SYDNEY: Australia’s Decrease Home of Parliament on Tuesday (Jan 20) handed legal guidelines to allow a nationwide gun buyback and tighten background checks for gun licences in response to the nation’s worst mass shooting in many years at a Jewish competition final month.
The Invoice, which was opposed by conservative lawmakers, handed the Home of Representatives by a vote of 96 to 45 and can now go to the Senate.
The Dec 14 assault at Bondi Seaside that killed 15 individuals was carried out by people who had “hate of their hearts and weapons of their palms”, Residence Affairs Minister Tony Burke stated as he launched the brand new legal guidelines.
“The tragic occasions at Bondi demand a complete response from authorities,” Burke stated. “As a authorities, we should do every thing we will to counter each the motivation and the strategy.”
The brand new measures would set up a nationwide gun buyback scheme to buy surplus and newly restricted firearms.
They’d additionally introduce harder background checks for firearm licences issued by Australia’s states by drawing on info held by the Australian Safety Intelligence Organisation.
The federal government stated on Sunday there have been a document 4.1 million firearms in Australia final yr, together with greater than 1.1 million in New South Wales, the nation’s most populous state and the positioning of the Bondi assault.
New South Wales additionally handed new legal guidelines final month that restrict the variety of weapons per particular person to 4 and 10 for farmers, and mandate firearm house owners to resume their licences each two years as a substitute of 5 years.
“The sheer variety of firearms presently circulating throughout the Australian neighborhood is unsustainable,” Burke stated.
The Invoice handed with out the assist of the conservative Liberal-Nationwide opposition coalition, who accuse Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor authorities of failing to adequately tackle rising antisemitism.
Parliament, which is sitting after Albanese recalled it early from its summer time break to handle points following the Bondi assault, can be debating separate laws that may decrease the edge for prosecuting hate speech offences.
