Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator McKenzie, I acknowledge that you do represent the state of Victoria. I could not call it 'the great state'! Being a senator from New South Wales, myself, I will have to claim ascendancy there. We are the premier state, New South Wales!

What we see from Senator McKenzie in calling for this gun to be allowed is a very, very different view of the importance of protecting the Australian people. Labor is very proud to stand in support of gun laws that have seen improvements in the expectation to be able to move freely in our community without fear of being shot by such implements as we are discussing here this evening.

The events that we have seen also show weakness and incompetence on the part of the Prime Minister and his predecessor, the member for Warringah. They have presided over a mess in which ministers have traded guns for votes and then broken their promises when keeping them became inconvenient. The manoeuvrings over the Adler ban were even caught up in the continuing rivalry between Mr Turnbull and Mr Abbott. Australians were treated to the unedifying spectacle of the Prime Minister and the member for Warringah sparring in the other place over just what was promised to Senator Leyonhjelm in August last year. Senator Leyonhjelm was watching with great interest, I am sure, to see what happened, but the outcome was that Mr Abbott lost that round. However, you could not say that the Prime Minister has emerged unscathed, because the government has changed its position on multiple occasions and no-one in the government is willing to take responsibility for the multiple messes they have made in managing this piece of legislation and this commitment to Senator Leyonhjelm, through the many sagas that have emerged.

It is not Labor's approach to the matter. We are clear: we will not risk undermining public safety in order to chase votes in the Senate, and that is what we are talking about—trading guns for votes. We will not be complicit in the weakening of Australian gun safety laws, which have kept us safe for two decades and set a benchmark for the world.

On the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre, the Alannah & Madeline Foundation started a national petition urging states and the federal parliament not to water down gun laws. Almost 60,000 people have signed that petition, and opinion polls regularly indicate that 80 per cent of Australians want the strict controls on firearms to be maintained. That may annoy libertarians like Senator Leyonhjelm, but it should surprise no-one.

Australians know that they live in a safe country, and they value that fact. They do not want this country to imitate the United States, where gun crime is prolific and people are unsafe—the country in which gun ownership is normalised under an 18th century understanding of the need to maintain a militia. The modern consequences of that outdated statute in the US are beyond tragic. Mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States. That country has more than 300 million guns in circulation, and that is more than one per person. One in 10,000 Americans will die as a result of gun injury. That compares with one in 100,000 Australians. I think we should stick with the Australian statistics, and stick with the legislative reform and gun control that we enacted as a bipartisan national response to the tragedy of Port Arthur, which captured the public imagination and helped us crystallise the sort of society that we want to live in and the sort of society in which restrictions on the freedom of some who would seek to use particular guns for particular purposes are balanced against the freedom and safety of the many.

When we look at the statistics, Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by someone using a gun than Australians are. That is the consequence of the sort of open slather gun regime that Senator Leyonhjelm thinks is acceptable. The mass shootings in public in the US have been well publicised. We know the tragic litany of place names—places we have never visited but where we know this great tragedy of the abuse of guns has occurred—Orlando, Charleston, San Bernardino, Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. But, as gun control advocates like Lesley Podesta remind us, gun violence is not always in a public place. I am not referring to those Hollywood style shootouts between cops and gangsters. Every day in the US five women are murdered with guns—five every day. Many of those deaths take place in the context of domestic violence. We know that the scourge of domestic violence is still far from being ended here in Australia. Moving to American style gun laws would only make the present danger that so many women and children experience even worse than it already is.

It must be hoped that the review of the National Firearms Agreement will not be subverted by those who want this country to go backyards on gun safety. Making it easier to import and own Adler A10 shotguns would undoubtedly do that. It is a disgrace that the government has resorted to vote-trading on this fundamental issue of public safety. But, if it now chooses to adhere to the original ban, it can at least redeem some of its sullied reputation.

The power of the gun lobby in the United States is legendary. The argument, 'Guns do not kill people, people do,' is bunkum. Enlighted Americans look to Australia as an example of what can be done with widespread public support to control firearms and make the country a safer place to live. Community protection and individual or personal security are not something to be privatised, as they are in the United States, by individuals arming themselves. Proper regulation of firearms is a responsibility of the state and not a case of individual freedom.

In closing, can I say that this must be one of the more underhanded, convoluted and bungled deals in recent memory: trading access to firearms to secure firearms in the Senate, guns for votes. Those are the sorts of headlines we have seen swirling around this government; it does not get much worse. From a New South Wales point of view, this has the added intrigue of the greyhounds, coalition bickering and a Deputy Premier who has fallen on his sword after abandoning his people. It all reeks of disarray, division, weakness and deceit in the coalition within both the federal and state tiers of government. It reeks of horse trading away public safety for the sake of power.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott introduced this ban in the context of concerns around the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney in 2014. And he backed that view up just last month when he said:

With a heightened terror threat, there is just no way that any serious Coalition government, any government in the tradition of John Howard should be allowing rapid fire weapons on a very large scale into our country.

We have made very clear Labor's position that we fundamentally reject Senator Leyonhjelm's position on gun control. But we also reject the way in which this government interjects with the crossbench. The crossbench are duly elected by the Australian people. In the last parliament we heard the name-calling from those opposite, from those who are supposed to be leading the government, of people who sat on the crossbench. Perhaps they have learnt their lesson and are name-calling a little less; but they are dirty dealing as much as they have ever done.

Senator Leyonhjelm's comments this evening are explosive. He said there is a better chance of the government getting agreement if it negotiates to secure crossbench votes in a way that is honourable and if it negotiates in good faith. Senator Leyonhjelm is clearly indicating to anyone who is watching around Australia that this is a government that no-one trusts. Even when getting their legislation through depends on doing a deal, they cannot be trusted. Senator Leyonhjelm honoured his deal—as much as I disagree with it. He gave his word—in the way businesses and decent people around Australia operate every day. He gave his word. But the government could not keep its word; it could not lie straight in bed; it is a government that you cannot trust. Senator Leyonhjelm has spelt out very clearly that that is absolutely the case: this is a government that you cannot trust. Labor will not support this disallowance motion by Senator Leyonhjelm.