3 hours ago
8
The shock and grief that already hung over Australia this week after the Bondi beach shootings has only been compounded by the funerals for the victims.
Members of Melbourne’s Jewish community gathered on Thursday to mourn Reuven Morrison. The 62-year-old met his wife, Leah, at Bondi after immigrating from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. He died there on Sunday night, having thrown a brick at one of the gunmen, trying to slow the deadly attack on joyful Hanukah celebrations. His unjust death betrays the reason Morrison chose to move across the world.
“We came here with the view that Australia is the safest country in the world,” Morrison said last year.
After more than two years of living in heightened fear, Jews in Australia had their worst fears confirmed at Bondi beach, where Morrison and 14 others died. Restoring their feeling of safety will take an extraordinary effort and a long time.
As well as a full-throated push to stamp out antisemitism and religious intolerance, the work should start with a national approach to managing guns. Serious and coordinated efforts to limit the number of weapons in the community, and properly assess the types of people seeking to access and keep them, must be part of the state and federal response.
The possibility of jurisdictions including Queensland and the Northern Territory sitting out the changes, as well as efforts by the Coalition and One Nation to play politics with a concrete action so soon after the tragedy, are cynical in the extreme.
In the days since the shooting, Anthony Albanese and state premiers have agreed to pursue a new package of reforms, including limiting the number and type of weapons individuals can own, reviewing licensing rules around the country, beefing up sharing of criminal intelligence, and limiting gun licences to Australian citizens.
Importantly, the federal government will look at ways to strengthen controls to stop importation of some weapons, including 3D printing products, as well as firearms equipment capable of holding large amounts of ammunition.
Just how one of the Bondi beach killers was able to get a gun licence, despite a three-year wait, must be explained by NSW authorities.
Currently the laws are a messy patchwork around the country, and there’s little clarity about whether tough rules are actually stopping guns getting in the hands of dangerous people.
Earlier this year, Western Australia cut the number of guns an individual could maintain from 10 to five, while giving farmers extra leeway. South Australia has already toughened some restrictions.
One of the biggest failures, going back decades, is the lack of a reliable national register, where authorities across state borders can track where weapons are and who might be a threat.
First proposed after Melbourne’s Hoddle Street shooting in 1987, and again after the Port Arthur massacre and the Lindt cafe siege, the project is progressing at a snail’s pace. Even with the acceleration promised this week, it looks like it won’t be online until at least 2027.
Consider some sober statistics: there are more than 4m guns in Australia today, a 25% increase since the Howard government passed world-leading reforms after Port Arthur. Today, about 2,000 new firearms are lawfully entering the community every week, as experts warn of complacency on the state of the laws.
On Friday, Albanese said the government would pursue the biggest gun buyback since the Howard era, when an incredible 650,000 weapons were handed over and destroyed. Where state laws restrict the total number of guns an individual can keep, owners will be able to sell back weapons to comply. Voluntary surrender is also a possibility.
Albanese said he wanted bipartisan support for the plan, but it might not be forthcoming from the Coalition. Eager to keep political pressure on the government over its response to antisemitism, the opposition leader, Sussan Ley, said on Friday she would consider any sensible and proportionate options. Like Ley, some Jewish groups have warned gun law reform is a deflection from the main threat facing their community.
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, took up predictable opposition to tougher measures immediately after the shooting, claiming two terrorists with bolt action high-powered rifles and shotguns “isn’t a gun problem, it’s an ideology problem”. Jonathon Duniam, the shadow home affairs minister, said changing gun laws wouldn’t prevent another Bondi, because terrorists would use explosives or knives. Bridget McKenzie, one of parliament’s best known recreational shooters, accused Albanese of being a coward, demanding “Australia should be confronting the guilty, not punishing the innocent”.
Queensland premier David Crisafulli is cool on some of the reforms, and the Northern Territory’s chief minister, Lia Finocchiaro, looks unlikely to support major changes. Earlier this year her Country Liberal government loosened gun laws to remove a mandatory 28-day waiting period for existing licence holders to add to their stocks of guns. NSW made the same change in 2008. Finocchiaro claimed to be bringing “a territory first” approach to national cabinet, even as Albanese noted national laws were only as strong as the weakest state.
Speaking of weak, Pauline Hanson – a couple of days after visiting the Bondi memorial to leave flowers – has begun railing against law reforms. Even before all the victims had been identified, One Nation posted a photo of Hanson wielding a pistol, with the cliched tagline of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. She went on Sky News on Thursday night to bizarrely link efforts to protect the community from guns to her defence of Ben Roberts-Smith, the disgraced Victoria Cross recipient.
For a prime minister seeking to reassert political authority amid criticism of his actions before Bondi, standing up to the gun lobby and minority political voices is smart politics.
Like Howard, who famously wore a bullet-proof vest as he made the case for reforms in the 1990s, Albanese can stare down opponents, too.
At his funeral this week, Reuven Morrison was likened to a lion in the Torah who rises without fear to protect others instinctively. He should not have had to fight crazed killers holding guns, and his death should not be in vain.
