Firearms dealers applaud opposition block of dealership regulation change

The successful motion, supported by the 41 members of the opposition and the two Katter’s Australian Party members, means a section of the Weapons Regulation 2016, tabled in the House on August 16, is no longer in operation.

In the wake of the decision, during which independent MP Rob Pyne was absent from the chamber and fellow independent Billy Gordon voted with the government, Police Minister Bill Byrne condemned the LNP for what he described as “sabotaging successful gun laws implemented by its own party in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre”, saying they had watered down regulations brought in by the Borbidge government, and had crossed a dangerous line.

His claim that the regulation had worked well for 20 years was denounced as incorrect by both the shadow police minister Tim Mander and specialist weapons licencing lawyer Peter Kuskie.

Mr Kuskie, the principal of SK Lawyers, said there had been a “sneaky difference” brought into the new regulations by Mr Byrne in August, in that instead of referring to the death of a licencee, as is the case in the relevant section of the Weapons Act, and which permits corporate licences to survive the death of an individual, the proposed regulation talked about the death of the representative, automatically triggering the suspension of the licence on the death of an individual nominee.

“I think it was either deliberate or egregiously incompetent, as the minister had been made aware of the problems with the proposed regulations,” he said. “The concern was that, if anything were to happen to the nominee, the dealership licence would be suspended, which could be catastrophic for those businesses.

“It would be like shutting down a Bunnings – firearms are under layby, dispatched or in transit.

“Some large dealers, are responsible for thousands of guns. Imagine the police trying to take them all away and store them.

“Operational police do not have the time or resources to deal with this number of firearms”

Mr Kuskie said Mr Byrne had failed to recognise that firearms dealers work in cooperation with Queensland Police to facilitate the effective administration of firearm control in Queensland.

“This had nothing to do with the issue of gun control; it is purely bad legislation and incompetent administration of the Weapons Act,” he said.

Opposition police spokesman, Tim Mander, said that under the changes tabled by Mr Byrne, if a licensee’s nominee died, police would be forced to seize all stock while the license was suspended, which he said would have been a huge waste of police resources that could be devoted to targeting the misuse of firearms.

“Now it will simply be a matter of updating the dealer’s license - meaning businesses won’t be thrown into limbo for weeks, if not months, while police freeze their stock,” he said.

In direct opposition to this, Mr Byrne said the disallowance of the regulation would mean a dealer’s licence would be cancelled and the Queensland Police Service would be legally required to ensure possibly thousands of guns are locked up securely for months while new licences are issued.

“This will create a significant burden on the police and adversely impact on firearms dealers carrying about their business.”

Mr Byrne said while the opposition claimed this change would help firearms dealers, the reality was it would do the opposite.

Firearms Dealers Association of Queensland president Rob Nioa is happy with the result though.

He said successfully disallowing the regulation change means the legislation now deals with the issue correctly.

“It says that a corporate licence never dies, only the nominee. The minister doesn’t understand how legislation and regulations work together.”

He added that the changes bring Queensland into line with New South Wales and Victoria, meaning that the state was no longer at a commercial disadvantage to interstate counterparts, and said he hoped if Mr Byrne was concerned about the outcome, he had spent the day working out how to correct that.

While firearms dealers would like to see a new regulation introduced that allowed licenced dealers to have an alternate nominee, a spokeswoman for Mr Mander said new regulations were something that would need to be introduced by the government.

“That sort of thing can’t be initiated from opposition,” she said.

It’s a refrain heard often in the escalated weapons licencing debates of recent months, in which firearms dealers accuse the government of refusing to consult with them or include them in decision-making bodies.

“We had this issue to raise but we weren’t given a forum,” Mr Nioa said. “This could have been resolved easily if we’d been asked.

“Bill Byrne brought this on by his failure to draft correct legislation, and by his failure to talk to the Firearms Dealers Association.”

Images invoked by ALP MPs participating in Wednesday night’s debate proclaimed the death of the Liberal Party, and used images of the Port Arthur massacre and subsequent gun law changes.

Mr Byrne described the disallowance motion as “an orchestrated and long-running campaign by the gun lobby across Australia to put pressure on every single government to wind back gun laws since the Port Arthur massacre”.

“Some of the comments made by those opposite this evening indicate a deep-seated resentment of those regulations and laws that came in under the National Firearms Agreement,” he said.

He said the Firearms Dealers Association, headed by Australia’s biggest gun dealer, Mr Nioa, who had imported over 22,000 Adler shotguns into Australia, had been “making false allegations about changes to the Weapons Regulation to partisan media outlets”.

Mr Mander said the changes would have “absolutely no impact on the way the public usually applies for firearms – the existing process remains in place.”