SSAA Victoria has updated its detailed analysis of the Firearms Amendment Bill currently before the Victorian Parliament and provided it to the Government, Opposition and crossbench MPs.
We will be back at State Parliament from Tuesday, making sure our position on this Bill, and on the Outdoor Recreation Victoria Bill, is clearly understood by MPs.
Our position throughout this process has been consistent: Victoria’s firearms laws were already conservative, restrictive and robust before the terrorist attack at Bondi late last year, and no compelling case has been made that the Victorian firearms licensing system failed in a way that requires the measures now being proposed.
That is not to diminish in any way the tragedy that occurred at Bondi.
But tragedy does not relieve governments or parliaments of their responsibility to make good law.
The knee-jerk political response that followed Bondi, particularly from the New South Wales and Commonwealth governments, should not be confused with evidence-based policy or good leadership. Too much of it was political theatre. An understandable demand that governments do something was met with a political imperative to be seen to be doing something.
That is not necessarily the same thing as making the community safer.
Victoria started differently
SSAA Victoria is also realistic about the political environment in which these reforms developed.
We engaged with the Victorian Government immediately after Bondi. When it became apparent that changes to firearms laws were going to be considered, our priority was to ensure that Victoria did not simply import the political responses being developed elsewhere.
We were therefore pleased when the initial momentum towards immediate legislative change slowed, and the Government instead commissioned former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay AO APM to undertake a Rapid Review of Victoria’s Firearms Laws.
We engaged extensively and in good faith with that Review.
We prepared a comprehensive submission. We met with Mr Lay and his Review team. We provided evidence, detailed analysis and the practical experience that comes from representing tens of thousands of Victorian firearms owners.
We took the process seriously.
When we became aware that the Lay Review appeared to be heading in a concerning direction, we immediately engaged with the Government about what we were hearing and why it concerned us.
We were therefore deeply disappointed, although sadly not surprised, by the final report when it was published.
In our view, the Lay Review accepted several questionable propositions that had emerged from the interstate political response to Bondi without adequately establishing that they represented actual deficiencies in Victoria’s firearms system.
A review should test propositions against the evidence. It should identify actual problems and recommend proportionate solutions to them. It should not construct an edifice of purported evidence around political responses that have already gathered momentum elsewhere.
On too many important issues, we do not believe the Lay Review met that test.
Engagement still delivered results
We didn’t walk away.
We continued engaging with the Victorian Government after the Review was delivered and, importantly, the Government did not simply accept everything that had been put in front of it.
When its response was announced in May, some of the most concerning proposals that had been canvassed were rejected.
Significantly, there would be no arbitrary numerical cap on the number of firearms a licensed Victorian could own and there would be no wholesale recategorisation of straight-pull and button-release firearms.
Those were important outcomes, and SSAA Victoria welcomed them.
They also demonstrated why serious engagement matters.
But rejecting the worst proposals did not automatically make everything that remained good policy.
We said that at the time and we continue to say it now.
The Bill is now before Parliament
The Firearms Amendment Bill contains a range of measures. Some are sensible. Some we support in principle. Others require amendment or additional safeguards.
We have assessed them individually and on their merits.
Two proposals, however, remain particularly concerning: mandatory Commonwealth AusCheck firearms background checks and the proposed citizenship requirements for firearms licences.
AusCheck: good principle, deeply flawed implementation
SSAA Victoria supports the principle that relevant national criminal and security intelligence should be available when firearms licensing decisions are made.
If ASIO, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission or another appropriate agency holds legitimate information demonstrating that someone represents a genuine security or organised-crime risk, of course that information should be capable of informing a firearms licensing decision.
Our objection is not to using intelligence.
It is to creating a mandatory system without first answering fundamental questions about natural justice and cost.
An adverse AusCheck assessment may rely upon sensitive intelligence that cannot be disclosed to the affected person. Critically, there is no right to merits review; the kind of process that currently allows firearms licensing decisions to be reconsidered on their merits through the Victorian Firearms Appeals Committee or, for other administrative decisions, VCAT.
