NSW Premier Chris Minns has jumped the gun with law changes before a royal commission, says Oliver Jacques. Photo: Donna Davis MP/Facebook.
Does anyone seriously believe that confiscating guns from a Griffith farmer or gagging arts students on campus will stop terrorism?
I don’t. And neither, I suspect, does the NSW Government — which is why its cynical exploitation of a national tragedy deserves to be called out.
On Christmas Eve — that magical time when journalists clock off and voters focus on pudding rather than policy — the Minns Government rushed through sweeping new laws restricting firearms and protests. Two completely different issues, bundled together in one bill, wrapped up with a bow and rammed through NSW Parliament in record time.
The gun laws allow police to seize firearms from licensed farmers and sporting shooters and make it harder to buy certain categories of weapons. The protest laws give the government extraordinary powers to shut down public assemblies for up to three months after a major incident.
The justification? An horrific terrorist attack at Bondi.
But here’s the obvious question: what on earth do licensed gun owners in the Riverina — or students waving placards outside Town Hall — have to do with the Bondi attack?
The answer, of course, is nothing. Which explains why the government glued these unrelated measures together in a single bill. It wasn’t about safety. It was about wedging its opponents on both sides of politics.
The Greens opposed the protest crackdown, allowing Labor supporters to accuse them of being soft on guns. The Nationals and rural independents opposed punishing innocent farmers and hunters, opening them up to claims they didn’t care about public safety. Heads Labor wins; tails everyone else loses.
Riverina MPs Joe McGirr, Helen Dalton and Wes Fang cut through the nonsense with a simple question: why are farmers, hunters and sporting shooters being punished for a crime they had nothing to do with?
These people already live under some of the toughest gun laws in the world. They are background-checked, trained, licensed and regularly inspected. Their firearms are registered, locked away and used for practical purposes — protecting livestock, controlling the explosion of feral pigs government has failed to combat and shooting at something that doesn’t shoot back.
Labor insists the changes are about “community safety”, yet that won’t stop them from spending millions of taxpayer dollars on a royal commission into the causes of the Bondi attack. Which raises an awkward contradiction: if the government is so confident guns and protests were the problem, why rush the laws before the inquiry even begins?
And if the royal commission ultimately finds no link between licensed firearms, peaceful protests and the attack — as many expect — will the government reverse course? Or is this the familiar one-way ratchet, where rights vanish permanently but accountability never turns up?
None of this diminishes the horror of what happened at Bondi. But good lawmaking requires evidence, restraint and honesty — not panic, posturing and political opportunism.
If NSW genuinely wants to combat terrorism, it should focus on intelligence failures, immigration vetting, policing resources and mental health funding. Taking guns off Wagga farmers and silencing Sydney protesters won’t make the public safer — but it might make life more comfortable for politicians looking for scapegoats and dodging scrutiny.
