FIREARMS BILL 2024

Second Reading

Extract from Hansard

[COUNCIL - Wednesday, 28 May 2024]

p2521c-2542a

Hon Dr Steve Thomas; Hon Louise Kingston; Hon Dr Brian Walker; Hon Nick Goiran

Resumed from 14 May.

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HON DR STEVE THOMAS (South West) [5.07 pm]: The Firearms Bill 2024 is a significant piece of legislation

on an issue that has been made even more poignant with the events that happened over the last week or so. I will

come back to that in more detail, but I will say of the events that occurred on Friday that it was another evil and

violent man who perpetrated another evil and violent act. Somehow, we have to get the message through that violence

is not the answer. Violence is never the answer. That does not mean I support the legislation before the house, and

I want to go through some detail to explain why. Members will probably get sick of me this year talking about the

philosophy of the various sides of politics. It is interesting that when speaking in public, occasionally members

will be asked what it means to be a member of the right wing or the left wing of the Liberal Party, Labor Party or

my good friends in the Nationals WA; I am not always sure whether they are left or right, but we will come to that

in the fullness of time. We are often asked what it actually means. I have said these remarks in the house before

and I want to reinforce them because it explains my position.

I did not give a speech on the motion to refer the bill to the Standing Committee on Legislation. I did not do that

for a couple reasons. Firstly, the government had indicated that it would not support the referral motion and

therefore the motion was bound to fail. I did not see the point in arguing for something that was never going to be

achieved. Secondly, I found myself in the position of thinking, “If I argue passionately for the bill to go to the

legislation committee and that did not happen—which was the only possible outcome—would it change my

position on the bill?” The answer is emphatically no. There are reasons why I do not support the bill. I support

good control of firearms and the licensing process, but I did not see the point of entering this argument because

my position on supporting or opposing this legislation will not change and the outcome will not change. I will

oppose this legislation for a number of reasons, which I will outline in a minute.

I wanted to start with the definition of what it means to be left wing and right wing, because I think it underpins

the two different approaches that we see on this and a number of other issues. The fact that the Labor Party

presented this legislation and will push it through Parliament does not upset or anger me because it simply reflects,

in my view, what it means to be a member of the Labor Party and the left wing. What we should get back to much

more than we do is this debate of ideas. We need to stop being afraid to put forward philosophical positions that

represent both our own opinion and the people who reflect our side of politics. This is how I explain it. I am

a member of the right wing. In fact, from my perspective and my side of politics, I am probably a member of the

far-right wing. When I used to sit in that chair over there, in the corner, I used to say a person could not get any

further in the right wing than me, and that may well be the case.

What does it mean to be a member of the right wing? I explain it this way, and I keep doing so. If a person is a member

of the right side of politics—that is, the right wing, not the correct side necessarily, although I might believe so—

they believe, in my view, in individual responsibility, individual freedom and individual rights. If a person belongs

on the left wing of politics, they believe in collective freedom, collective responsibility and collective rights. To

be honest, that is the most simple version of the difference between the two sides of politics that I can give.

How does that play out in legislative debate? How does that play out on the proposed gun laws before the house

today? We all agree, I think, that gun violence is horrendous and that the perpetrators of gun violence perpetrate

evil acts. However, I blame the perpetrator, not the tool. If I believe in individual freedoms, rights and responsibilities,

I describe the role of government as supporting someone if they are doing the right thing. If a person is a sensible

responsible gun owner, in this case, it is not the role of government to make their life vastly more difficult than it

is currently. A person should bae expected to do the right thing. A gun owner should be expected to use and store

their firearms safely, and not misuse them or make them easy to steal. Those are all the things that we would expect

from a responsible gun owner. A person should be expected to do those things. In my view, if a person fails to do

those things, they should be held adequately responsible. Ultimately, if a person misuses firearms—as happens—

they need to be held fiercely responsible for their actions. I apply that same rule to domestic violence, to be honest,

because the reality is that it is basically impossible to legislate normality, common sense and compliance. Laws

are put in place and people are expected to comply. I will come back to that in a bit more detail in a while, too.

My expectation is that people who do not do that need to be properly held to account.

Is it possible to prevent all acts of violence up to and including murder and the sort of violence we have seen recently?

