then, that this reform is not treated as a shared national responsibility today. What a shame that the National Party would rather engage in culture wars than commit, across party lines, to getting unnecessary guns out of our communities and off our streets. This issue should not be partisan.

Today, I also recognise—after work from the Greens, my colleagues—the agreement to establish a national firearms safety council as another step towards meaningful gun safety, and I want to thank my colleagues Senator Shoebridge and Senator Larissa Waters for their leadership in that area. These reforms must be our first step, but, of course, we can't pretend that they're the only ones. When I look at my home state of Victoria, particularly in the weeks of horror after Bondi, I feel something else. I feel pride—pride in its diversity and pride in its resilience. In the days and weeks after Bondi, I saw communities come together across faiths and across cultures. Solidarity matters. It reminds us that removing the tools of violence must go hand in hand with confronting hatred, extremism and social fracture before they take hold.

Let me be very clear. Suppressing democratic freedoms and protecting some groups over others or vilifying migrants will not make us safer. It will do quite the opposite. Knee-jerk reactions from Labor that follow the coalition down this twisted path of culture wars and divisions do not make us safer. They will not make us safer. So, yes, we must take back firearms as tools of destruction and violence and chaos, but we must make sure that what we do today isn't just symbolic but serious, grounded in evidence, in courage and in a refusal to accept the slow drift towards violence as normal.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've returned this week hopefully with the same intent as other senators, that what we should be doing here in this shortened day is to take actions to reduce the risk of the horrific events of 14 December happening again. I don't support this bill because I don't see a significant link here between the tragedy of what we saw and what we are doing here today. In fact, much of what we are doing here today seems completely irrelevant to those issues and perhaps instead is in pursuit of a broader agenda that seeks to demonise the otherwise legal, recreational use of firearms in this country.

I've listened to some of the debate this afternoon and this evening, and I have heard it said often that the evil monsters that committed these acts on 14 December would have been breaking the law if we had passed these laws. One of the assailants was a foreign citizen. If we pass these laws, foreign citizens won't be able to have guns anymore, so December 14 couldn't happen. I can't accept that level of naivety as a reason to pass laws that restrict the rights of the rest of our law-abiding Australians. Those two murderers were breaking the law already. They were terrorists. They were murderers. They were killers. They were criminals. The idea, then, that somehow passing a law to make something illegal is going to stop crime does seem the height of naivety. If it's that simple, why don't we just pass a law banning all crime and then everything will be peaceful—apparently.

Those two individuals we now know were very committed to do the evil they did. They trained to do what they did. They possibly went to the Philippines and continued that training. They went to great lengths to commit the acts of evil that they did over a month ago. The idea that somehow in the future any two similar murderers with a warped mind and evil intent could not somehow find a way around the laws we're passing today indicates that we are not approaching this issue with the seriousness of what happened over a month ago.

There are millions of illegal firearms in this country. There are possibly hundreds of thousands of them in Western Sydney, where these two murderers came from. The idea that they couldn't get their hands on something that was illegal is absurd. It's totally ridiculous. Whatever provisions are here are not really going to tackle the major issue that confronted this nation over a month ago. Yet it was this issue of gun law reform, as the government describes it, that the Prime Minister first latched on to in his response. Within days of this terrible event, the greatest terrorist attack in Australia's history, the Prime Minister was latching on to the issue of guns, almost certainly, transparently, as a means to avoid having to confront the more difficult issue for himself and his political party of the spread of radical Islamic extremism inspired by antisemitism that this government has done far too little about. The Prime Minister's initial bumbling of this issue has left a bad taste in the mouths of those Australians that do use guns for work, that use guns for pleasure—it's not illegal to do that. There has not been good faith from the Prime Minister or the Labor Party on this issue, because, from the get-go, they sought to demonise gun owners as somehow contributing to the risks of this event when that was, to most Australians, completely absurd.

Now, because of the public pressure and because that initial response was so cynical and was so transparently desperate, the Australian people didn't buy it. They didn't buy it. I think the Australian people could see, after the Port Arthur massacre, a prime minister who was taking on his own political base, who was tackling a difficult issue. There were assault and semi-automatic weapons available out there to the general public then. So he saw a legitimate issue that the then Howard government was taking on—a tough issue, but one they took on. This time, very clearly, the Australian public saw that this was very political and not really a serious response to what happened. Yet here we are just a few weeks later, and the first bill the government has proposed after splitting their broader bill—it's a complete shambles, which we'll get to later—tackles not the root cause of what happened on 14 December; it tackles a whole lot of ancillary issues that don't go anywhere close to what happened on 14 December or the days leading up to it. It has led to the demonisation of a million Australians who own firearms, sometimes because they have to for work or sometimes because they enjoy the pastime and the pursuit.

