The ongoing Adler debacle has not only revealed the complete incompetence of the Australian media, it’s also highlighted just how bad our Police Ministers are. The one that has gone under the radar the most despite making Bill Byrne-esque ploys? Victorian Police Minister Lisa Neville.
Neville is the second Police Minister, taking over from Wade Noonan, under the train wreck that is the Daniel Andrews’ Labor Government. Victoria is obviously trying to keep pace with Queensland in the “hoplophobic Police Minister” stakes.
Neville recently proclaimed that “states were in agreement aside from NSW over the Adler shotgun.” Well, there have been several different versions of events which came out of the NFA meeting and in complete absence of any independently verifiable first hand information from that meeting, Neville’s proclamation is little more than that. It also cost the Nationals a 36% swing against them in Orange.
In the lead up to the NFA, Neville much like Bill Byrne refused to meet with any firearm organisations (including us despite several requests), manufacturers or firearm owning constituents – instead preferring the generic, mass disseminated form of “go away” correspondence. Because one way to be totally fair, impartial and consultative with a large number of constituents who actually possess the knowledge base and experience relevant to the subject and who will be directly affected by decisions you are making – is to shut them out and ignore them entirely. Imagine the outrage if the same was applied to the LGBTI community in Melbourne?
Further, this is almost always the hallmark of someone who uses dictatorial like edicts to compensate when they know very little about the subject matter and have an agenda to push regardless. It certainly was with Jo-Ann Miller and Byrne in Queensland and it certainly is now with Neville.
There are no Police or ADF units that use or have used lever action firearms -this is a complete lie. They have absolutely no use for these types of firearms and if they are military style, then why aren’t they being issued these firearms? It’s because they aren’t rapid fire, military style or any plethora of buzzword being thrown around by Neville and her ilk. Perhaps Neville would like to ask Victoria Police where their 200+ missing firearms went?
It continues with a recent seizure:
and then:
Doesn’t look like they were stopped at all to me if you can’t locate them. So criminals are getting their hands on Category E firearms which the cops can’t locate but we need to crack down on people using lever action shotguns legally so said criminals can’t get an inferior firearm to “keep the community safe?”
On the topic of the recent decision to have another firearm amnesty Neville “supported an amnesty as an important way of getting guns off the streets.”
What metric of ‘success’ are we talking about here? There already is a permanent firearm amnesty in three states. Because criminals who have spent, time, money and energy procuring illegal firearms are going to have an epiphany and surrender them? So why is there need for an amnesty if the ongoing permanent amnesty and the stealback of ’96 were so “successful?”
Appearing on the Today Show in a horribly factually inaccurate piece on 3D printed firearms, Neville admitted that “Australian Border Force only check around 1% of the incoming freight.” So, given the above example of automatics that were smuggled in, the fact that she admits most of our shipping (and air) freight is not even checked and the recent revelation that it costs around $130,000 of tax payer money per illegal firearm recovered, what exactly does Neville think that going after law abiding firearm owners hopes to achieve, when criminals are having a field day in open borders Australia? Much like these that were seized in NSW last week? And also when the Senate Inquiry stated that 97% of firearm crime is committed with illegal firearms, which Victoria Police also affirmed at said Senate Inquiry?
We’ve hit peak potato. By her own Victorian Police department’s admission, fully automatic firearms are being imported by criminals, yet in the next breath is telling law abiding citizens cannot even own non-lethal items to protect themselves and includes it’s own Victorian Police officers when fighting off knife wielding home invaders.
As we’ve written about before, Neville and Daniel Andrews are too busy castrating Victoria Police with political correctness and incredibly inept policy decisions, doing very little about a 13.4% increase in violent crime while weakening the bail laws and then congratulating themselves for tightening them again while a youth detention centre is trashed at taxpayer expense. Meanwhile, home invasions, violent crime and shootings continue.
It also doesn’t help when you have Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton calling the Adler shotgun “recoilless” and Assistant Commissioner Steve Fontana calling a perfectly legal centrefire Savage 110B “some kind of automatic.” The problem also extends to the heavily politicised upper echelons of Victoria Police and the Police Union. No one votes for Police to make laws either.
Neville is clearly relying on her position title as her sole reasoning – arguing from authority. The reality – she has none whatsoever. She has no background on firearms, is unwilling to listen and is employing the exact same tactics Queensland Labor and Jo Ann Miller used which eventually found her and her successor out of a job.
Should Lisa Neville continue this kind of hubris towards the most law abiding section of the Victorian community, she may very well join Miller, Byrne and the Nationals as the next #DrainTheBillabong victim.
Hope you were paying attention to Orange, Lisa.
Never elect a finger waver! … especially one UGLY to the core …