Sydney’s parliament was swift Tuesday, approving two substantial gun crime and hate crime Bills in a special parliamentary sitting convened in response to last month’s fatal attack on the festival in Bondi. The bills, aimed at regulating firearms and increasing penalties for attacks motivated by hatred, passed overwhelmingly in the lower chamber and are anticipated to pass in the Senate.
The package of reforms announced by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke was directly linked by the minister to the attack on December 14 that resulted in the deaths of 15 people. “Those people who held hatred in their hearts plus guns in their hands launched the attack on Bondi,” he said.
The Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, had to recall Parliament for a two-day sitting after Parliament had been recessing for the summer holidays due to community concerns about guns and a rise in antisemitic violence. The proposed national gun buyback is Australia’s biggest buyback since 1996’s Port Arthur laws were passed following a mass shooting at Port Arthur.
The package also tightens state-background checks for gun licenses, incorporating intelligence information, including information held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. The government has pointed to a record 4.1 million firearms in circulation last year, over a quarter of these firearms operating in the state of New South Wales, where the Bondi incident took place.
“The quantity of guns that exist in our community is unsustainable,” Burke said. The bill was passed by the House 96-45, with the Liberal-National party not voting for it.
Shadow Attorney-General Andrew Wallace labeled this move “contempt” for gun owners and “disrespectful” and said the prime minister has “no idea about guns as tools used daily by many Australians.”
The second bill increases hate crime sentences to a maximum of 12 years if the victims are religious leaders or clergymen, as well as the power to dissolve groups that incite hate. Powers to cancel or deny visas for persons who spread hate are also offered in the second bill. It was passed with a vote of 116-7, supported by the Liberal Party in parliament, while the coalition parties abstained.
A similar view was shared by Attorney General Michelle Rowland, who stated that “the conduct sought to be addressed by these laws is the conduct that leads to violence in respect of immutable characteristics, and that kind of conduct can lead to extremism and terrorism.”
The reforms had begun life as one package but under pressure from coalition backbenchers and the Greens, they were split. Simultaneously, New South Wales announced its parallel measures-limiting the number of guns a person could own and expanding police powers during declared terrorist emergencies-part of a broader nationwide attempt to prevent such attacks in the future.