No; it is not. Why is that? It is because the villain of the piece is actually human and human nature, so it is not possible

to prevent all these acts from occurring. We need to do our best to prevent the ones that we can prevent, but it is

not possible to prevent them all. Evil people will conduct themselves and they will do evil things. It does not really

matter how often we put up the personal responsibility argument, there will always be people who will refuse to

comply and who do not believe that the laws apply to them. That is not just a group of people who want to be gun

owners, for example; there are plenty of people out there who think that the rules should not apply to them.

If I am sitting out there and I believe in individual responsibility and properly holding people to account for their

actions, I also believe in individual reward, and there we get the economics part. I agree that those people who

work hard should get the bulk of the reward for that work. If one is on the left-hand end, out to the communists,

one believes that everybody’s work should be shared equally amongst the entire populace. This is fairly basic political

stuff. It is amazing how often people do not think about what their political position actually is. It is amazing how

often somebody gets asked what it means to be left wing or right wing and they cannot explain it. I have seen members

of Parliament be completely unable to explain what they stand for. This is what it means to me. Right wing means

individual freedom, individual responsibility and individual reward. On the left wing—I understand this—the

Labor Party would, by nature, bring forward the kind of legislation that is currently before the house today. Left

wing means communal responsibility, communal reward and not individual rights but community rights.

It is no wonder we are having this debate, and it is a really healthy debate. It is a positive debate to see the two sides

of politics debate these issues. That does not mean that I believe the Labor Party is right—I do not. We should

have more of these left-wing, right-wing debates. I am really keen to see us throw some more of this in there. I am

not frustrated that the Labor Party has presented this piece of legislation. I think there are huge problems with it.

We could have made it better. There could have been improvements to this legislation if the government had

worked cooperatively with the opposition. Ultimately, it will get through, and it will get through unamended

because the government has all the numbers, and it reflects the philosophical position of the left wing; it reflects

the Labor Party. That is fine, but it does not mean that it actually works.

We have seen a number of significant trends around violence. It is interesting that nobody can come up with a really

simple solution for it. I firmly believe that both sides of politics have a genuine intent and genuine commitment to

reducing the rates of domestic violence and violence against women. It is an absolute scourge. It is a plague upon

the community. I do not know that it is worse than it used to be. For those of us who are perhaps getting on a bit—

I am not looking at anybody, Hon Martin Pritchard—we have had these debates for a very long time. Is it worse

than it used to be? I am not convinced it is, but the fact that it is still there is problematic. But domestic violence

in itself deserves just a few minutes of conversation.

In my view, the focus on domestic violence for a very long period has been far too lightweight. Governments,

whether state or federal, are far too interested in throwing money into advertising campaigns that look really good,

but I suspect have very little impact. Members might remember that not that long ago there was a campaign titled

“Violence Against Women, Australia Says No”. The ads were fantastic. They were glossy. They were slick. That

campaign won awards all around the world. It was a world-renowned campaign against violence towards women.

The question is: what difference did it make? Everybody is talking about government advertising at the moment.

That was a big one; a lot of money was put into it. Did it make a difference? The answer is probably not. I suspect

because the people —

Hon Martin Pritchard: What about the Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign or the anti-smoking campaign? They were

educational. It took a long while, but they had an effect.

Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: Other ones have been more successful, but I am only going on the measurement.

Slip! Slop! Slap! came in pretty easily, as did Norm’s get up and exercise, “Life. Be in it” campaign—all those. I am

not sure that that one has been all that successful. The anti-smoking campaign has probably been more successful,

but I suspect that massively increasing the tax on tobacco has been more successful than the advertising campaign.

Hon Wilson Tucker: “Where the bloody hell are you?”

Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: Let us not go to Lara Bingle, thank you, honourable member. That is one step too far.

Advertising campaigns are all well and good, because they make people think that governments are doing something

without necessarily having to provide any achievement. I think they fail partly because they do not focus on holding

people properly to account. The people who think that violence is okay are not going to be impacted by an ad that

asks them to not be violent, just as people in this room, all of whom I have enormous respect for, would probably go,

“Yes, I believe in that. I understand that, and I think that is right. I believe that violence against women is a terrible

thing.” But do members know what? The target market is not sitting in this room. The target market needs to be

the group of people who think that violence against women and children is okay. How we get to that group of people

is something completely different and that is very hard. How we get people who do not want to change to change

is a very tough task. I think Labor, Liberals and the Nationals all vehemently agree that action should occur and

everybody tries their absolute best to try to fix some of these things, but because we are trying to impact human nature

and behaviour, it is almost impossible.

