Media release: Bright spot in a difficult week as Greens win National Firearms Safety Council
2026-01-21
greens.org.au
In a week dominated by controversial hate speech laws there’s been one piece of genuinely good news that deserves to be celebrated: the Greens working with gun safety advocates have secured a commitment from the Government to establish a National Firearms Safety Council. This is an historic win for evidence-based firearms policy that might otherwise have been lost in the headlines.

The commitment was communicated by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to the Leader of the Australian Greens Senator Larissa Waters. The Greens will work with the Government to ensure the composition of the board meets community expectations.

We thank the Australian Gun Safety Alliance, the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, Gun Control Australia and the Public Health Association of Australia for their continued advocacy and work calling for a National Firearms Safety Council.

Greens Senator and Justice Spokesperson David Shoebridge said:

“The passage of the new firearms laws this week includes several crucial gun safety measures that advocates have campaigned for over many years, and we have now also secured a commitment from the Government for a National Firearms Safety Council.

“The Council will provide evidence-based oversight to ensure firearm laws consistently prioritise public safety across Australia which is exactly what the Greens and advocates have been calling for.

“A Firearms Safety Council is an important future-proofing of our new gun laws against politically motivated deals struck by politicians to weaken laws and harm community safety.

“We also know that as technology advances and data is more deeply understood, that there will be future changes to gun laws we can and should make and having a body focused on public safety advising the government on this will be critical.

“This is in addition to the National Gun Buyback which we know from the 1996 National Firearms Agreement is an important way to reduce the number of high risk firearms in circulation.

“Likewise these new laws have strengthened background checks based on strong intelligence sharing and will meaningfully contribute to community safety. 

“This achievement came from listening to gun control advocates, survivor groups, and our community who care deeply about community safety.

“The Bondi massacre exposed dangerous flaws in our national firearms laws that the Greens have been highlighting for many years including the proliferation of private arsenals in suburban homes. (See our website www.toomanyguns.org)

“We’re not America and in Australia there is no right to have a gun, owning a gun is a privilege not a right, and the community expects our laws to be based on careful regulation for public safety.

“Now we need state and territory governments to follow through with restrictions on firearms capable of mass shootings through a new National Firearms Agreement and take steps to do their part on gun buybacks.

“We have worked with gun control advocates including survivors of gun violence for many years and this is a much deserved win for them and the community.”

And when it is set up and working and decisions are evidence bbased the Greens and fellow travellers will be screaming for its abolition.

Green’s erroneous thinking:
‘’We’re not America and in Australia there is no right to have a gun, owning a gun is a privilege not a right, and the community expects our laws to be based on careful regulation for public safety.’’

Actually the rights are exactly the same in both countries,  everyone has the right to self defence against unlawful attacks, and the right to adequate means of such defence; the difference is that in the USA such rights are recognised by law whereas in Australia they are denied by law.

More Greens avoidance of reality:

‘’ Now we need state and territory governments to follow through with restrictions on firearms capable of mass shootings through a new National Firearms Agreement and take steps to do their part on gun buybacks.’’

The National Firearms Agreement is not law, this is wishful and wooly thinking.
Almost all firearms are capable of mass shootings.
Recently I tried myself out at rapid aimed fire with a single shot .22 rifle (Category A ) and put 15 shots into a 6 inch circle at 50 metres in one minute
Commonly 20 shots are possible and with a second person loading the rate can easily reach 45 aimed shots/minute.
A double barrel self ejecting, hammerless shotgun (Category A) can keep up a higher sustained rate of fire than a semiautomatic or a pump action shotgun.

As the Greens have committed themselves to evidence based assessment of firearm matters they will soon come to see that most of their ideas are fanciful and wide of the mark; however ‘’porcine aeronautics’’.

The Greens have a paucity of evidenced based anything. ;)

whiteknight wrote on Jan 22^nd, 2026 at 6:43am:

Greens working with gun safety advocates have secured a commitment from the Government to establish a National Firearms Safety Council. This is an historic win for evidence-based firearms policy

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Australia and firearms: What the evidence really tells us Dr Samara McPhedran Responding to MLC David Shoebridge’s firearms piece, Dr Samara McPhedran argues that anti-gun lobbyists privilege some forms of “evidence” over all others, at the expense of proper scrutiny. Greens NSW MLC David Shoebridge’s call for evidence-based policy towards firearms management sounds good. Sadly, his statistical cherry-picking shows that politicians use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp-post. The facts simply do not support Mr Shoebridge’s belief that more gun laws equate to more safety. Nor do the facts back the Greens NSW long-standing policy platform of imposing ever-increasing bans on legal gun ownership. In 1996, Australia passed some of the most restrictive gun laws in the Western world. This included bans on semi-automatic longarms (rifles and shotguns) and pump-action shotguns, and a taxpayer-funded gun confiscation program costing an estimated half-billion dollars. Since then, many different research groups have studied the effects of those laws. None of these has found a significant impact of the legislative changes on the pre-existing downward trend in firearm homicide. The decline in firearm homicides in Australia is not unique, with other Commonwealth countries like Canada and New Zealand experiencing similar or greater declines over time, despite having higher density of gun ownership than Australia and much less restrictive legislative approaches to firearms control. Whether or not Australia’s laws affected firearm suicides is uncertain. Some studies find an impact, others find little or no evidence of any changes and/or substitution of other suicide methods. Adding to this complexity, suicides across the board declined after 1997. This coincided with national implementation of a wide range of suicide prevention strategies. Anti-gun lobbyists often claim that banning private ownership of semi-automatic longarms has prevented mass shootings. However, our close neighbour New Zealand – similar to us in history, culture, and economic trends – has experienced an almost identical time period with no mass shootings despite continued widespread availability of the firearms Australia banned. The absence of mass shootings in New Zealand alongside ongoing use of sporting configuration semi-automatic firearms for target shooting and hunting cannot be reasonably attributed to pre-existing differences between the two countries: data that takes the different population sizes into account shows the occurrence of mass shootings before 1996/1997 was comparable between countries. Is it true that the more legally-owned guns there are in Australia, the more gun crime we will have? The answer is resoundingly “no”. For example, figures released by the NSW Government show very clearly that although the number of firearm licence holders and legally-owned guns has continued to grow, firearm misuse, as well as firearm theft, has continued to fall. The ongoing administrative costs of Australia’s firearms management regime are unknown, but have been conservatively estimated at around AU$27 million per year, or about AU$75,000 per day. This is more than the average Australian earns in a year and it is a “low estimate” – the real costs may be much higher[2]. Despite this massive price tag, the overall balance of evidence suggests Australia’s gun laws are simply not the “too good to be true” success story anti-gun lobbyists want them to be So, if Mr Shoebridge and his colleagues genuinely want evidence-based policy towards firearms, it looks like they still have a lot to learn. https://thebigsmoke.com.au/2014/10/20/australia-firearms-evidence-really-tells-us/

Dr Samara McPhedran specialises in studying violence more articles from her here-
https://thebigsmoke.com.au/author/drsamaramcphedran/


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Dr McPhedran's research expertise includes homicide, suicide, domestic and family violence, gun violence and injury prevention, and firearms legislation and policy.

More articles here- https://theconversation.com/profiles/samara-mcphedran-13190/articles