Australia is poised to pass new laws to enable a national gun buyback and tighten background checks for gun licences in response to the country’s worst mass shooting in decades at a Jewish festival last month.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on Tuesday by a vote of 96 to 45, despite being opposed by conservative lawmakers. It will now go to the Senate where it is expected to pass with the support of the Greens party.
The December 14 attack at Bondi Beach that killed 15 people was carried out by individuals who had "hate in their hearts and guns in their hands," Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said as he introduced the new laws.
"The tragic events at Bondi demand a comprehensive response from government," Burke said. "As a government, we must do everything we can to counter both the motivation and the method."
The new measures would establish the largest national gun buyback scheme since one implemented after a massacre in 1996 in Tasmania's Port Arthur where a lone gunman killed 35 people.
They would also introduce tougher background checks for firearm licences issued by Australia’s states by drawing on information held by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
The government said on Sunday there were a record 4.1 million firearms in Australia last year, including more than 1.1 million in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state and the site of the Bondi attack.
New South Wales has also passed new laws that limit the number of guns per individual to four and 10 for farmers, and mandate firearm owners renew their licences every two years instead of five years.
"The sheer number of firearms currently circulating within the Australian community is unsustainable," Burke said.
The bill passed without the support of the conservative Liberal-National opposition coalition, who accuse Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government of failing to adequately address rising antisemitism.
"This bill reveals the contempt the government has for the million gun owners of Australia. The prime minister has failed to recognise that guns are tools of trade for so many Australians," said Shadow Attorney-General Andrew Wallace.
Parliament, which is sitting after Albanese recalled it early from its summer break to address issues following the Bondi attack, is also debating separate legislation that would lower the threshold for prosecuting hate speech offences.
The laws were originally proposed as a single bill, but opposition from both the coalition and the Greens forced the government to split the package and drop provisions from the hate speech laws that proposed introducing an offence against racial vilification.
Liberal party lawmakers have indicated they will support the government's hate speech laws, while the position of the Nationals, their coalition partner, remains unclear.