It is particularly impossible if we take the left-wing view of it, which is communal responsibility. If society is

responsible for domestic violence for example, and we have to apply a societal fix to it, I think we are doomed before

we start. It cannot be fixed that way. The only way this will be fixed is to demand personal responsibility so that

everybody knows that they are personally responsible. I know that comes from a right-wing philosophy and I do not

hink we see enough of that, because we do not see the right wing come forward often enough and say that personal

responsibility is critical, particularly in areas such as domestic violence. We need a far greater focus on holding

people personally to account for their actions. That used to be what conservatives called the old law-and-order

debate. It was not always well thought through, but we can see it come through. We should hold people responsible

for their actions and their behaviour.

I like the fact that yesterday one of the Labor ministers went out to the press—it might have been the Minister for

Environment—and called him an evil fellow. I nodded along in agreement. I do not often agree with the Minister

for Environment, so there you go.

Hon Darren West: An evil coward.

Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: An evil coward. Thank you, that is what it was. Personal responsibility. It must have

been a right-wing fillip, but that is what we need to see. We need to see people held personally to account for their

actions. When someone finds themselves in a position that they do not like—I do not care whether it is that their

marriage has broken up—a lot of that will be their responsibility. Before anybody asks, yes, I have had a failed

marriage; I am on my second. I speak from experience with this. I have been through that process. In fact, I was

a registered firearm owner during that process and any violence in any form would have been as abhorrent to me

then as it is now, because it is a personal choice. It is a position to take. If someone has considered that violence

towards women and children is okay, that is a personal position they take that they should be held to account for.

One of the other issues with campaigns on domestic violence is that it is very hard to target one component of

violence. In my view, violence is always wrong. It is always the worst choice. Just occasionally, we use it when

we do not see any other option, although not in the case of relationships. I will use the example of smacking children.

I used smacking on very rare occasions, and it was because I could not come up with a better strategy at the time.

That was my failure, not theirs. People say, “We got belted as kids and it didn’t impact us.” I usually ask those people

to take a good, hard, long look at themselves, because it probably did, but that is a different argument. That happens

because I was not good enough to come up with a better answer. On the rare occasions that I used smacking of

children, it was my failure, and I still regret every occasion. It was a failure of my capacity to do things in an

alternative way. It was my failure, but isolating one particular set of violence is very tough. The hard bit is that if

you start to have a different judgement of violence based on who the victim is, it is very hard to sell that, because

the person who is violent towards their spouse is often violent towards everybody. Not always; some keep it hidden

and just target their spouse, but they obviously have some significant violence issues, so it is very tough. It is

a tough campaign to do that.

I wanted to put some of those things on the table. When people find themselves in prison, it is my view that they

are generally there because of their choices. I am on the right wing, so I talk about personal responsibility. They

are there because of their personal decisions. They have been held to account. It is not society’s fault that they are

in there. Society should not have to change so that they can be released. Whether they are juveniles or adults, it is

not society’s job to change to suit them. It is not the prison’s job to change to suit them. The first step in all these

things is personal responsibility. Taking responsibility means behaving in a way that is acceptable to the wider

community. Rules are put in place for a reason. It is when we start to believe that we are above those rules that we

get into significant trouble. People think the law does not apply to them for all sorts of reasons: “The law doesn’t

apply to us; therefore, it doesn’t count.” There is nothing more horrendous to good order than the assumption that

the law does not apply, or that the law should be shifted, or that it is the fault of the law, the community or society

that people are in prison or are breaking the law. How about a bit of personal responsibility as part of that?

Personal responsibility means holding to account those people who do the wrong thing, but because I am on the

right wing of politics, in my view it also means that people who do the right thing should face minimum

impingement. The problem with the Firearms Bill is that it continues the government’s vilification of legitimate

gun ownership and legitimate gun owners—all those people who do the right thing. There are 90 000 gun owners out

there and I imagine that eighty-nine-thousand-and-something of them are all trying to do the right thing. Once again,

because of this left-wing position, they will face more criticism, more obstacles and more hurdles from a government

for whom collective responsibility is the driving force. It is left-wing versus right-wing. I am on the right; I think

government should minimise its control and impact on people’s lives. The left wing generally thinks that government

should be far more controlling. We disagree on that philosophy and policy, but I can tell members that in

conversations with police officers, both serving and retired, I have not yet found one who has said, “Legitimate gun

ownership is a bad thing that should be banned.” The police have a far more legitimate reason than everybody else

to support this legislation. It would be far easier for the police to do their job if they were the only people who

had firearms. I get that. I mean, that is a very tough job. It is a miserable job. A lot of the time, they are going into

dangerous situations. Members in this house probably do not have a lot of interactions with the police, apart from

positive interactions. I get the occasional random breath test as I drive. I pass a really nice officer down at

