Gun-toting MotoGP champ wins stoush with Qld licensing cops

Queensland and NSW Police were tasked to seize six guns owned by MotoGP world champ Casey Stoner during a bizarre battle over jurisdiction.

Queensland and NSW Police were tasked to seize six guns owned by two-time MotoGP world champion Casey Stoner during a bizarre jurisdictional fight over where he should get his weapons licence, a tribunal has heard.

In April, an officer from Queensland police’s weapons licensing division said she would task NSW police to “seize” the six rifles that the 35-year-old said he owned, after his Queensland licence expired six months earlier on October 16 last year.

Queensland police refused to grant Stoner a gun licence on December 1, 2020, because he did not show “a genuine need” such as owning a rural property for shooting in Queensland or belonging to a gun club.

Stoner argued he needs the weapons to shoot feral animals on his black Angus cattle farm in NSW.

The tasking by Queensland police to request NSW officers to visit Stoner’s 647ha cattle farm at Niangala near Tamworth, NSW to “seize” the rifles came four months after Queensland officer Gareth Toogood turned up at Stoner’s palatial six-bedroom $3m estate in Upper Coomera to find the rifles and retrieve them, tribunal documents state.

Stoner told Sgt Toogood that there had been “major issues” with both NSW and Queensland’s weapons licensing divisions, with NSW telling him he needed a Queensland licence and Queensland telling him the opposite.

Details of Stoner’s bureaucratic fight with the QPS were revealed in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal where Stoner applied on January 4 to overturn the QPS refusal.

Stoner was supposed to store the rifles at his Upper Coomera home as part of his Queensland gun licence, Sgt Danielle Ayscough states in an email filed in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal (QCAT).

Stoner said how NSW and Queensland weapons licensing divisions were having major problems over who he should speak to. Photo: Daniel Kalisz/Getty Images

But instead he told Sgt Toogood that he had always kept them in NSW.

Sgt Ayscough asked a police colleague to inquire whether Stoner may prefer to transfer his rifles to a NSW dealer or licence holder rather than have them seized, according to the April 29 email filed in the tribunal.

Six months after Stoner applied to QCAT in a bid to overturn the Queensland police refusal, the QPS has relented and finally let Stoner have his gun licence, tribunal documents state.

In his application to QCAT Stoner revealed he has six rifles including two-lever action Marlin’s, a bolt action 0.17 calibre rifle, a bolt-action 0.22 calibre Tikka, a break action Laurona and a bolt-action 0.3 calibre Steyr rifle.

Southport-born Stoner told the tribunal that he needed a Queensland gun licence because he lives here and that he had previously held a Queensland licence.

“My firearms are a necessity in running a cattle property. Dependent on feed, calving etc we have 500-1000 head of cattle, and also need to deal with feral animals,” the father-of-two told the tribunal in his application.

Casey Stoner and wife Adriana Stoner and daughter Alessandra Maria Stoner. Source: TWITTER @adri_stoner

“Nothing has changed in the last five years from my previously approved weapons licence.

“I still own three cattle properties in NSW, where I securely store my weapons, on my own property and in my own home, and often travel down to run the farms,” he said in tribunal documents.

“Before my last Queensland firearms licence, I resided in NSW full time and had a NSW weapons licence.

“After moving to Queensland, I had to hand in all my firearms in to a gun store in NSW, which they then had shipped up to a gun store in Queensland.

“Once my application was approved, we sent them back down to NSW to be securely stored in my gun safe on my property. No one else has access to the safe,” Stoner wrote.

Stoner told The Courier-Mail that his NSW property manager arranged for his rifled to be kept in an off-farm “secure location in NSW” until the dispute could be resolved.

“There were unnecessary challenges” in his bid to renew his Queensland gun licence, he said.

“I’m thankful the issues are now resolved, and I continue to be a registered and responsible gun owner,” he said in a statement.

“I have owned guns for over 15 years,” he said.