As we were all reeling in the immediate aftermath of the horrific mass shooting of Jewish people on the beach at Bondi, Premier Chris Minns announced that the NSW Parliament would be recalled to fix our gun laws.
On 14th December two hate-fuelled men, a man and his son, killed 15 people, including 10-year old Matilda, as they, along with thousands of other Australians, were celebrating the first day of Hanukkah.
Amongst the myriad of questions asked was, rightly, how did these men come to be in possession of the killing machines that fired over 100 shots in less than six minutes. Gun laws will not completely stop radicalised hate-fuelled violence, but mass violent shootings are inextricably linked to gun culture and laws.
In NSW there are over 1.1 million registered firearms. Gun ownership around Sydney is increasing, and more people are buying multiple firearms on a single gun licence. Some individuals, who are not dealers or collectors, own almost 300 guns each. 41% of licensed gun-owners live in Sydney, Newcastle or Wollongong. Before the Bondi mass shooting there was no limit whatsoever on how many guns a person can own.
As a rural landholder, guns play a part in my life, albeit very limited, so I do get that guns can be a useful tool in limited circumstances. But this year I saw our politics captured by the gun lobby here in NSW, when Premier Chris Minns made a deal with the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party to enshrine a “right to hunt” in our laws.
A right to hunt is the step before a “right to bear arms” in the all-American way. The Greens worked very hard with a broad section of the community and together, we stopped those laws.
Our laws recognise that it is a privileged responsibility to own and use a gun; this was deliberately enshrined in our gun laws after the Port Arthur mass shooting which was the trigger for Australia taking the path we have, in contrast to America, where gun violence is normalised and children are not safe at school from gun violence.
So, when the Premier announced that as elected representatives one thing we could do in the wake of the Bondi mass shooting horror was to come back to an emergency sitting of Parliament and fix our runaway gun laws, I for one was ready.
In fact, I wrote to the Premier and indicated that the Greens stand ready to work with the Labor Government to fix gun laws in accordance with the recommendations of the Australian Gun Safety Alliance, which is made up of the nation’s leading expert bodies when it comes to firearms safety.
Anti-protest laws
In the shadow of that moment of leadership, Premier Chris Minns couldn’t help himself, he then declared he was also going to foist a whole new tranche of draconian anti-protest laws upon the people.
He, and now others, tried to link the pro-Palestine marches and rallies that have taken place across NSW and Australia, calling for the end of Israel’s brutal unlawful genocide of Palestinian people and the destruction of Gaza and the anti-semitic mass shooting at Bondi.
Conflating protests for peace in the Middle East with anti-semitic radicalised gun violence on Bondi Beach is wrong and must be rejected. It is shock-jock divisive politics, the type that doesn’t accept that the people hold the real power and as a leader you should recognise and embrace this. The type of politics that goes hand in hand with authoritarianism.
It was disgraceful of the Minns Labor Government to use the recall of the Parliament to introduce an omnibus bill, which conflated gun law reform and anti-protest laws. I moved a motion to separate the bills, but Labor voted with the Liberals against it.
I worked across the Parliament and managed to get support for a significant amendment to further improve our gun laws, but I was not able to get rid of the worst of the anti-protest laws. Knowing that the bill as a whole would pass through the Parliament, the Greens in good conscience abstained from voting for the most draconian anti-protest laws NSW has ever seen.
As we were debating the anti-protest laws, I recalled the words of Dr Nama Blatman, executive member of the Jewish Council of Australia who said, “We call on the Minns government and members of the NSW parliament not to politicise our grief and not to capitalise on our tragedy, not to pass laws that stifle our freedoms and punish us for our commitment to justice.
“We can only heal and recover from this tragedy and ensure that our communities are safe by standing together as an entire community against hateful atrocities.”
The Minns’ Labor Government’s anti-protest laws will not make NSW safer, nor will they go any way to addressing anti-semitism. They will make us less democratic and they are proof that the Minns’ Labor Government is willing to make undemocratic laws based on lies and misinformation.
The day the laws were passed, I stood with a coalition of civil society organisations who announced that they would mount a legal challenge to these anti-protest laws on the basis that they impermissibly burden the implied freedom of political communication within the Australian constitution.
This is the second time this year the Minns Labor Government has introduced anti-protest laws and faced such a challenge. The first challenge the community won.
