Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to add to an answer that I gave to Senator Bob Brown earlier in relation to the shooting in Melbourne. Media reports indicate that a person was killed with a handgun in Melbourne this morning. The exact nature of the incident or the specific type of handgun used is not yet clear.

Since the 1996 national firearms agreement, firearms owners in Australia have needed to prove they have a genuine reason to own, possess or use firearms. Such reasons include government, professional pest controllers, security guards, recreational hunters and sporting shooters. Personal protection is not a genuine reason. Following the Monash University shooting in 2002, the Council of Australian Governments agreed to prohibit a large number of handguns based on characteristics of calibre, capacity and concealability. Almost 70,000 handguns were taken off the streets in the 2003 national handgun buyback. In addition to the prohibition of many handguns, tighter controls on access to handguns were agreed to by the COAG, including establishing additional requirements for sporting shooters to gain access to handguns, providing shooting clubs with the power to request police checks on people before accepting them as members, adopting laws to allow the refusal of handgun licences on the basis of criminal intelligence and any other relevant information, requiring suspension or revocation of licences, and seizure of firearms immediately upon the issue of a domestic violence order or an apprehended violence order to a licence holder.