Australia parliament votes on tighter gun controls after Bondi shooting
Australia’s lower house of parliament has voted for a national gun buyback program and new checks on firearms license applications, a month after the deadly shooting at Bondi Beach.
Home Secretary Tony Burke said before the attack targeting a Jewish festival that if such a law had been in place, gunmen would not have had legal access to firearms.
In his speech to parliament, Burke said that the people who killed 15 people on December 14 had “hate in their hearts and guns in their hands.”
It was learned that the father of the father-son duo allegedly behind the Bondi attack legally owned 6 firearms, and his son was on the radar of intelligence agencies.
The bill was accepted by the House of Representatives with 96 votes to 45. The bill, which will now go to the Senate, is expected to pass with the support of the Greens.
Parliament is also debating hate speech reforms.
Burke said the buyback plan would target “surplus and newly restricted firearms” and reduce the nation’s 4 million registered guns.
Burke added that it “comes as a shock to most Australians” to know the country has more firearms than before the Port Arthur attack in Tasmania in 1996, when a gunman killed 35 people.
This shooting prompted the government at the time to impose some of the strictest gun controls in the world.
Other measures passed Tuesday include stricter firearms import controls and provisions to improve the sharing of information among intelligence agencies about people trying to obtain gun licences.
The lower house of parliament is also expected to pass reforms on hate speech aimed at combating antisemitism on Tuesday.
The bill’s passage in the Senate initially appeared uncertain after opposition members of the conservative Liberal-National coalition said its provisions could affect freedom of expression, among other things.
However, reports late Monday indicated that Liberal leader Sussan Ley had agreed with the government on a watered-down version. It remained unclear whether citizens would support the law.
Liberal MP Julian Leeser, who is Jewish, told parliament on Tuesday that Bondi represented a “choice moment” and that “the choice the Liberal Party has made this morning is to stand with the Jewish community and law-abiding Australians, as we always have.”
The Greens said they would not vote in favor of the reforms unless changes were made to protect all minorities and there was legitimate protest.