Bridgetown all the time. He always gets me for a random breath test at some point. Peter and I have a lovely chat,

and I go on my way. I spend a lot of time on the road. It is a tough job. I understand, from a police perspective,

that fewer guns out there means that police are more likely to be the only people who are armed. Maybe there are

police officers who believe that there should be no privately owned firearms. Maybe they exist. Maybe there are

members of the force who think that they should be the only people carrying firearms, but the reality is that I have

not met one yet. For the most part, the police officers I have spoken to believe that there is a legitimate place for

firearm ownership.

I have to say that the portrayal of honest, legitimate firearm licensees as a danger to the community is a disgraceful

manipulation, and I do not like it. Yes; there are bad firearm owners. There are bad car owners. There are bad

landowners. There are bad, evil and violent people of all sorts, but the portrayal of all private firearm owners as

bad and a threat to the community is a terrible outcome. I actually agree with the Minister for Police on some of

these things. He is a long-term left-winger, but I can agree with some of his positions on some of the issues.

However, the vilification of legal firearm ownership is a disgrace, and it is not just the Minister for Police who is

doing this. He is taking advantage of it—I get it—but I think that the media coverage of this issue has been equally

unfortunate. I understand that the Labor Party’s agenda on this is a left-wing agenda—that is fine—but it appears

to me that we have some pretty hard left-wing areas of the media also jumping on board. I thought that having on

a newspaper page a whole pile of bullet holes indicating where guns are in the suburbs of Perth was an absolute

vilification of legal gun ownership and legal gun owners in this state. It said, “You should be afraid. Have a look

at this. All these guns are out there, and you should be afraid.” The government has, to some degree, backed that

up, as far as I am aware. I cannot imagine that those photographs and mock-ups went from the police to the media

without some sort of tacit approval from the government.

I tell members this: be very cautious about a government or a communicator that is trying to make people afraid.

Human beings are most dangerous when we are afraid. Deliberately trying to instil fear is a problem; really weird

and crazy stuff happens when the community is afraid. Instilling fear of legitimate, sensible gun owners trying to

do the right thing is a terrible look, in my view. I would have thought that we could have had a sensible conversation

about improvements to the Firearms Act that did not involve trying to instil fear into the community, but that is

where we have got to. That is the standard of the debate we have had. I am more than happy to have a conversation

about legitimate firearm ownership. There are things that should be improved and should be better.

Some things have improved. Members will remember that this is not my first rodeo—pronounced roh-day-oh if

I was American. I have spoken on gun laws before and I have told this story before about my first application for

a firearms licence—not the first time I bought a firearm because that was in Queensland. We think this is the wild

west but Queensland is the wild west. A long time ago a person did not have to be 18 years of age to buy firearms

in Queensland; it was a bit of an open slather. That was a long, long time ago. My first application for a firearms

licence in Western Australia was as a veterinarian. I put in an application to euthanise large animals—horses and

cattle—which are animals that are hard to get to in a safe manner. I have told stories about some of the dangers of

veterinary practice on large animals. I was told that I could not have a licence to euthanise sick and dying animals.

A person had to get two letters to say that they were going to shoot perfectly healthy kangaroos on somebody else’s

property, so I did—I got two letters. They were legitimate letters from farmers who I worked for as a veterinarian, but

I did not shoot kangaroos on their properties. I used the firearm that I eventually bought to euthanise sick and dying

animals. I understand that that has changed; it took a while. In fact, it came out of the recommendations of the very

important document that I want to get to in a bit, the Review of the Firearms Act 1973 (WA): Project 105 final report

by the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, which came out in 2016. It finally recognised, probably

25 years too late, that euthanasia of animals was probably a legitimate reason to have a firearms licence. The law

does not always get it right. The Law Reform Commission report is critically important. In fact, it is so important

that I pulled out this quote from the minister’s second reading speech. It says —

The need for reform is driven by the recommendations from the Law Reform Commission of

Western Australia’s 2016 report titled Review of the Firearms Act 1973 (WA) … that identified the 1973 act

as lacking clarity and no longer being fit for purpose.

