Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday said that a review of national gun laws would not weaken strict regulations that had kept Australians safer since 35 people were shot dead by a mass murderer 20 years ago.
Turnbull was in the island state of Tasmania to attend a 20th anniversary commemoration of one of the world’s worst mass murders by a lone gunman at the historic tourist site of Port Arthur on April 28, 1996.
Federal and state governments responded by severely restricting ownership of rapid-fire weapons and by buying back about one-in-five guns from Australia’s public arsenal.
Photo: Reuters
Turnbull told Hobart Radio 7HO that the National Firearms Agreement was one of the then-Australian prime minister John Howard’s “greatest achievements and it has kept Australians safer ever since.”
A government inquiry into a 2014 siege in a Sydney cafe in which a gunman and two of his hostages died recommended a review of that agreement with a view to modernizing it.
Gun enthusiasts fear that any changes to the law could mean greater restrictions on gun ownership, while gun control advocates say that the country was already backsliding on its post-Port Arthur regulations.
Turnbull, who is a licensed shooter, said maintaining the strength of the agreement was “one absolutely non-negotiable factor.”
“We must continue to maintain our strong and responsible stance with respect to guns that is enshrined in the National Firearms Agreement and which has kept Australians safe,” he said.
Most analysts agree that the reforms have resulted in declines in gun deaths and gun crime, but some opponents say the reforms have achieved nothing and blame illegal guns for the nation’s gun problems.
Turnbull pointed to the US, where a person is 10 times more likely to be shot dead than in Australia, as an example of why Australians needed to severely restrict the type of semi-automatic weapons used at Port Arthur.
“You only have to look at the tragic examples — I was going to say ‘daily,’ but certainly ‘weekly’ — in the United States of what happens when you have very little if any restrictions on the purchase of weapons like that,” Turnbull said.
Dignitaries, survivors and victims’ families yesterday gathered at Port Arthur for the first official commemoration since the 10th anniversary of the tragedy.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion