Aussie parliament passes tougher gun control laws

Australia’s lower house of Parliament has passed laws to enable a national gun buyback and tighten background checks for gun licences.

Tuesday's move was in response to the country’s worst mass shooting in decades at a Jewish festival held in Sydney last month.

The bill, which was opposed by conservative lawmakers, passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 96 to 45 and will now go to the Senate, Reuters reports. 

The December 14 attack at Bondi Beach that killed 15 people was carried out by individuals who had "hate in their hearts and guns in their hands," Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said as he introduced the new laws.

"The tragic events at Bondi demand a comprehensive response from government," Burke said. "As a government, we must do everything we can to counter both the motivation and the method."

The new measures would establish a national gun buyback scheme to purchase surplus and newly restricted firearms.

They would also introduce tougher background checks for firearm licences issued by Australia’s states by drawing on information held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

The government said on Sunday there were a record 4.1 million firearms in Australia last year, including more than 1.1 million in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state.

New South Wales also passed new laws last month that limit the number of guns per individual to four and 10 for farmers, and mandate firearm owners to renew their licences every two years instead of five years.

"The sheer number of firearms currently circulating within the Australian community is unsustainable," Burke said.

The bill passed without the support of the conservative Liberal-National opposition coalition, who accuse Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government of failing to adequately address rising antisemitism.

Parliament, which is sitting after Albanese recalled it early from its summer break to address issues following the Bondi attack, is also debating separate legislation that would lower the threshold for prosecuting hate speech offences.

Hate speech reforms 

Labor originally planned to introduce the gun and hate speech reforms in a single package, but was forced to split the bill due to fierce opposition to proposed racial vilification laws from the coalition and the Greens, the AAP reports.

After Albanese and Opposition Leader Sussan Ley discussed the reforms on Monday morning, Liberal MPs met in the evening to formalise their position ahead of a joint partyroom meeting with coalition partner the Nationals today.

Liberal sources told AAP last night their party had put forward a series of technical amendments which had been accepted by Labor.

The changes include tightening the definition of a preacher or religious leader, introducing mandatory two-year reviews of the legislation and requiring consultation with the opposition leader when listing an extremist organisation.

Nationals MPs still have concerns about the impact the reforms could have on free speech.

The Greens have said they will not back the hate speech legislation due to the effect it could have on political commentary including protests, leaving the coalition as the only viable partner to pass the bill through the Senate.

While provisions making it illegal to vilify someone based on their race have been dropped, the watered-down legislation would still allow the government to effectively outlaw groups that promote hatred, likely including neo-Nazi organisation the National Socialist Network and radical Islamist collective Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The proposed laws would also allow the government to refuse or revoke the visas of people who hold extremist views.

Opposition home affairs spokesman Jonathon Duniam on Monday night praised elements of the bill allowing the government to shut down hardline extremist groups.

Nationals leader David Littleproud said he supported the provisions allowing extremist preachers' visas to be cancelled, but negotiations with the government were ongoing.

"There are elements that we want to support, but there are other elements that obviously we have serious issues about," he told the ABC's 7.30 programme.

Albanese said if the legislation did not pass parliament this week, there would not be another chance to deal with it.

"We're not a government that puts things up over and over again to see them defeated," he told ABC Radio on Monday.

- Reuters and AAP