That review of the Firearms Act 1973 is that report. I hope everybody has had a chance to browse the report

because it is fairly big. I suspect that when members get into their second reading contributions and we get into

the details of the bill, we will be interested in the report because there are a lot of very important components of

the issues around the bill that the government forgot about, and it does not necessarily take its guidance from the

Law Reform Commission’s report. That is a problem because the emotional drive to make the community scared

of properly licensed and cooperative firearm owners has meant that common sense has been left behind. I thought

this part of the report I am about to read is really interesting. This is in the foreword on page 9. I was going to read

one paragraph, but I will read two. I will have to give this bit to Hansard so they know where I found it. It reads —

Firearms have continued to be at the forefront of community attention, particularly as a result of reports of

tragic mass shootings elsewhere in the world as well as reports of criminal activities in our own backyard.

Scarcely a day goes past without firearms being mentioned in daily news bulletins. These events have driven

a push for legislative change. At a national level, the Commonwealth continue to drive discussions on a new

National Firearms Agreement, possibly with harsher trafficking laws and a further nationwide general

amnesty to remove unlawfully held firearms from circulation. Victoria and Tasmania have recently amended

their Firearms Acts, and last year the South Australian Firearms Act was completely re-written.

This is the bit I originally intended to read —

Notwithstanding the tragic events highlighted in the media, the Commission has taken great care not

to overreact. An often repeated theme of the submissions made to the Commission was that the

Firearms Legislation is for the administration and regulation of the lawfully held firearms whereas many

of the news reports concern unlawfully held firearms. The Commission agrees; the vast majority of

firearms users in Western Australia are law-abiding and the Commission certainly has no intention of

recommending legislative change that could make it more difficult for firearms users to abide by the law

while having no practical purpose to meet the objects of the Firearms Act.

That is right at the start, in the foreword of the report. The Law Reform Commission of Western Australia said

that it was not its intent to attack lawful, well-meaning and cooperative firearm owners. That strongly worded

intent has been completely neglected by the government and the Firearms Bill 2024.

One of the issues with this bill, as it has been with most large government bills, is that it is very hard to debate it

when we do not have all the pieces. There has been a horrible trend recently whereby the government says,

“We’ll put the principles in, and the detail will come when we get to the regulations some time down the track.”

That has not necessarily worked all that well. As the opposition, we have probably not been good enough at saying,

“That’s not acceptable. Stop asking us to accept half the information that we need to determine whether this is

a good thing.” A lot of stuff in this bill will be determined by the regulatory process and we have no idea whether

that will be workable. We do not know whether it will be another attack on legitimate honest firearms owners. At

one point, the government will have to work out whether it believes that recreational shooting is a legitimate

pastime. Is it trying to get rid of all recreational shooting? Is that the ultimate target? If the government believes

that no registered and well-meaning firearms owners can be trusted and that there is no role for recreational

shooting in any form, whether it is sports shooting, target shooting, clay shooting or pest reduction shooting—that

every gun in the community is a threat—let us at least be honest enough to have that conversation. If the government

believes in recreational shooting as a pastime, a part of the conversation we have to have is: how do we maximise

the safety but minimise the impost on the good firearms owners out there? Most importantly, how do we ensure

that we do not demonise them? That is, effectively, what the government has been doing. I am not necessarily

referring to individual members in the chamber, but the government’s agenda has been to demonise that group of

90 000 or so people. A lot of them are very nice people. Funnily enough, I know of a few police officers who go

recreational shooting—not with their police-issued weapons, of course, but plenty of police officers are recreational

firearms users. Are they not to be trusted? The government’s intent is to not trust people as a part of that process.

I will run out of time during my second reading address. I will slip in a few of the statements from the report

because the government has relied on this report. As was stated in the second reading speech, this is the report that

is driving the legislation before us today. I would love to spend some time talking about the potential assessment

of mental acuity, because that is very difficult. The problem is that a lot of that will be in the regulations. What

sort of testing will be proposed? We will not see that until we see the regulations. We do not know what the

regulations will look like. What will the regulations around storage look like? Will every firearm owner have to

use a different storage model? Here is a little tip; there is not a house in Australia that cannot be broken into and

there is not a firearms cabinet in Australia, including those in police stations, that, with the right equipment, cannot

be broken into. Absolute security does not exist. We know that. When people lock up their house, for the most

part, they are keeping the honest people out because the people who are practised are going to get in anyway. It is

not going to prevent firearms thefts.

