Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the continuing strength of Australia's gun laws. Indeed I would like to see gun laws strengthened—I say that up-front. I can't ever remember a time when I wasn't opposed to guns, even as a small child. Certainly as a parent I went to great lengths to try and educate my children about the dangers of guns. I appreciate that in some parts of Australian society we do have guns. Guns are needed on farms, our police force carry guns and so on. Our armed forces carry guns. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the everyday carrying or use of guns by ordinary citizens. I simply don't see the point and I don't support the use of guns. We see the shocking deaths in the US, where thousands of schoolchildren have taken to the streets to say that they want to make their schools safe. What a sad indictment it is of a country when some children feel that it's no longer safe to go to schools. Our schools should be sanctuaries, and yet for some children they are not.

I don't really think it matters if gun violence and deaths from shootings are declining. What matters is that they're happening in the first place. Any death through a shooting is a shocking thing and we should all, as a society, be opposed to that. I certainly don't support young children being able to get gun licences, as is the case in some states across this country. I'm proud to say that in Western Australia you have to be 18 years of age to get a gun licence. In Western Australia, if you've got a history of domestic violence, you also can't get a gun licence. If you've got an issue around mental health, you are, again, unable to get a gun licence. But, really, our gun laws should be uniform across this country. What applies in one state should be the case in another state because we don't want to see people being able to take advantage in one state where they can't in another.

I've never been a fan of John Howard's—never ever—but his bravery in standing up after Port Arthur needs to be commended. I remember seeing him on the news being absolutely heckled by people who thought they had some right to carry arms and by the National Rifle Association, which is way, way too influential in our politics these days, particularly in state politics. He did a great job, but what we've seen since then is the watering down of gun laws. It's starting to become easier, and we don't want that. We don't have that history of the right to bear arms and the gun violence that we see in the US, and we certainly don't want to see that in Australia as a rule.

I commend my friend and colleague, Michelle Roberts, who is concerned that in Western Australia we have seen a spike in drive-by shootings and woundings. She has taken action on that, and she's looking at some of the recommendations by the WA Law Reform Commission to introduce what are known as firearms prohibition orders, which already exist in other states. Again, gun violence should be something where we simply have national standards so that, for every state and territory in this nation, there's a uniform provision around gun laws. I have to say that I was quite shocked to learn that there are differences, and I was really shocked to hear that, in some states, children of 10 years of age can be given a gun licence, presumably to shoot on a range somewhere. That's just inappropriate. Why we would want to introduce our children to guns at such an early age defies logic, as far as I'm concerned. And I want to make sure that Australia remains a safe country and that we don't have guns being freely available. I do admit that they are somewhat freely available at the moment, but the more we can clamp down on that, the stronger our laws can be on stopping guns, and the more we as a culture embrace the fact that we don't want to see guns in this country, the better off we'll be.