Just in the previous speech, we heard that this is not a time to demonise fellow Australians or divide fellow Australians, that we've all got to come together and unify, except if you own a gun. If you own a gun, apparently you can be demonised, you can be judged and you can be prejudged. You can be prejudged such that, because you may collect guns or have more than five—apparently the people who, I think, have never shot a gun seem to understand how many guns you need—you're an evil person, you're a terrible person, you're a risk to society, you're a public enemy. Don't give me this rubbish of uniting. Don't give me this veneer of saying, 'We're all Australians,' after this event when you make your response to it transparently politically divisive.

It divides some Australians against others. I completely understand that as someone who doesn't own guns and has rarely shot a gun. I don't mind doing it—it's a bit of fun—but it's not my main pastime in life. We've got to get over this idea that just because I don't do it or I don't like it, I should take it away from a fellow Australian and stop them doing it. There are a lot of people in this country that legally pursue these things. We cheer them on when they win gold medals at the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games. We're happy for them then. But, when it suits us politically, we'll say that they're the problem to distract everyone from the more difficult discussions that we might get to later tonight, which are also being glossed over and are another story.

You can tell, as I said before, the government is not serious about this. It is not taking this issue with the due consideration it should be, through both the completely irrelevant provisions that are in this particular bill and the fact that, in the last day or two, the government's had to drop a whole lot of changes because it didn't consult properly on its initial bill released only a week ago.

This bill had restrictions on how many shells you could hold in a vest. I think it was limited to 30 rounds in a particular vest. You wouldn't be able to, in the initial drafting of this bill, import a vest that had more than 30 rounds. It took someone pointing out to the government that, if you want to practise for the Olympics and compete at the AIS down the road, you actually do need more than 30 rounds to do that. No-one had checked that! No-one in the government had checked that. Now, thankfully, they've removed that provision, but the problem, when you do these last-minute amendments, is you start, as a legislator, to think: 'What other gremlins are in this bill? What other things haven't they thought of properly here?' That is so, so silly. It should have been picked up in early consultations, which clearly did not happen before we got here.

This bill also, for some unknown reason, goes after people who use gel blasters. Now, I'm not the expert on this. I have shot a gun, as I've said, but I don't know if I've ever shot a gel blaster before. There's a group in Rocky, where I live, who I know do it all. They seem like good people. They put on parties and events and team-bonding stuff you can do. Good luck to people. Why is that in this bill? I don't know. I don't know if we're having a committee stage. Is everything just getting guillotined? Perhaps the minister can tell us. Has there ever been an incident with a fatality in this country involving a gel blaster? Has a terrorist organisation or group ever sought to acquire gel blasters to commit acts of terror? They do it with cars, they do with homemade bombs, and now, unfortunately, they've done it with some guns. But have they done it with gel blasters? If not, why is that in here?

This goes to show that this has obviously been a laundry list of things that certain people have wanted to get done, and they've just chucked it in. They've just chucked it in this bill because they didn't think people would be watching. Worse, in quite a contemptible fashion, they have used a national tragedy, the worst terrorist attack on our shores ever, to pursue an unrelated agenda under the guise of trying to do something about terrorism. That's what's happening here. That's what the government has done to people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens.

The government here hasn't thought through the provisions around a national gun buyback. They're trying to force this through. It's very much putting the cart before the horse, because most states haven't even signed up to a buyback yet. There is time to put funds in place if and when that ever happens, but, by rushing this here, the government, seemingly, has not considered why ammunition wouldn't be part of that buyback, like it was in the original buyback. That's not included at all. Some simple details have been glossed over by this government.

For all these reasons, the National Party and the Liberal Party will not be voting for these laws. They will not appreciably reduce the risk of a terrorist attack happening again on our shores. Terrorists are unlikely to be the kinds of people that are going to obey the law in any event. It would be much, much more sensible for us to focus on the root cause of what's happened here, at Bondi, which is these evil ideas, the antisemitic ideas, the divisive ideas, the hateful ideas, that lead to violence. Focus on that instead of reducing the rights of other Australians who have done nothing wrong.

