Thursday, 30 July 2026

 Brad BATTIN (Berwick) (14:39): I rise to speak on the Firearms Amendment Bill 2026. In rising for this bill, it is obviously a fairly sensitive bill within the community at the moment and has been for a long time. Just to put it into context in relation to firearms reform not just in Victoria but across Australia over our time, I think every person in this chamber would be old enough to remember what happened on 28 April 1996 when Martin Bryant killed 35 people and injured 23 others down in Port Arthur.

Everyone remembers that tragedy. It was a huge, huge tragedy across the whole of the country which the world froze for. It was something that we did not really hear of here in Australia or did not understand in Australia. We had seen it overseas. I think most people knew someone who was attached or involved with it, and it impacted everyone across the entire country.

At that time we all recall that there was a pretty big push then for firearms reform here in Australia, and it would have impacted each state for that reform to happen. Our Prime Minister at the time John Howard started the process of going through that reform. When it first came out there were mixed reviews. There were some people out there that were very much anti any reform, and there was a group who were very supportive. We would have to say and agree that a majority of the community were supportive of that reform. There was a pretty big campaign by gun lobbyists. We saw that in the day and we recall many images. Some of those John Howard has spoken about since – turning up to an event with a bulletproof vest on because of the fear that was out there. I know that it is one of those things where he looks back now and I think regrets what he did on that day. But you do understand, though, at that time the tension that was within the community around what had happened.

I know that some of our regional members who will be speaking on this will talk about the impact. Even if we look back then, farmers came out who were genuinely concerned about the use of firearms on their properties – they do use them. Legal firearms users across the state – who are still in that position today, still legal firearms users across Victoria – were fearful they were going to get caught up in this national firearms reform. Then the agreement came out and we had the amnesty for people to hand in or sell their firearms back with a buyback system from the national government. I think no-one today would disagree that that reform was a positive, and we have seen less firearms on the streets here in Australia.

It is interesting. We still have shooters clubs and firearms and ranges. We still have people who have legal firearms. We still have consequences every so often of shootings here in Victoria and across the nation – not to the degree that we saw recently in Bondi. But up until then we would still see incidents of mainly individual cases of firearm shootings, which would be very difficult to totally rule out and totally get rid of. Therefore the target was to take away the high-powered automatic rifles, and I think overall it was very well received. We have seen since then – and I think most members would have seen them, whether it is on Instagram or TikTok or whatever they watch – that there are always memes and things about those firearms changes, and they do the comparison to the United States.

I have had this discussion with the new Premier before when we talk about youth crime. It is one of the things that we do agree on, and we have spoken about it in the past. We both have read a book from America by Geoffrey Canada – I have spoken about it in here before – which is Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun. It speaks about the changes in youth crime through the United States, focusing mostly on New York. You see the change from a group of young people in the street who used to go out and have a fistfight in the street – someone brought a stick to the fight – and it goes on, progressing and eventually ending up with a firearm. The one thing I can say here in Australia is that whilst we are going through knife and blade weapons at the moment, we have not really seen that major move to firearms on the streets in those particular instances. Again, we see some random ones right now, but not with youth having firearms. That is very much something we should look back at that federal government from 1996 for – having the courage to go out and do what they did at the time.

On 14 December 2025 we saw another terrorist attack here on our shores. As we all know, that was the Bondi terrorist attack. At that Hanukkah celebration 15 people were killed and 41 others were injured.

Again, it was an absolute tragedy, the lives that we lost up there on Bondi. Many leaders from the community and from all sides of politics came out and spoke about the disaster that that was and the impact, and particularly the impact on the Jewish community. It was obviously a very targeted terrorist attack, and it was linked to or part of, you could see, a chain of attacks that had been happening across the country because of the antisemitism that was happening and occurring on our streets. Whether it was starting back from some of the things like graffiti, the more we saw a blind eye turned to those crimes happening on what we would say may have been a smaller scale, we started to see an increase in those crimes, getting to a stage where we saw protests outside synagogues. We saw Addas synagogue firebombed; we saw Melbourne East synagogue firebombed and targeted. We saw the families and homes of rabbis targeted by terrorists here in this state, much of it being organised from overseas. Tragically, over time we saw an increase. I think the challenge is that when we continued to almost allow some of the protests that were on the street dividing and creating hate, particularly here in Victoria – and we saw one or two up in New South Wales – when we saw that, it almost became acceptable. Then it gets to a stage where we start to see people acting further on that hate and that division.

