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- 5 December 2002
Firearms Ownership
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Page: 7956
The Hon. DAVID OLDFIELD [2.46 p.m.]: As 2002 closes, Australians face many terrible issues—drought, bushfires and terrorism are some of the more prominent. This morning the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald reported some specifics of the long-term plan by Muslims to turn Australia into an Islamic State—something all real Australians will oppose by whatever means necessary. Another significant issue for hundreds of thousands of Australians, including approximately 200,000 in New South Wales, is the dark cloud of further nonsensical gun laws and confiscations.
I do not detract from the many other matters of great importance, but through a dishonest assault law-abiding firearm owners have been treated like criminals and have suffered unjust penalties through the illogical and unsustainable policies of Prime Minister Howard. Shooters are workers, professional people, self-funded retirees, housewives and husbands, pensioners and teenagers—indeed, shooters come from all walks of life and every age bracket in society. Some are hunters, others are collectors, target shooters, western action and black powder enthusiasts—many shoot multiple disciplines. A significant number have spent years honing their skills and earning considerable acknowledgement by winning local, State and international titles. A few have even made history through Olympic success.
Shooters are not abnormal. They are simply Australians dedicated to their chosen competition or recreation. Yet each of them has been made to feel like a criminal by John Howard. John Howard's current gun grab centres on pistols, but all shooters should recognise that this man, for whom many of them voted, will not be satisfied until the only people legally in possession of firearms are the military, police and security forces. John Howard's position is clear: he awaits any excuse to act on taking guns, be it a few at a time or all at once. We would accept his agenda if law-abiding firearm owners posed a genuine risk to society. But that is not the case. All the evidence is clear: law-abiding firearm owners are decent, responsible, disciplined people who are not by any reasonable evaluation contributing to firearm-assisted crime.
In 1996 John Howard's gun buyback had a direct cost of around $500 million, with countless millions more in indirect costs. John Howard claims his gun grab has succeeded in saving lives, but any accurate evaluation of Australian Bureau of Statistics or Australian Institute of Criminology statistics shows his claim to be out-of-context bunk being used deliberately to deceive people. Neither the overall murder rate nor the firearm-assisted murder rate has been positively affected by Howard's spending spree on guns. The last thing John Howard wants Australians to find out is that he spent $500 million of taxpayers' funds, collected through the Medicare levy, and arguably has not saved a life.
It is not an unreasonable argument that the time, energy and money poured into Howard's firearm policies have actually allowed deaths rather than saved lives. How many lives would that $500 million from the Medicare levy have saved if it, along with the accompanying time, energy and media effort, had been appropriately directed at issues where differences could have been made? Regional health, cancer research, suicide prevention and road safety all would have turned in life-saving results if the money had been fed their way. Even putting more nurses back into hospitals would have saved lives. But Howard chose to spend $500 million on guns and, as a result, taxpayers have nothing to show for their money.
I have no doubt there are those who would be alive today if John Howard knew how to appropriately spend public money. John Howard's actions on firearms, his threats against duly elected State governments, including cursing them publicly for not immediately bowing to his edicts, are nothing short of dictatorship. If John Howard stays in office long enough there will be more than a few who will be unsurprised if he uses the excuse of terrorism to start arresting Australians who publicly disagree with him. Howard's gun grabs will not get terrorists or other criminals' guns. And let us not forget that other despicable dictator who reportedly registered and then took every law-abiding citizen's firearms. That dictator was Adolf Hitler.
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