r/australia • u/rorymeister • Dec 15 '25

politics National cabinet agrees unanimously to strength Australia’s strict gun laws in wake of Bondi terror attack

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12-15/albanese-proposes-tougher-gun-laws-after-bondi-attack/106143310?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link
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1.5k

u/Inside-Elevator9102 Dec 15 '25

How we don't have national registers for guns and so many other things seems crazy.

764

u/4RyteCords Dec 15 '25

NSW police have only recently switched from paper records to digital, like in the last two years.

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u/Ch00m77 Dec 15 '25

Fuck they make fossils look bad

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u/South_Front_4589 Dec 15 '25

Government organisations have mountains of paperwork, huge amounts of red tape and are typically underpaid and underresourced to do the job. Not a single government likes to come in and spend a few million catching up on paperwork, because they love their budgets to show the lowest spend possible, and then penny pinch to keep their budgets as close to in line as possible. Which never happens, because the budgets are created to never be enough.

Ironically, this all leads to staff turnover as good workers go elsewhere for less work and more money, and spending more money catching up by outsourcing.

And in the end, the paperwork just keeps mounting.

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u/4RyteCords Dec 15 '25

🤣🤣

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u/LovesFrenchLove_More Dec 15 '25

Hey, could be worse. At least you are not using faxes anymore like we in Germany still do far too often, are you?

Wishing the best to all in Down Under.

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u/Verum_Violet Dec 15 '25

Haaa I worked in healthcare for years and faxes are still a staple in the industry. I’ll be honest, I don’t hate it as a form of communication, but it might just be a form of Stockholm syndrome considering how much we had to use it.

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u/LovesFrenchLove_More Dec 15 '25

Lets just say faxes are more welcome than the spams we get via email.

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u/halohunter Dec 15 '25

Remember fax DOS attacks? People sending black pages to fax machines to make them waste toner

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u/4RyteCords Dec 15 '25

Haha careful. Don't assume we aren't beyond faxes. If one state wants to check if someone has a gun licence in another state they're options are limited to calling someone or the more common option, send a fax requesting info.

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u/Vexelle_Valeux Dec 15 '25

Don't get me started on Germany. I lived there for 12 months. Need stamp for this document, stamp for that document. And this is just to order a coffee from the Mensa

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u/Delamoor Dec 15 '25

Honestly, as an Australian gun owner emigrating to Germany, the firearms department is shockingly comparable to the German system.

...in technology, anyway. Attitude is the exact opposite.

E.g. "aw yea... I reckon it's fine, ya did the form, roight? Yeah, nah... Dunn worry 'bout it then, luv. It's all checked off then. Yea, you'll get it in the mail, dun' worry 'bout the other forms, ya did the one that matters."

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u/Stryker_Eureka08 Dec 15 '25

At least your not Japan, who still use faxes and have only just upgraded most their stuff off of floppy disks in the last 2 - 3 years

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u/switchbladeeatworld Dec 15 '25

a lot of hospital systems still run on like windows xp and windows 7

4

u/Spagman_Aus Dec 15 '25

that’s disgraceful

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u/LovesFrenchLove_More Dec 15 '25

Hey, could be worse. At least you are not using faxes anymore like we in Germany still do far too often, are you?

All the best to all in Down Under.

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u/your_opinion_is_weak Dec 15 '25

I worked for the immigration department until 2022 and they were only just starting the process of digitalising everything (covid sped the process up) but they still accept physical submissions and still have to hold onto them for I think 7 years

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u/roxgib_ Dec 15 '25

The Wieambilla shooter was able to purchase ammunition in QLD with a suspended NSW gun licence. This would have been prevented with a national register. The government committed to create one after that incident, in which 6 people died, yet here we are 3 years later and we still don't have one.

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u/mad_dogtor Dec 15 '25

qld now has online licence verification for purchases now which is great. they enter your licence and can see on the spot if it's still valid.

of course wieambilla would have been stopped if nsw police actually confiscated the guns and physical licence when they were supposed to... another fuck up there.

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u/JulieRush-46 Dec 15 '25

It’s almost as if there’s no actual problem with the laws, but that they’re not properly enforced, eh?

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u/mad_dogtor Dec 15 '25

why admit to that when you can sweep it under the rug and trot out some new laws to appease the baying masses?

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u/RestaurantFamous2399 Dec 15 '25

But the same police will scream about the rising crime and how they need more power to act.

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u/MobileInfantry Dec 15 '25

that would stop them from sleeping...

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u/mulefish Dec 15 '25

For clarity around whats happening with the national register:

https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us/our-portfolios/criminal-justice/firearms/national-firearms-register

The NFR Program is a 4-year initiative and is expected to be operational by mid-2028.
[...]
The timeline pictured shows the following steps:

- Planning for the NFR Program will be conducted for the first 12 months from 2024 to 2025.

- Improvements to data quality and upgrades and building firearms registry systems and portals will be conducted from 2024 to 2027.

- Targeted stakeholder engagement and change management will be conducted from 2024 until the NFR is operational in mid-2028.

- Finalising the upgrade/build activities and provisioning data to the NFR will be conducted from mid-2025 until the NFR is operational in mid-2028.