What we saw in Bondi was something that we never want to see again, so it was vital that, from a federal position, they went in and did the review so we could try to ensure that I would not just say we strengthen the gun laws but we ensure our gun laws are in the best position they can be. There was a report done federally, and obviously we had a report done down here, the Lay report. I have a lot of time for Ken Lay. He has been involved with Victoria Police for a long time. He is very respected from his time in Victoria Police. He has an understanding of the impact of violent crime across our nation, and he put forward what he thought when he was part of that rapid review down here in Victoria. From that rapid review we have come out with the Firearms Amendment Bill 2026, which the government has put forward and which we will not oppose. There are some elements in there that we have got no dramas or issues with at all. We know it implements significant reforms to the firearm and regulatory framework. It gives effect to the recommendations, mostly from that independent review conducted by Ken Lay, as I said, and the government did accept 15 of the 16 recommendations.

One of the concerns that we will raise in the scheme of the legislation – and we will consider our position later on with this – is the introduction of AusCheck. AusCheck will be the Commonwealth’s proposed national background checking system into our firearm licensing. The reason we are raising a concern is it does not actually exist at the moment. We do not know the cost of it. We do not know how it is going to be implemented. We just think this is something that should be put in legislation possibly later. It is pre-emptive when you do not know the cost or how much it is going to cost for someone to legally go and get their licence here in our state.

I know that I and I am pretty confident the speakers on this side, when we speak about this, will all be speaking highly of the fact that we know we have actually got a lot of very good, legal, honest firearms holders here in this state, whether that is for work purposes or whether it is for purposes of sport and entertainment. We are even seeing licences that can be used for younger people to get them into the sport and to get insurance. They can get involved in their community, and it is a positive community to be involved with. Firearms holders, firearms shooters and sporting shooters associations are great communities to be involved with. I will actually go even further: they are genuinely probably some of the most disciplined organisations to be involved with because of the safety requirements. It is not like a football hits you in the head while you are just sitting around, and you might get a bit of a black eye or a sore back of the head. Obviously the safety concerns when you come to firearms are extreme, so it teaches discipline to this generation and the next generation who are coming through. We are also very proud that we have had gold medal winners in firearms around the world. So we know how important the firearms industry is.

On top of that it is a very big and welcome part of our economy. Whether you go out to regional parts of Victoria or you see shooting competitions in places like Lilydale or down in Lara – we have got the firearms ranges down there – it attracts people from interstate to come down and shoot as well, and that is obviously a positive thing for our economy. They stay in the accommodation, they eat the food in the area and they generally support the local economy as well.

The other side of that from the legal element is that – I can use my own electorate, where we go up into Upper Beaconsfield – we have, it is fair to say, a major issue with deer. It has got to the stage – I should not have, but I made a joke about it before – where you can sit at the local pub there now and the deer will come up and have a pot with you, because there are that many deer in Upper Beaconsfield. They are a danger on the road –

Peter Walsh interjected.

Brad BATTIN: No, they do not pay for the beer, especially if you are sitting there as a shooter. They do not really want to sit with you too often. But we do have an issue on the roads up there with the amount of deer causing accidents. We have legal culling programs which we use industry groups for, to come in and work with us to reduce the impact of them not just on our roads but also on our environment, because they can pose some massive challenges to our environment through the areas like Yellingbo et cetera, where we have some of the natives and small clusters of birds et cetera that could be extinct in the future, like the helmeted honeyeater.

There are those that raised the issue of AusCheck with me, which we made sure we would in here, particularly around the costs as one of the things, and concerns were raised around what was going to be done to legislate it. The advice provided indicated AusCheck may take several years to become fully operational, so we are just unclear on the framework and the timing that they have got within this legislation and how that will impact with AusCheck moving forward.

Another section that has been raised and that I will quickly touch on is the citizenship requirement. We went out to all of the shooting associations and we received feedback from them. First and foremost, and I think this is an important inclusion, people, even if they are permanent residents, who use their firearm for work purposes will still be exempt. That is not going to change. But a person who is currently a permanent resident and has a firearm and wants to continue to use that firearm when they renew their licence – it will be grandfathered until they renew their licence – at that stage must consider becoming an Australian citizen. I think when I first had a look at that I knew there were going to be some concerns raised, but it was not as many as I thought might be raised. But for those people that do have their firearms, hopefully there is a process for them to get more information quickly so they can go through the process to get their citizenship so they can continue with their firearms licence and their shooting and being involved in the sporting associations moving forward.

The same people who came in and spoke about the delays also raised the other issue in relation to applying for a firearms licence these days: that it can take a long time. That is a police shortage issue. Obviously, as we all know, there are many police stations that are closed. There are stations that used to be 24 hours and now operate for 7 hours or 8 hours on one day a week. If you are a person who wants to get into the sport, you might not be available on Tuesday to go down to the station and get the paperwork and get it signed. So I think it is really important that if we are going to make these changes and make it rightfully difficult to get your licence so that only the right people can get their licence, then we have to have the facilities there so people can go in and get their licence when they are required.

