Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader (Tasmania)) Share this | Hansard source

What a pathetic attempt to try to justify what Minister Keenan tried to do last year. This is why Peter Dutton needs to be pulled into line by the Prime Minister. For those in the chamber and those up in the gallery, I am a Tasmanian who remembers very vividly what happened at Port Arthur in 1996. You only had to walk the streets of any town or city in Tasmania and see written on the faces of those Tasmanians the tragedy, the hurt and the horrific scars that had been left on our communities to know that any change to, any softening of, the gun laws in this country will not be tolerated by the Australian people.

I wasn't a great fan of Mr Howard's, but I will say this about John Howard at that time: he, with the Tasmanian state leaders at that time, helped bring about the world's best gun laws. Internationally, we are admired. We talk about what's been happening in America. You have students and parents marching to change things. I'm speaking as someone who was a licensed gun owner. I was. I was brought up in the country, so I knew how to shoot and to respect guns from a reasonably young age. But I turned my guns in and my husband relinquished his firearms as well because we believed that that was the right thing to do.

Now what we are seeing from these Liberals, both at a federal level and at a state level in my home state of Tasmania, are proposed changes to the gun laws. When did we find out about these changes by the Liberal state government? We heard nothing during the recent state election, but there was a leak to the media about secret meetings and the sneaky, underhand way that the Premier of that state had engaged with the gun lobby to make these changes. I have been inundated by people in Tasmania telling me they voted for the Hodgman government because they didn't know their proposal about changing the gun laws. That was sneaky, it was underhanded and it proves the Liberals cannot be trusted when it comes to gun laws in this country.

We know that there are people who use guns for sport. We know that. But they have to respect the gun laws that we currently have in this country. There is no way that as a Tasmanian I'm going to sit in this chamber and listen to the nonsense that the Minister for Sport has put before this chamber to try to justify the changes that Dutton and Keenan have proposed. It is about time that the Prime Minister grew a backbone and put an end to this debate. We saw how weak he is when he defended Minister Cash with her outlandish attack on women in the Leader of the Opposition's office during the estimates process. So he needs some credibility and this is a good place to start.

It's not just people like me who have concerns. I want to also remind people that a Port Arthur survivor, Peter Crosswell, has said about the proposed changes in Tasmania that our gun laws were 'the only good thing' to come out of the Port Arthur tragedy and disaster. The Alannah and Madeline Foundation, which was set up by Walter Mikac, whose wife and two daughters were killed in the massacre, has said that Mr Hodgman's proposed changes are 'a total betrayal of those lost'. That's a man who is still grieving for his wife and his two beautiful young daughters.

There isn't a Tasmanian who would've supported any change proposed by the Hodgman government if they had been aware of it. It was deceitful, it was dishonest and it proves yet again that the Liberals cannot be trusted. There were those who were negotiating behind closed doors, hoping like hell that no-one would find out before election day. We found out on the Friday. The next day was polling day. It was disgusting. I would have expected so much more from the Premier of the day—to be open and honest with Tasmanians.

I support this motion, because I'm speaking from experience, as a Tasmanian, of the impact of guns. We know that domestic violence, no matter what Senator McKenzie says, is still a big issue, and guns are part of that. (Time expired)