Four killed by guns in less than a week as politicians squabble
The national guns register has hit an 11th-hour roadblock with a blow-up between state and federal treasurers derailing plans to finalise a funding deal.
The national firearm register has hit an 11th-hour roadblock with a blow-up between state and federal treasurers derailing plans to finalise a funding deal.
National cabinet was set to finally sign off on the registry as early as its meeting on Wednesday, 27 years after the database was first agreed to following the Port Arthur massacre of 35 people in 1996.
But a funding brawl at the national meeting of treasurers in Brisbane on Friday, fuelled by Victoria and smaller jurisdictions still demanding more cash from Canberra to replace their ageing, paper-based state registers, has thrown into doubt an agreement before the end of the year.
The deadlock comes 12 days before the anniversary of the shooting murders of two police officers and a neighbour at Wieambilla, in southern Queensland, which reignited the push for a national database to provide real-time digital updates on registered guns and licensed firearm-owners across Australia.
This newspaper’s Target on Guns investigation previously revealed a national register has been costed at about $200m, and would take at least four years to deliver after a funding deal is struck.
ACT Chief Minister and Treasurer Andrew Barr complained that the price of joining the national register was too high, claiming it would cost the ACT $1100 per firearm to implement.
After the meeting, the state and territory treasurers issued a communique urging federal counterpart Jim Chalmers to agree to a “funding framework that will fairly share the final costs with the commonwealth”.
While politicians squabble over money, four people in three states have been shot dead in a single week, including a police officer and a domestic violence victim. Another man committed suicide using a gun and several others were wounded.
On November 16, Brevet Sergeant Jason Doig was fatally shot while on duty at a remote farming property near Bordertown in South Australia. His colleague Sergeant Michael Hutchinson, 59, was also shot but survived.
The man accused of shooting them, Jadyn Stimson, 26, remains in hospital with critical injuries after being shot by police and has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
In central Queensland on November 17, footballer Anuisha Bone, 34, was found dead in the early hours of the morning near Rockhampton with a gunshot wound to his neck.
In South Australia, domestic violence victim Jodie Jewell, 55, was shot dead by her estranged husband Kevin Jewell, a recreational hunter and licensed firearm owner, on November 21. Jewell then shot himself. And on November 22, Paul Davy, 44, was shot dead at a house at Kendall, on the NSW Mid-North Coast. Four people have been arrested over his death and face various charges including murder.
As the nation’s treasurers met, Australia’s largest gun-maker and seller was backing a national firearms register, blaming the 27-year delay on the federal government’s unwillingness to pay for it.
NIOA Group chief executive Rob Nioa – who runs the biggest Australian-owned supplier of firearms, munitions and weapons to the Australian and New Zealand defence forces, police, and licensed firearm dealers – said the shooting industry supported a real-time information-sharing gun register.
“The only thing that’s stopping that happening is the allocation of federal government money,” Mr Nioa told the National Press Club.
“That’s been a problem not just for this government but successive governments, it’s been announced on multiple occasions and it’s never been done. There’s no objection from state jurisdictions, there’s no objections from industry, there’s no objections from users.”
“I’m not sure why we can find hundreds of millions of dollars for lots of things but why that would be a challenge. This is simply an IT program … It’s just about making sure that is shared in real time and that there is integrity of the data.
“So data’s been lost and as a result of that community safety has degraded and it’s been going on now for a long time.”
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