There are some sections in here too around penalties – increasing the maximum penalty for certain firearms offences from 10 to 15 years imprisonment. Whilst there have been some questions raised around this, one of the questions, I think, if the government can look at this later, is just in relation to if it applies to minors. What is the age limit on it? Is it only over 18 for the extension, or will it be expanded with young people in relation to the firearms offences? It is probably something we should consider, because we want to be pretty strict that illegal firearms are not something we ever want to see on the streets; we do not want to be going down that path, as I said before, of stick, fist, knife – we want to make sure that we can avoid the gun section of it. I think the best way to do that is education but also ensuring that the penalties are there, that people do not want to go down the path of having an illegal firearm when they are here in Victoria.

So as far as it goes here for the legislation, we do support it. I can speak for myself, and I can speak for most of my colleagues: we are very pro when it comes to the shooting fraternity here in Victoria.

I have seen the positive impact of them. I am not a shooter. I put that out there: I am not a shooter myself. I have never had a firearms licence. I carried a firearm whilst I was a police officer. You do not require a licence – you are exempt. But I have never had a firearms licence. I will be honest: I shot my uncle’s firearm once, and I missed a rabbit and shot his sheep, so it was best that I did not keep shooting in the future. I chose not to continue down the path of being a shooter. The only other time I went out, believe it or not – I made a joke before about a deer coming into the pub – was with the Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia, and they were doing their culling program up through Yellingbo. I actually only went out because I thought it was important that if we were making decisions – we were in government at the time – around the culling and we were saying it was humane, I should go and see what they were doing, how they were doing it and the process. I think it was really important. I am going to use all the wrong terms, so no laughing from the Chair. We were sitting in a little tent thing, and he had his firearm there. He had some scopes, and he gave one to me – without a firearm attached, because he knew how bad a shot I was. He had the one with the firearm attached. He said to me – we were whispering, because you want the deer to come a little bit closer – ‘You can have a look through.’ And I said, ‘How close do they get?’ And he goes, ‘They don’t get that close because they can smell the dog. They know we’re here.’ And as he has put it up and turned a light on, literally closer than I am to you, Speaker, there was a deer, and he missed. It was more out of shock.

It is really important, though, that we are backing those people that are out there as sporting shooters. We need to be supporting them. We need to be sending a very clear message. There is a small element within the community and probably within the Parliament who are anti – anti everything, but particularly anti the shooters here in our state. The Liberals and Nationals have always stuck by them, not just because of the farmers and clearing their property, but we genuinely believe it is a good and proper recreational sport. I will go back to where I started with that. Having a sport where young people can come in and be involved is a great alternative to them not being involved in something, particularly in regional areas, because idle hands are the devil’s playground. We want to make sure that kids can be engaged in something that they enjoy. Some of these kids go on to the air shooting or the pistol shooting – there are many pathways for them to go on. I went out to Lilydale and met some of the shooters there that ended up going over to the United States. They compete over in the United States. Our guys go over there themselves with a little briefcase with probably two firearms in it. They go up against organisations or experts over in America that drive around in buses with full staffing et cetera, and yet we still compete so well on the world stage. We compete well on the world stage with people here in Victoria because we have got, generally, a Parliament that backs firearms and shooting here in our state and we do believe that it is a genuine sport here in Victoria.

Just before I do finish – and I said I was going to just be aware time wise because I know a few people want to speak on this, and we have got a shorter period to do it today. I acknowledge we have to, here in this state, always consider firearms. We have to always consider who is holding firearms. We have to always consider what firearms are available – the rapid fires and all those sorts of things. Again, there are terms that I will not go through, because I do not know half of them. But we have to ensure that with what we do have out there, we can improve and highlight the safety measures as much as possible. Bondi should never have happened. What happened down in Tasmania, at Port Arthur, should never have happened. But they both did, and we cannot go back and change that. But what we can do to respect and honour those families, particularly up in Bondi, which happened most recently, is send a clear message that the Parliament is going to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure that firearms do not fall into the hands of the wrong people. We must make sure that they cannot be traded so easily – whether it is across borders or with people that should not hold those firearms – that it does not matter who is in government when it comes to this, and that each and every day we are protecting our sporting shooters, we are protecting our farmers and we are protecting those that legally use guns but at the same time balancing it to make sure that firearms, particularly high-powered firearms, are not falling into the wrong people’s hands here in Victoria and, I hope, the whole way across Australia. I would hate to be in government when a tragedy like this happens again. I just think it would, obviously, be one of the worst nightmares. But if we can do this right and we get behind the changes mostly in here and not oppose this bill, and it goes through in this form, I think it will actually make sure that we can partially achieve that. You can never guarantee firearms will not fall into the hands of the wrong people, but this Parliament will be doing its bit to ensure that they do not.

 Natalie SULEYMAN (St Albans – Minister for Veterans, Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Employment, Minister for Tourism) (15:00): I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

Motion agreed to and debate adjourned.

Ordered that debate be adjourned until later this day.