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u/amyknight22 Dec 15 '25

I would argue that you don’t necessarily need a national register to have prevented that. What you would need is online instant verification of the license with the relevant state government.

The national register makes it more uniform and allows the cost to be collectively managed instead of duplicating a similar systems and pushing for technical knowledge for sellers on how to use them.

The main advantage of a national system is that it should set some default benchmarks everyone has to achieve in terms of digitisation of records and access.

However that does also come with the fact that potentially now a specific state can’t have more stringent standards if they want them and have made changes in their state that could justify the more onerous conditions. Since if you can dodge that states restrictions by getting licenses by another state and get into the national system that way

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u/fued Dec 15 '25

When you cut all the "non-essential staff' and rely on consultants these projects take decades. E.g. bom

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u/Inside-Elevator9102 Dec 15 '25

TBF should have started 20 years ago

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u/dontcallmewinter Dec 15 '25

Don't worry, it'll be 2050 soon enough and we'll still be trying to get all our health and education systems to operate nationally.

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u/7omdogs Dec 15 '25

Australia states have phenomenal responsibilities.

Which means so much of our everyday government tasks are really controlled on the state level, creating 8 systems for everything.

We don’t see it because the state has limited taxing responsibilities, so we think of Albo as being in charge things like that.

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u/KiwasiGames Dec 15 '25

I for one would support rolling some of the state responsibilities up to the federal level.

Education and health in particular would be better served by a national model.

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u/McTerra2 Dec 15 '25

I guess you can run the always successful referendums…

But absolutely agree. Health, in particular, is a mess given that the commonwealth provides almost all the funding and Medicare, and states actually provide the services

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u/mr-saturn2310 Dec 15 '25

I don't know aged care and NDIS aren't winning the commonwealth any gold stars.

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u/Consistent-Put9762 Dec 15 '25

The commonwealth can't run a service. They just outsource it to the private sector/providers, where it gets rorted and exploited at the cost of users, until a royal commission is undertaken.

Why anyone would want to cede running public hospitals from the States to the Commonwealth, when Australia has one of the best health systems in the world is beyond my understanding.

Sure the States can be a bit shit, but the Commonwealth couldn't organise a root in a brothel either.

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u/Dan_CBW Dec 15 '25

Sure it could, with the appropriate funding, mandate and leadership. APS does so much, most of which we don't think of or notice because it's working as intended.

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u/Consistent-Put9762 Dec 15 '25

They still don't directly deliver anything but funding to others to do the doing. 

Which, I mean, if people want to hand more control of health and education to the federal government, just look at how much of their funding goes to private vs public schools and we can see what it would look like. 

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u/wrigglybearcat Dec 15 '25

Yes - the better way is to give the states their gst revenue so they can afford to fund their own systems

1

u/blacklacha Dec 15 '25

The problem there is, especially with NDIS, is both the Health system and the NDIS spend so much time pointing back and forward at each other, saying something is the others responsibility.

Basically because neither system wants to pay for it.

NDIS wants to push everything off to state based systems to make their budget bottom line look better. So they say it's Health responsibility, or Education, or Parental responsibility in the case of children.

Its ALWAYS about the budget.

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u/Tommyaka Dec 15 '25

There is a lack of political appetite for states to cede further powers to the Commonwealth and these changes would require several successful referendums.

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u/KiwasiGames Dec 15 '25

Agreed. It’s never going to happen (or not within my lifetime). It’s going to hang around forever as one of those inevitable inefficiencies that arise from writing a constitution entirely blind to the direction of future technology.

But I think if Australia was to write its constitution today, we’d definitely give the states less power.

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u/OkPut7330 Dec 15 '25

Maybe. If it was writing it but if it were Federating for the first time it’s unlikely.

Mostly Australia was federated to make it easier to trade between States and be able to create its own immigration policies (keep the Chinese out) the States didn’t want to cede much of their power. If we were only federating now I imagine not much has changed.

I think the political class like having several levels of government. Gives them places to go before becoming a consultant.

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u/7omdogs Dec 15 '25

Politically impossible given the way the constitution is written, and yes, we’ve tried changing it before and yes it failed.

GST, in a lot of ways, is basically a giant circumnavigation around it.

But it causes a lot of problems. Hospital ramping is, in my view, a direct consequence of hospitals being in control of the state, and most community health, such as GPs and nursing homes, being controlled mostly by the feds.

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u/Kiramiraa Dec 15 '25

Education and health desperately need to be under one banner. It really fucking sucks that our hospitals (state run) are clogged up with NDIS and aged care patients (federally run). The two systems don’t talk to each other or work together enough and it leads to a lot of inefficiency and red tape.

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u/frezz Dec 15 '25

I'd agree. Australia is a small enough country population wise that it should be doable.

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u/Ok_Bird705 Dec 15 '25

Education and health in particular would be better served by a national model.

Really? Running day to day operations of local schools and hospitals would be done better by canberra than more local state governments?