That creates the extraordinary prospect of someone losing their firearms licence because of information they cannot see, allegations they cannot properly understand and evidence they cannot meaningfully challenge.
The suggestion that an affected licence holder could still seek judicial review is not an adequate answer. Judicial review is principally concerned with whether a decision was made lawfully; it does not provide an opportunity to reconsider the merits of the decision or test the factual basis of the underlying intelligence. It is also typically a prohibitively expensive option, placing it beyond the practical reach of many ordinary licence holders.
In other words, judicial review is neither functionally equivalent to merits review nor, for many people, a realistically accessible substitute for it.
In practical terms, someone could lose their licence on the basis of information they cannot see and cannot meaningfully challenge, without access to the ordinary merits-review mechanisms that exist for firearms licensing decisions today.
There are ways of protecting genuinely sensitive intelligence while also protecting basic procedural fairness. Governments need to develop them before this scheme commences, not afterwards.
Then there is the cost.
The Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs has confirmed in correspondence that AusCheck will administer the Commonwealth background-checking arrangements, including any Commonwealth charging arrangements, while state and territory governments will determine how those costs are managed within their own firearms licensing systems.
In other words, there will be a cost and the question of who ultimately pays it remains unresolved.
That is no small matter.
Existing AusCheck services can involve fees of around $500. We are not suggesting that the eventual firearms background-check fee will necessarily be the same; that has not yet been determined.
In fact, at this stage neither the cost of the new firearms check nor who will ultimately be expected to pay for it has been settled.
A Victorian five-year longarm firearms licence currently costs around $309.
With around 250,000 firearms licence holders in Victoria, even a substantially discounted AusCheck fee could create a significant new recurrent cost.
The possibility that an additional Commonwealth check could cost an individual shooter as much as, or potentially more than, their firearms licence cannot simply be waved away as an implementation detail to be sorted out later.
SSAA Victoria’s position is straightforward.
If governments decide that national intelligence screening is required as a broader public-safety measure, they should not simply pass on the costs to individual firearms licence holders.
We have therefore told MP’s that, if Parliament does proceed with legislating the AusCheck provisions, they should not be proclaimed until two things have happened: an effective mechanism protecting procedural fairness and natural justice has been established, and governments have settled a transparent and proportionate funding model that does not impose an unreasonable additional financial burden on individual shooters.
But there is an even more obvious option.
Don’t legislate a scheme that isn’t ready.
So much about the proposed AusCheck system remains unknown, including its cost, its funding arrangements and how fundamental natural-justice issues will be resolved – that it appears almost inevitable the Victorian provisions will need to be revisited before they can actually operate.
The sensible course is therefore to remove these provisions from the Bill and deal with them when the Commonwealth scheme is sufficiently developed for Parliament to know what it is actually being asked to legislate.
The apparent urgency comes from commitments made through National Cabinet in the immediate aftermath of Bondi. But National Cabinet agreements are political agreements between leaders; they do not relieve the Victorian Parliament of its responsibility to independently scrutinise legislation and determine whether it is necessary, workable and proportionate.
Meeting a political commitment is not, by itself, a sound reason to make law.
The Coalition has made some encouraging noises about the AusCheck proposal.
That is welcome, but the problems still need to be fixed.
Citizenship: a solution looking for a problem?
The proposed citizenship requirement is harder to justify.
SSAA Victoria has opposed it from the outset.
Permanent residents are already required to satisfy Victoria’s firearms licensing requirements. They are already subject to the same assessment of their suitability to possess firearms.
The Government has not demonstrated that lawful permanent residents represent some particular firearms risk that Australian citizens do not.
So we keep coming back to a very simple question:
What identified public-safety problem is this measure actually solving?
If there is evidence demonstrating that permanent residents who otherwise satisfy Victoria’s existing fit-and-proper-person requirements present an unacceptable additional risk, the Government should produce it.
If there isn’t, citizenship is simply being used as a proxy for risk.
That is bad policy.
Public safety should turn on whether an individual is suitable to possess firearms – their criminal history, conduct, character and relevant intelligence – not the passport they hold.
