Dear Minister: can I have my guns back?

After endlessly asking for the return of my firearms, and repeatedly meeting the brick wall of bureaucracy, I’m resorting to writing this open letter to NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley.

I have been a licenced gun owner for nearly 40 years but after filling out the renewal paperwork I haven’t heard a peep. Worse still, the police have collected my firearms. Picture: Peter Stoop

This is an open letter to the Honourable Yasmin Catley, NSW Minister for Police and Counter-Terrorism and Minister for the Hunter.

Dear Minister,

Over the decades, I’ve written and broadcast countless times praising our public libraries, so I noted with pleasure that you were previously a librarian. I assume we share a love of books – and I suspect we share a distaste for guns.

As we both know, there are about 400 millionfirearms in civilian possession in the US – leading me to describe that nation as the Gunited States. Gun ownership, promoted by that most powerful and dangerous lobby group the National Rifle Association, makes the US the land of political assassinations and school massacres. Deadly weapons (it would seem up to missile launchers) can be bought at Walmart and “open carried” in many states. Madness.

Since the Port Arthur massacre Australia has done its best to limit gun ownership – though clearly criminals (organised and unorganised) still find them easy to obtain. There are gang wars and killings galore. Despite the Howard buyback – the only thing during his prime ministership that I agreed with – some 4 million guns are now legally owned in Australia. Mainly by hunters and farmers. Minus me.

Owning a large farm in the Upper Hunter (sheep, cattle, garlic, olives, honey, etc), I was a licenced gun owner for nearly 40 years. I’ve never shot for pleasure, but we have feral dogs, foxes and pigs to contend with, and sometimes I have to put an ailing animal out of its misery.

In September 2023, I was advised that my licence needed to be renewed – so I went immediately to Service NSW. I filled out a pile of forms and was told I’d be called back for a photograph and then issued with the licence. But nothing happened. Zero. Zilch. Silence. Whereupon months later, Muswellbrook Police told me to hand over my weapons. They were put under lock and key at the police station. They’re still there.

Phillip Adams pictured in 2018 on his property Elmswood in the Hunter Valley. Picture: James Croucher

I have gone through the same application procedures again and again, have repeatedly provided all required documentation – and have repeatedly been promised the licence. But I might as well have put all the documentation into a shredder instead of the online gun licence portal. More total silence.

The folk at the Service NSW are mystified, and the local police apologetic – as Sergeant Ben Christensen will confirm. Yet nothing happens. I’ve put in a formal complaint and have been assured that the matter is “being processed”. And I’ll soon be 86.

I can provide excellent references from a dozen PMs and premiers, who’ve appointed me to chair such august bodies as the National Australia Day Council, FFS. Oh, did I mention I’m the father of four daughters? Unless made of cement, citizens don’t get more solid.

Dear Minister. Farming is tough enough without such endless and exhausting nonsense. Unless I’m not on some secret terrorist watch list, please apply your ministerial boot to the appropriate bureaucratic bottoms. Give me back my gun licence. And give me back my guns.

Yours sincerely and desperately,

Phillip Adams AO, FAHA FRSA.