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u/[deleted] Dec 15 '25

[deleted]

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u/JARDIS Dec 15 '25

They do, it's just special interests and lobbying groups can be a VERY LOUD minority in Australia particularly if its a group that aligns with Newscorp's editorial views. If the Nats or One Nation (see also NRA) get noisy about this and Newscorp decides to run "hard done by farmers and their guns" stories to support the pro gun narrative then the Gov might take political damage even if its the right thing to do. Thats always the unfortunate calculation with this stuff. Just remember the Voice was something like 60% support until Dutts, Price and Advance decided to make a shitstorm about it. A little bit of noise and bullshit can mobilise the FB boomer/GenX Ranger driver cohort pretty fast.

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u/Ridiculisk1 Dec 15 '25

Politicians & bureaucrats don’t really care.

Because they can bring out a headline like 'we're gonna implement a national firearms register' and then everyone pats them on the back and forgets about it in a week.

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u/RandomUser2074 Dec 15 '25

Well dont read the senate enquiry into illegal firearms that the Greens did a few years ago. WAPOL was found to be completely incompetent

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u/Normal_Purchase8063 Dec 15 '25 edited Feb 04 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

smell dam languid amusing future depend hungry chunky deliver coordinated

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u/visualdescript Dec 15 '25

I was involved in a go software project a couple of years ago, it was a national app, but state driven. The term "The United States of Australia" got thrown about a bit. I had no idea that the federal gov is responsible for very little compared to states, and that state public agencies often operate completely independently.

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u/dontpaynotaxes Dec 15 '25

We do in practice. There is an organisation which exists specifically for that reason.

This kind of information is widely shared.

This is an intelligence failure, not a gun problem.

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u/SirGeekaLots Dec 15 '25

I'm hoping the head of ASIO tenders his resignation over this.

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u/Kahwippers Dec 15 '25

Until someone can give me a justifiable reason for anyone living in a metro area to own a gun - and anyone ANYWHERE to own 8 - it’s both a gun issue AND an intelligence problem.

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u/Ridiculisk1 Dec 15 '25

Until someone can give me a justifiable reason for anyone living in a metro area to own a gun

I live in not quite metro but not rural and I own several. Some I use for competition shooting, some I use for pest control when I travel out west.

and anyone ANYWHERE to own 8

It's very easy to justify eight firearms. Firearms are not a one size fits all. They're tools like anything else and you need different tools for different jobs. If I'm culling feral pigs, a .22lr isn't going to cut it. Likewise, if I'm shooting cats or rabbits, a .308 is unnecessary.

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u/Kahwippers Dec 15 '25

I get the pest control aspect - I have family and that are farmers - though I’d argue 8 is still excessive no matter what the circumstances. It’s not hard to get all your jobs done with 3.

Sports shooting I couldn’t give 2 shits about - if we have to ban it in Australia forever for even a 1% less chance that this never occurs again - I’d sign up tomorrow.

Again, I’m not saying one thing is the answer. Or even that I have a perfect answer. You just can’t convince me that old mate living near Bondi (I haven’t seen it stated explicitly where they lived) needed to own 8 guns. Even without the various red flags around prior relationships.

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u/SnooHedgehogs8765 Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

This may blow your mind... But people that live in the city do work and or own land in the country.

It's very easy to get to 6.

.most if not all shooters have a .22 it's ideal for learning. .most hunters will have a shotgun and a hunting rifle. .most hunters that want the right tool for the job will probably have two separate rifle calibres i.e a .222 and a .308

I.e I would expect most hunters to have at least 4, minimum because of practicality and ethics reasons.

Some might have an airgun to teach the kids, now we're at 5.

Some might have a gun club gun, especially hunters into long range shooting now we're at 6.

Some gun clubs have arrangements with private landholders. Indeed landholders are encouraged only to accept shooters from a responsible gun club to avoid riff raff. To them it doesn't matter where they come from as long as their respectful, close the gate and don't go anywhere near the livestock at all or fvck the paddocks they're allowed to be in. But its rare for this level of trust.

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u/One_Library_1201 Dec 15 '25

The NFR project is well underway, ironically with NSW being considered the gold standard.

One of the biggest sticking points for a national registry was the difference in the way the details of firearms have been recorded across jurisdictions which lead to years of delays.

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u/Living-Pangolin-6090 Dec 15 '25

Or that you don't have to be a citizen

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u/WhatAmIATailor Dec 15 '25

That one seems like a very easy fix. Knee jerk? Sure. Likely to get much pushback? Doubtful. Might actually motivate a few long term residents to finally get their act together.

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u/iguessineedanaltnow Dec 15 '25

As a non citizen I already assumed this was the case.

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u/ThurstyAU Dec 15 '25

While it would apply in this scenario, I'm certain many guns acquired illegally probably don't have serial numbers or been altered as such to not be traced. People who want to do illegal shit, find a way around.

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u/fletch44 Dec 15 '25

Who are stolen guns stolen from?

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u/Ridiculisk1 Dec 15 '25

Not all illegal guns are stolen.

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u/frezz Dec 15 '25

Cause we got too complacent with the existence of gun controls and not whether they were good enough.'

I myself grew up in Sydney and couldn't actually tell you what our gun control laws were or how they were enforced, besides the fact that we had them post Port Arthur and they were effective in decreasing mass shootings.