Nation’s police officers say federal gun database is essential for safety

A national firearm register should include intelligence about licensed gun-owners who have been identified on social media as ‘police-haters’ or sovereign citizens.

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A national firearm register should include intelligence about licensed gun owners identified on social media as “police-haters” or sovereign citizens, and trace stockpiling of ammunition, gun parts and magazines, according to the nation’s police officers.

In a submission to federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’s consultation about the proposed database, Police Federation of Australia CEO Scott Weber urged that all criminal and intelligence history of a licensed gun owner be contained in the new system.

“In particular for law enforcement purposes, any firearms licence holder’s information should be linked to criminal and intelligence history of the individual. eg links to Sovereign Citizen posts, police haters etc, which would provide the capability of inter-jurisdictional information including alerts around rejected, suspended or cancelled licences,” the submission from the PFA, which represents 66,029 officers, reads.

All Australian governments again committed to setting up a national firearm register – first agreed to after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre – in the wake of the shooting of two police officers and a good Samaritan neighbour on December 12 last year at a remote property at Wieambilla in southern Queensland.

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The three culprits were identified as extremist Christian conspiracy theorists, who believed the “end of days” was approaching and that the police were evil.

One of the shooters, former school principal Nathaniel Train, was a suspended Queensland gun licence holder, and had firearms registered in Queensland and NSW. Two of his registered guns were recovered from the Wieambilla property after the shootings, along with four unregistered firearms.

Constable Rachel McCrow, 26, and Constable Matthew Arnold, 29, were shot dead at Wieambilla on December 12 last year, along with neighbour Alan Dare.

Last-minute funding negotiations are continuing in the lead-up to Wednesday’s national cabinet meeting, after Mr Dreyfus told police ministers the financial fight over the register would be settled by the end of the year.

Victoria, South Australia, the ACT and the NT are digging in their heels, pressing the federal government to pay more of the estimated $200m cost to get the national register up and running.

All jurisdictions, apart from NSW, which is already mostly digital, must upgrade their own ageing and largely paper-based weapons databases to be compatible with a real-time online national gun registry.

A meeting of the nation’s treasurers in Brisbane on Friday failed to solve the impasse, though the states and territories said they had worked out a “funding framework that will fairly share the final costs with the commonwealth government” but could not get federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers to agree to it.

A spokeswoman for ACT Chief Minister and Treasurer Andrew Barr told The Australian he had pushed for the national registry’s “procurement process to deliver effectiveness, community safety and value for money”, after some jurisdictions baulked at the $200m-plus price tag.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus told his police minister colleagues that the funding fight over a national firearms register would be settled by national cabinet before the end of the year. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Mr Dreyfus’s department is leading the design of the new system, and it is believed two of the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s existing databases – the Australian Firearms Information Network and the National Criminal Intelligence System – will be technologically upgraded to link to the revamped state and territory registers.

The PFA has also lobbied Mr Dreyfus to ensure ammunition purchases are entered into a register, as well as the buying of firearm accessories, magazines and gun parts.

Mr Weber said RSPCA inspectors and state wildlife rangers should be given access to certain information contained in a national register, and should also be able to contribute intelligence.

He said a national register would “provide real-time information for frontline officers attending incidents; in particular, incidents where a firearm may be available to an offender”.