Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice) Share this | Hansard source

Since we arrived in office we have worked to restrict the access of criminals to illegal guns. Part of that is making sure we have tougher restrictions for gun smuggling. We have presented that to the parliament twice and twice the Labor Party has stood in the way of us passing these stricter penalties for gun smuggling. So there is all this confected outrage, all this nonsense, about issues that they clearly do not understand. Yet they are standing in the way of us having stricter penalties for organised crooks who smuggle in the black market. That is actually the issue that we should be addressing as a parliament. We will continue to make sure that John Howard's very strong, very successful firearms laws remain in place. And we will continue to do the most important thing with regard to public safety, and that is crackdown on the illegal firearms market. If you cared about this, you would join us in doing that.

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