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Event: DOORSTOP INTERVIEW Date: 24/06/2003
THE GOVERNMENT'S HANDGUN BUYBACK INTERVIEWEES: SENATOR BRIAN GREIG,
AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRATS SPOKESPERSON FOR ATTORNEY GENERAL & JUSTICE

SENATOR BRIAN GREIG: Um, guns. In the next few hours, or at least in
the next day, the Government is going to introduce its hand gun buyback
scheme. This is in response to the fatal shootings at Monash University
last year, where the Prime Minister said he would do everything humanly
possible to bring about reform in this area.

He has not done that, and the states have not done that. What we're
getting as a result is a scheme where fewer - or at best only twenty per
cent of guns will comply with the legislation. That is, twenty per cent
of guns will be deemed unlawful and will be able to go through a buyback
scheme.

The difficulty with that in part is that it means that those people who
are going to have guns which become unlawful are simply going to use it
as a swap scheme. Get their money back for their now unlawful gun, and
purchase a lawful gun. So people will be swapping illegal guns for
legal guns, but there are still guns in the community.

What we Democrats are calling for, what the broader community is calling
for, is for a complete national ban on automatic and semi-automatic
weapons. Australians do not want to live in armed communities.

QUESTION: But it doesn't appear that a national ban's going to
work, because some of the states are indicating that the laws that the
Government's introducing now they're not supporting.

SENATOR GREIG: Look, we can and must go further. We need stronger
co-operation between the states and the Commonwealth. The Prime
Minister has said he would do everything humanly possible. He's not
done that. Our state premiers need to wake up to the fact that
overwhelmingly polling has shown that up to 90% in some cases,
Australians want tough, unambiguous laws to get hand guns out of our
communities.

QUESTION: So how do you see the Government and the states working
together a lot better? They can't seem to work together now.

SENATOR GREIG: I hesitate to say further discussion is needed. I don't
believe it is. I think we need to - the state premiers need to
recognise that we do need co-operative state-Federal reform in this
area. We're not talking necessarily about elite sporting shooters'
weapons for Olympic and Commonwealth games. They can still have the -
owners can still have them and use them, and they can acquire the
appropriate protection.

We're not talking about the sorts of rifles that people on the land
would be using on farms. We're talking about hand guns, which are
essentially in urban communities.

QUESTION: Given that there was already row at COAG over who was
going to pay for this, I mean, so who can fund it, and how can a
complete buyback scheme, if you like, be realistically funded?

SENATOR GREIG: Well, as it stands the Commonwealth will be putting in
two thirds of the funding, the states will be matching the rest. State
and Federal constitutional issues mean that there's not a huge amount
that the Federal Government can do in a legislative sense, but it can
provide the funding.
But more importantly, it should provide the leadership, and this is
where the Prime Minister has failed.

QUESTION: And do you buy the arguments at all that it does affect
sporting shooters, and could result in more [indistinct]?

SENATOR GREIG: Sorry, the question again?
QUESTION: That it could affect sporting shooters. Does it at
all? I mean, in a competition sense?
SENATOR GREIG: Oh, look, not those in elite sports. Not those in
Olympic and Commonwealth games. But to other sporting shooters, yes it
would affect them. But what we Democrats are saying is that we believe
that is not an unreasonable price to pay in our democracy, and that all
guns, wherever possible, should be removed from the community.

QUESTION: All you calling on these changes now because some states
- I think Adelaide, New South Wales, and Tasmania - say that they won't
even be introducing the current laws until July? So you think some
states haven't introduced the laws as a stand, there's time to review
them?

SENATOR GREIG: It's been slow enough already. It's been more than a
year, or close to a year, since the fatal shootings in Monash which
triggered this. I think going back to the massacre of Port Arthur -
involving , I accept, different guns in that instance - there has been a
hue and call - a hue and cry from the Australian community for better
and stronger laws, and for greater co-operation between the Commonwealth
and the states.

We've not got that. Instead what we've got now is a - is a - is
an inadequate system where, for example, of the - the guns that will
comply, that will come in under the new rules, there are only those that
are of a barrel length less than 100 millimetres - that is for revolvers
- or 120 millimetres for semi-automatics. And a shot capacity of 10
rounds and a calibre in excess of .38 or .45 at special accredited
sporting events.

It's confusing, it's complex, and contributing to the fact - to
this is the difficulty is that there's no uniform way for measuring
barrel length amongst the states and territories. So we're going to
have the absurd situation where the Government has not and will not
produce a list of those guns that have been banned, but instead, when
people go to hand their guns in, police are actually going to have to
measure, with a tape measure, the length of these guns, confusing the
issue even further.

QUESTION: Will the Democrats support the Bill anyway?
SENATOR GREIG: It's a difficult one for us, because not to do so would
mean that we would be leaving roughly ten to twenty per cent of guns in
the community that otherwise wouldn't be there. So yes, we'll be
supporting the legislation. But we have to make the point that it's
inadequate, and we can and must go further.

QUESTION: But wouldn't it be a start to start getting guns out of
the community?
SENATOR GREIG: Yeah, but why not make it a finish as well. Let's do it
thoroughly. Let's get all automatic and semi-automatic weapons out of
our communities.

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