Australian governments have ‘never been closer’ to a gun database deal

Gun safety advocates say Australia’s state, territory, and federal governments have ‘never been closer’ to a deal on a national firearm register, 27 years after the Port Arthur massacre that first prompted calls for the database.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus told a meeting of police ministers last week that the funding fight over the national firearms register would be settled by national cabinet before the end of the year.

Gun safety advocates say state, territory and federal governments have “never been closer” to a deal on a national firearm register, some 27 years after the Port Arthur massacre that first prompted calls for the database.

National cabinet, due to meet as early as next week, is thought to be poised to agree on a funding framework to bring Australia’s eight state and territory guns registers into one database capable of providing real-time information on every licensed gun owner and registered firearm in the country.

The development comes after The Australian’s Target on Guns investigation revealed a funding stoush between the jurisdictions had stalled the push for a national register, which had taken on fresh impetus after the shooting murders of two police officers and a neighbour at Wieambilla in southern Queensland last December.

Victoria and the smaller jurisdictions of South Australia, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Tasmania resisted paying for upgrades of their own ageing, paper-based databases to become part of a national system, and instead sought federal cash.

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Queensland and Western Australia had already agreed to fund overhauls of their systems in anticipation of being able to “plug in” to a national database, which has been costed at $200m, while NSW’s register is already the most modern in the country.

The national guns registry will be discussed at Friday’s meeting of the Standing Council of Attorneys-General, where the state and territory’s top law officers will meet with federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.

Mr Dreyfus told a meeting of police ministers last week the dispute would be settled by national cabinet before the end of the year.

Jim Chalmers is due to deliver the upcoming mid-year economic and fiscal outlook in the next few weeks, raising expectations the funding will be made available.

Australian Gun Safety Alliance convener Stephen Bendle – who met Mr Dreyfus in Canberra on Tuesday – said he had never been more confident in the delivery of a register.

Australian Gun Safety Alliance convenor Stephen Bendle. Picture: Supplied

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“A national firearms register remains the final plank in the National Firearms Agreement agreed to by all jurisdictions in the shadow of Port Arthur,” he said.

“Calls from law enforcement agencies and the community at large following the Wiembilla shootings in December last year raised the prospect of this finally happening.

“Our conversations with premiers, police ministers and firearms registries around the country have been positive. However, it still hasn’t been done. This week I had meetings with the firearms section of the Attorney-General’s Department, who are doing the design work of a new national firearms register, and it seems they are well advanced,” he added.

“I also had discussions with (Mr) Dreyfus and I came away confident the commonwealth and all of the jurisdictions are in full agreement on the need and have never been closer to agreement.

“There will be difficulties but the goodwill and intent is there and I have never been more confident that we will see a national firearms register soon.”

Anthony Albanese has described a national firearms register as the “next step’’ in the reforms that were introduced after a gunman killed 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996.

Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers, at the Wieambilla property recently. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

Queensland Police Union president Ian Leavers, who launched the renewed push for a national register last December, said he spoke to the Prime Minister minutes before the funerals of Wieambilla victims Constable Matthew Arnold and Constable Rachel McCrow, and Mr Albanese “shared his passion’’ for making the register work.

As progress towards a national register inches closer, Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park writes for The Australian that the country does not have a gun problem, it has a “politics problem,” arguing that gun law rhetoric has nothing to do with public safety and “everything to do with political one-upmanship”.

“The extent to which a government bloviates about legal gun ownership is a direct measure of how much it wants to divert attention away from its shortcomings on other fronts – such as the skyrocketing cost of living, a crippling housing shortage and badly overstressed infrastructure,” Mr Park said.

“It is no coincidence that as the Labor left has exerted more and more policy dominance within the party, Labor’s vote has collapsed in its traditional heartland.

“Labor’s right knows full well any further moves on legal gun ownership will go down like a lead balloon, being seen as capitulating yet again to the out-of-touch elite’s disdain for working-class pursuits.”

Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park. Picture: Supplied.

After the Wieambilla shootings, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk – a member of the Labor Party’s Right faction – put the national gun register on the agenda of national cabinet in February, where it garnered unanimous support.