In the political environment in which these proposals emerged, imposing a citizenship test without demonstrating any connection between citizenship and firearms risk is reactionary and carries an uncomfortable undertone of racial and political dog-whistling.
That has no place in evidence-based firearms legislation.
And this isn’t an academic argument for SSAA Victoria.
If enacted in its current form, this provision would arbitrarily remove the ability of thousands of already licensed Victorian shooters to renew their firearms licences.
These are people who have already been assessed as suitable to hold a licence. Some have lived, worked and lawfully owned and used firearms in Victoria for decades. They are our neighbours, workmates and members of our communities. Some serve in our police and emergency services. Some volunteer with their local CFA or SES.
Nothing about their suitability to possess a firearm will have changed.
They won’t have committed an offence.
They won’t have become a threat to public safety.
They won’t have suddenly failed the fit-and-proper-person test.
They will simply hold the wrong passport.
That is the practical consequence of this provision.
Unless there are significant amendments, any MP who votes for it could be voting to take legally held firearms licences away from thousands of Victorian shooters without the Government having demonstrated a defendable public-safety reason for doing so.
While the Coalition has raised legitimate concerns about AusCheck, it has not yet taken an equally strong position against the citizenship provisions.
We will continue pressing that case.
Look past the rhetoric
The political arguments supporting these sorts of measures are easy to make.
“We’re strengthening background checks.”
“We’re keeping firearms out of the wrong hands.”
“We’re making Victorians safer.”
They sound reassuring.
But slogans aren’t evidence, and they aren’t legislation.
Look at what is actually being proposed, and the questions become much harder.
What deficiency in Victoria’s existing licensing system has been identified?
What will an AusCheck firearms check cost?
Who will pay for it?
How does somebody meaningfully challenge an adverse decision based on intelligence they are not permitted to see?
What evidence demonstrates that a permanent resident who satisfies Victoria’s existing suitability requirements presents a greater firearms risk than an Australian citizen?
Most importantly; how will these particular measures make Victorians safer?
These are not obscure technical questions. They go to the heart of whether Parliament is making evidence-based law or simply demonstrating that something was done after a tragedy.
Doing the work
SSAA Victoria briefs MPs on a wide range of issues throughout the year.
We do that diligently and professionally, as should be expected from subject-matter experts representing a significant membership base and an Association with three-quarters of a century of history behind it.
Much of that advocacy necessarily happens away from public view.
We regularly publish major submissions and explain the positions we take, but we don’t ordinarily publish the detailed background briefings we provide to MPs. There is little sense in providing every argument, piece of evidence and advocacy strategy to the people campaigning against the interests of our members.
In this instance, however, we have decided to publish our analysis.
We believe members should be able to see just how inadequate the policy justification for some of these measures becomes when the detail is exposed to scrutiny.
The fig leaf is very thin.
Our analysis sets out what the Bill actually does, what we support, where safeguards are required and which measures we believe simply cannot be justified.
It also means there can be no ambiguity about the position we have put to Parliament.
Our approach throughout this process has been consistent.
- We did not believe Bondi demonstrated a need to rewrite Victoria’s firearms laws.
- When a review became inevitable, we engaged with it extensively and in good faith.
- When we believed the Lay Review got things wrong, we said so.
- When the Government rejected its worst proposals, we acknowledged that.
- Where provisions in the resulting Bill are reasonable, we have assessed them on their merits.
- Where improvements or safeguards are required, we have proposed them.
- And where provisions cannot be justified by the evidence, we are opposing them.
That is what effective representation looks like.
It isn’t automatically opposing everything a government proposes. It isn’t giving any political party a free pass. And it isn’t shouting from the sidelines.
It is doing the work, understanding the legislation, engaging directly with the people who will decide its fate and making sure they understand the consequences of the decisions they are being asked to make.
The Government has our analysis.
The Opposition has our analysis.
Crossbench MPs have our analysis.
And, in this instance, we’re making it available to our members as well.
There will be debate. There will be amendments. There will inevitably be politics.
But when MPs ultimately decide what becomes Victorian law, there is one thing they will not be able to credibly say:
“We didn’t know”.
