Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I really appreciate this opportunity to make a contribution on the motion moved by my good friend the member for Moore. I must admit I was a little bit surprised to see that the member for Moore wanted to come in today and talk about guns, because in a very crowded field I think this is a subject on which there has probably been more disunity and dysfunction within the government than on any other. We have 18C, tax reform, climate change, competition policy and economic policy, but I think it is guns that take the cake.

But what I really want to talk about today is that there is a lot of politics around about this issue, but what is important is that there are real community safety repercussions from some of the divisions about how we should proceed with guns policy. I will just very quickly speak about some of the issues that we have observed on guns since I have been a member of parliament. This is the issue on which we saw something very extraordinary happen in the House of Representatives, and that is that the Prime Minister and the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah, both stood up in the same question time and gave completely contradictory accounts of how their offices had managed gun policy.

Debate interrupted.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:30

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