What new requirements are going to run around? What is the mental health test? What requirements are going to

be in place for storage? Is the government ultimately going to require security services like alarms in every house

and room in which there is a firearms storage unit? How do we judge all of those things? Saying “Trust us. We will

put something together in regulations. You just need to trust us” is a terrible trend that the government has got into.

I thought this was interesting. It is on page 55 of the report. I am definitely going to run out of time. Let us remember

that in the minister’s second reading speech, he said that the need for the report was driven by the recommendations

from the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia’s report, titled Review of the Firearms Act 1973 (WA):

Project 105 final report. Page 55 contains recommendation 54. It states —

There should be no upper limit on the number of firearms a single Firearm Licence holder may possess.

If the minister is driven by the Law Reform Commission’s review, the first cab off the rank is ultimately chucked

out the window. We might have to get to this in the clause 1 debate. I suspect other members will deal with the

Law Reform Commission’s review in some detail. I could have spent my entire 45 minutes just reading in

recommendations, sections and chapters from it. It said that there should not be a limit.

I think there ultimately does become a sort of practical limit. That is not the bit in the firearms legislation that I am

actually most concerned about. I would have thought that generally speaking, a limit of five and a limit of 10 on farms

and pastoral stations is probably not unreasonable. People can potentially apply to have extras and that. I am not so

concerned about the fact that exists. However, this driving force that is in place fell at the first hurdle because it is not

following the recommendations of the Law Reform Commission. In my view, the government is attempting to

provide a political outcome using fear. That is not entirely the government’s fault; I think it is being aided and abetted.

For those evil men—even though they are not the entirety, they are the vast majority—who perpetrate evil acts, whether

they have 10 or five firearms does not matter because one is probably enough. For those evil men who perpetrate evil

acts, if they had no firearms, I suspect the majority of them would perpetrate evil acts with something else.

Apparently I am not the only person who thinks that. I thought this was a really interesting comment. It has been

made public today. I am happy to quote it in. It is from Ariel Bombara, who presumably was one of the intended

victims of the Floreat shooting on Friday night.

Hon Martin Aldridge: I think she was the daughter of the gentleman—daughter of the offender.

Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: That is right.

Hon Sue Ellery: Be careful.

Hon Dr STEVE THOMAS: I am being careful.

There is every chance that they were both intended to be victims. I do not think this man had a line drawn in the

level of evil that he would perpetrate. She stated —

The gun reforms being discussed currently are an important step …

I think there are important steps within them. She continues —

… but it is my unwavering belief that even without his guns my father would have committed a horrific

act of violence which likely would have claimed lives.

I agree. I think that is probably right. The man who believes that he has the right to use violence—in this case, the

ultimate violence—is unlikely to be dissuaded on the basis that he has or has not got a firearm because there are

too many other opportunities.

We are now talking about the plague of knife violence across Australia, which has occurred in Western Australia

as it has everywhere else. I do not imagine anybody is proposing that we licence someone to have a knife because

then every chef I know is in trouble. There should be a commonsense approach to this.

I come back to my original point. We must hold the person properly to account, whether the weapon was a firearm,

a knife, a club or any other tool that can be used for a violent act. We must hold the perpetrator properly accountable.

If we want to make a genuine difference to domestic violence—I think this incident was absolutely mistargeted

family and domestic violence—rather than have advertising campaigns, our approach should be twofold. First off,

genuinely hold evil and violent men to account for their evil and violent actions and their evil and violent beliefs.

Secondly, put all the money put from advertising into refuge and escape. Provide a safe place for women and

families to go when they need to get out. Most police officers I speak to say the biggest issue they have is the

victims have nowhere to go, and they end up going into a violent circumstance. When they go back, the case falls

apart because the victim is suddenly then re-exposed to the same violence. In my view, if we want to make it better,

we need to invest heavily in alternative safe accommodation. That should be the focus to fix some of these issues.

I think it is the only way to make a significant difference.

I wish I had more time speak on this. This is something that I think is incredibly important. There are some bits of this

bill that are not too bad, but there is too much in this bill that is unexplained or not good enough for me to be able to

support the bill, so I will be opposing the bill. I would love the government to go away and come back and have some

genuine negotiations and let us help put together a bill that will deal with the issues without vilifying and demonising

legitimate and honest gun owners. I think there are ways to make it better. I just do not think the government and its

version of it is the right way. I could not bring myself to undermine the individual freedom of the people in that way.