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

Yet again that premise of the question is completely wrong. I already said in the House on Tuesday that we put a sunset clause on that regulation at the request of Senator Leyonhjelm as result of a conversation that the government was having with him. I have already explained that. I have already explained that particular matter.

I would like to remind the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, when she was a minister in the Gillard and Rudd governments, lever-action shotguns were categorised in category A, the lowest possible licensing arrangement that we could have—the same category that we put air rifles in. The thing about category A licences is that you can have multiple weapons. In fact, if you wanted to, you could have had 100 lever-action shotguns, regardless of their capacity, regardless of their calibre. We decided that that was an inappropriate classification for that particular gun, and we started a conversation with the states and territories about what that appropriate classification would be. We have been negotiating with them ever since.

Now, I would have liked that negotiation to have been completed within the 12 months before that sunset clause was exercised, but it was not, so we did exactly what we said we would do: we continued the restriction of the import of lever-action shotguns with a magazine capacity of over five until those negotiations were concluded. The government's position has been the same—in 2014, 2015, up till today.

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