On the gun issue, on the issue itself, clearly what should happen is a renewed effort to clamp down on organised crime. As I mentioned before, there's a lot of focus on the fact that there are more legal firearms in Australia since Port Arthur, although I'm indebted to my colleague Senator McDonald, who has pointed out that there are actually many fewer per person. Per person, the number of firearms in this country has fallen. You don't hear that. But, for all the focus on the legal firearm market, there's almost an ignorance, an unwillingness, to look at the fact that we have enormous numbers of illegal firearms in this country. These are controlled largely by criminal gangs and organised crime, which is growing like Topsy in our country right now because we've created enormous lines of businesses for these groups through our ineptitude on tobacco policy, our pigheadedness on vaping policy and our distractions from illicit drugs and substances, which have given those organisations enormous streams of money to import all kinds of contraband into this country, including, presumably, illegal firearms out there.

This brings me to my final point. I worry a bit about rushing something like a national gun buyback. How are we going to be sure that this won't be abused as well? We have seen the Commonwealth government—not just this government—fail to run basic programs time and time again. The NDIS has become a pot of gold for people doing the wrong thing—as, seemingly, has some of the childcare funding that has massively increased recently as well. I worry here that setting up a gun buyback scheme in a rushed fashion, without considering all the details of it, could easily be an ability for people—what's stopping someone from importing a gun and then going to sell it in the buyback and making heaps of money? That did happen, apparently, in the first round of the buyback, but it could be on steroids here because we've rushed this, haven't got the details right and are still changing it within hours of this bill passing this evening. That's why we should reject this bill.

We should, if we have to, support my colleague Senator McKenzie's amendment to push this to a Senate inquiry, consider it more detail and get the details right. But, right here, right now—tonight—this is not going to reduce the risk of another terrorist attack. It's only going to take away rights from Australians, and for that reason it should be voted down.

Sean Bell (NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To every law-abiding firearm owner and to every Australian watching what is happening right now: One Nation's position on this legislation, on this policy issue, is very straightforward. One Nation supports law-abiding gun owners. One Nation believes we should be punishing extremists and not punishing law-abiding gun owners. The Albanese Labor government has dumped on us this major gun reform package, the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Firearms and Customs Laws) Bill 2026, and they are expecting everyone to simply accept this while ignoring the normal processes of scrutiny.

The truth is the people who will be affected by this first will not be terrorists or criminals; it will be you. It will be farmers. It will be regional Australians. It will be pest controllers. It will be sporting shooters. It'll be collectors. It will be licence holders—law-abiding citizens who have never committed a crime in their lives and who would never commit a crime. They will be the ones who will be punished. These are the people that do the training. They keep their firearms secure, they comply with inspections and they live by the law. To those people: know that you are not the problem and we have your back.

One Nation knows that criminals do not line up for gun buybacks. Criminals do not register illegal weapons. Criminals do not care about new paperwork, new rules or new announcements. They operate in the shadows, through trafficking, importation and organised crime, and they will keep doing it while the government is focused on quick headlines instead of criminals. I'll say it again. One Nation's position is straightforward. We support law-abiding gun owners. One Nation believes we need to punish extremists, not shooters. We need to punish the root cause of the things that happened in Bondi—radical Islamic extremism—not law-abiding Australians who have never committed a crime in their life.

If the Albanese Labor government is genuinely concerned about public safety, it needs to be honest about this. It needs to be honest about what is driving the violence that we saw in Bondi and this extremism. We should be confronting it directly. We should not be dodging it with vague language and political slogans. Unfortunately, what we've seen is Labor's instinct has been to punish people who are already doing the right thing—law-abiding Australians who have never committed and never would commit a crime in their life.

The other issue here is One Nation is not prepared to sign you up for a blank cheque. We actually don't know how much this is going to cost. We know that a lot of the states are rejecting this proposal. We know that Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania are not on board with this.

Here is what One Nation wants instead: we want policies that actually target criminals and protect the public. That is how you improve safety, not by scapegoating farmers and licence holders, not by punishing law-abiding Australians and not by pretending criminals and terrorists will comply with a gun buyback. Again, to the law-abiding firearm community: One Nation hears you, and we will stand with you. And to the wider public: do not be fooled by this farce. Do not be fooled, because real safety comes from confronting the cause of the threats and enforcing laws against criminals, not cracking down on the people who are already abiding by the law. One Nation opposes this buyback, and we will keep fighting for common sense and fairness. We will keep standing with farmers, regional Australians, pest controllers, sporting shooters and collectors. We are not about to support a policy where we don't know how many billions it's going to cost—and it's in the billions. How many regional hospitals could we be funding?