In a cynical move designed deliberately to tie in with the #MarchForOurLives hysteria, Bill Shorten has written to Malcolm Turnbull over the Will Hodgman government’s proposals in Tasmania. This from the ALPBC:
“Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has called on the Prime Minister to review proposed changes to Tasmania’s gun laws and consider intervening to stop them going ahead.
“I ask you to order an immediate review into the compliance of the Tasmanian Government’s proposal with the National Firearms Agreement,” Mr Shorten wrote to Malcolm Turnbull ahead of the return of Federal Parliament. “If, as appears to be the case, that proposal would breach the agreement, I ask you to publicly demand that your Liberal Party colleagues in the Tasmanian Government abandon it.”
“Simply put, the weakening of gun laws threatens the safety of our community.”
Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman did not release plans for the changes in the lead-up to the March 3 state election. They were made public on the eve of the poll, leading gun control groups to mount accusations of an attempted cover-up.”
The usual greasy opportunism from the most unelectable Labor leader and indeed, party, in history. Bill doesn’t know what the gun laws are either, so his opinion means nothing. And of course, the ABC went softball on Bill.
The proposals were made public and to relevant stakeholders by then Police Minister Rene Hidding on February 9, 2018:
For the ABC to suggest that it was not public knowledge is a complete lie, and the fact that they could not be bothered trying to investigate this and save their “outrage” until the night before the election in the hope of swaying it, smells of a certain group committing a cover-up. At best, it’s completely lazy journalism.
If Bill indeed knew anything, it’s that the National Firearms Agreement is non-legally binding and the states do not have to comply with it, nor can the federal government compel the states to comply. As we’ve seen so many times, the only way to do this is to wave the federal funding stick at them. Whether or not Turnbull will pull a Howard remains to be seen, however, Hodgman is more within his rights to tell Malcolm where to go.
As we’ve stated before, the proposed changes are very reasonable, evidence based and quite frankly, nothing major. No-one is removing background checks or licencing, so the false “watering down” scare argument is completely moot.
Bill might want to think about keeping Chinese spies out of his party and why he is even more unpopular than Malcolm Turnbull – no mean feat by any means.
Once again reminding LAFO’s that the Labor Party are not and never will be your friends.
Labor: representing workers by disarming them.
I have had a similar discussion with a fairly senior journalist in Tasmania who is a friend of mine, I pointed out that the Liberal Govt offer to LAFOs was not secret, I knew about it a month before the election, as did 40,000 or so other LAFOs. He asked why I didn’t tell him then and my answer was “you’d have just lied about it as your organisation is doing now”.
Re Shorten, perhaps someone should explain the Federal part of Federation to him, firearms are a states rights matter, the NFA is just a collection of states that were financially blackmailed into passing similar laws, it was never going to hold up forever – eventually it will boil down to retaining licencing and background checks and the rest of the BS will be stripped away and dumped.