Australia is failing on key gun control laws

A gun safety lobby group says Australia has failed to live up to one of the key promises made after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. 

Despite a resolution in the national firearms agreement adopted after that tragedy, Australia doesn’t have a proper national registry of guns and gun owners. Registries are still being enforced by states and territories.

“In 1996, every jurisdiction agreed to a minimum set of standards for the use of firearms,” Australian Gun Australian Gun Safety Alliance convenor Stephen Bendle told Crikey.  said. “After more than 26 years, not a single jurisdiction is fully compliant with the national firearms agreement.

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“We’re currently reliant on seven different systems from the states and territories. The Commonwealth has a system that tracks data on individual firearms, but it would be better to have one system that every police force uses, that every policeman can access, so they know who has a firearm, where they live, and what the risks are.”

Bendle said another problem was that the federal system tracks guns, but not gun owners.

The union representing federal police officers agreed a better national database was badly needed.

“It’s a no-brainer, but it keeps getting pushed to the side,” Australian Federal Police Association media and government relations manager Troy Roberts said. “What we’re hoping to see is a real-time database that police officers and law enforcement agencies can access to try and locate information.”

If an officer in the ACT did a traffic stop on a car with Queensland plates, he or she had to call interstate colleagues and have them check their records, rather than being able to access the information themselves. 

“It’s ridiculous that today, we don’t have one system that all police officers across Australia can use,” Roberts said. 

After two officers were among six killed in a shooting on a rural Queensland property last week, it appears there could be a political will to revisit the gun registry issue. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday he would be briefed on “practical ways” in which gun rules could be changed.

“On the issue of guns in the wake of the tragedy on the Darling Downs that occurred just a week ago, this tragedy is still, of course, the subject of ongoing investigations,” he said.

“My government will take any advice, particularly from police and law enforcement, about better ways in which we can have coordination and better laws to protect people. I am certainly up for dialogue with the states and territories about how there can be a better national consistency and national information that can serve the interests of police going about their duty.”

Albanese said the next meeting of national cabinet, in 2023, would have gun laws on the agenda. 

A federal Coalition spokesperson said the opposition was keen to have a look at what Albanese might propose: “The opposition is supportive of enhanced data sharing to safeguard the community and will look at anything the government puts forward.”

It isn’t clear how the slain shooters in the Queensland tragedy obtained their guns but the state’s police force told Crikey whether they did so illegally or legally was still under investigation.

Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission chief executive Mike Phelan told senators last year that the existing national registry failed to capture accurate data because of difficulties in matching information coming from various states and territories.