April President’s Message

Early next month we will be casting our vote to decide who will lead the federal government and who will be in the parliament to hopefully keep them in check.

For once, at the time of writing, besides a poorly thought-out article in The Australian newspaper suggesting the yet-to-be-built National Firearms Register could know where unregistered firearms are, firearm laws have hardly been raised during the election campaign. That could change before the ballot booths are open. What we do know is that both major sides can get themselves in a ludicrous race to the bottom raising ideas that in practice have no benefit to community safety and are often just more red tape or restrictions to appear ‘tough’ on crime.

One member of parliament who has been there for more than three decades to keep them in check is Bob Katter. A parliamentarian of 50 years this year, as he previously served in our state parliament, his views on firearms are well known. While he has not always been in a position to vote bad policy down, his opinions are to be ignored at the parliament’s peril. He has been a strong supporter of us, the firearms community, and it is for that reason we have again financially supported his campaign on our members’ behalf.

Under our ownership of the Australian Shooters Alliance (ASA), we recently met with the federal Attorney-General’s department on the construction of the National Firearms Register. The ASA is now recognised by the federal government as an official stakeholder and is your direct lobbying and consulting vehicle to Canberra. The register is a connection system of the eight state and territory firearms databases and will hopefully finally force them to clean up their databases that are bulging with incorrect information, and that at times has been used to persecute law-abiding firearm owners. Our experienced lobbyist Tim Bannister writes about it below.

Vote wisely and safe shooting.

Hellen Gill 

SSAA Queensland President