Coalition opposes gun control changes, hate crimes bill set to pass with Liberal support

The opposition leader separately told colleagues that some of the changes proposed by the National Party would water down the legislation to the extent that neo-Nazis and Islamist extremists would not be caught, and that if they voted against the bill in the Senate, the National Party would vote with the Greens, who are often accused of antisemitism.

The Nationals’ stance on the bills did not ultimately matter, as the Liberals’ support in the Senate was enough for the bills to pass late Tuesday. But the internal drama highlights the pressure facing the tiny Coalition party, which held multiple party room meetings on Tuesday in a difficult internal process to debate the bill.

One Nation is rising in the polls and former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce is aiming to steal votes from the middle party, posing a risk to the Nationals’ lead on voting for legislation if Joyce and Canavan campaign against the policies.

Right-wing Liberal supporters Andrew Hastie and Tony Pasin voted to change hate crimes legislation earlier on Tuesday.

Ley said in a statement: “In the interest of the national interest, the Liberal party has taken action today to correct the legislation that the Albanian government has grossly misused.”

While Albanese ultimately worked with the opposition to support hate crimes legislation, he worked with the Greens in the Senate to pass stricter gun laws, the second component of his legislative response to Bondi. When it became clear that there was no broad support for either bill in parliament, the prime minister was forced to split the bills into two bills.

The gun laws tighten firearm controls with greater cooperation among law enforcement agencies for background checks on licensed gun owners, strengthen restrictions on firearm imports, and create authority for the federal government to enact a national buyback plan.

Albanese said the plan was similar to the buyback scheme introduced by the Howard government after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 and included import measures to prevent dangerous people from owning guns. He rejected claims by national MPs that the laws were unfairly focused on rural residents.

“This [legislation] “This is not about targeting farmers, it is not about competitive shooters, it is not about law-abiding firearm owners,” Albanese said.

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Littleproud argued that the restrictions were an unnecessary distraction in the fight against antisemitism.

He told parliament on Tuesday that the gun bill was a “cheap political diversion”. “We don’t have a gun problem, we have a radical Islam problem,” the national leader said.

Littleproud had campaigned against tighter controls shortly after the Bondi massacre, prioritizing senior Coalition partners in the Liberal Party as he did in the Voice of Parliament referendum and Australia’s net-zero emissions target legislation.

A Resolve Political Monitor poll conducted for this imprint found this week that the number of voters who want to toughen gun laws dropped 10 percentage points in a matter of weeks, from 76 percent to 66 percent; because both One Nation and the National Party took strong stances against change.

But support for restricting gun licenses (73 percent), limiting the number of guns an individual can own (81 percent) and stricter regulations on high-powered guns (84 percent) remained strong.