Today in Parliament, Abigail spoke in strong opposition to the Shooters hunting bill, pointing out that it dangerously expands gun access, undermines public safety, threatens animal welfare and ignores domestic and family violence risks, as well as calling out the Labor government’s morally bankrupt decision to back in this dangerous proposal.

Abigail said:

I contribute to debate on the Game and Feral Animal Legislation Amendment (Conservation Hunting) Bill 2025, although I do not think it will be as entertaining as the Hon. Wes Fang's contribution. I echo the sentiments so ably articulated by my colleagues in The Greens. No member in their right mind should or could support this bill if they give any consideration to good public policy or the interests of public safety. A parliamentary inquiry interrogated this bill and found that it had many flaws. Members who were not quite convinced of its disastrous effect before the inquiry must surely be convinced of it now.

The bill proposes a range of amendments to the laws that regulate hunting in New South Wales, primarily by making certain Crown land "designated land" for hunting and by prescribing the mechanisms by which Crown land may be made available for hunting. The bill also proposes creating the Conservation Hunting Authority, which will replace the Game and Pest Management Advisory Board; replacing restricted game hunting licences with conservation hunting licences; and legislating a "right to hunt". The bill also proposes an amendment to the Weapons Prohibition Act to provide conservation hunting licence holders a permit to use a silencer.

The Premier made a classic, absurd captain's call to back in this bill while live on talkback radio, which is apparently this Government's preferred forum for reasoned decision making. He started to back-pedal his support for this shocking piece of legislation after the evidence came out. The Premier and Government members now repeatedly claim that they do not condone any relaxation of State gun laws. In tried-and-true fashion, what this Government says is once again out of step with what it does.

The New South Wales Labor Government supports this bill despite its protestations. It has committed millions of dollars towards a publicly funded gun lobby group to propagandise in favour of expanding gun ownership in this State. Under the feckless leadership of Chris Minns, the New South Wales Labor Government is watering down gun laws by supporting this legislation. It is guilty of endangering public safety in its pursuit of political manoeuvring. It is making public policy on the fly and signing blank cheques for the gun lobby. Members will not be surprised to hear that The Greens virulently oppose these laws. Virulently—I think that is a word.

The Greens have been longstanding and vocal opponents to the proliferation of guns in the community. I hold up the pioneering work of my colleague and former member of this place Senator David Shoebridge. David launched the website toomanyguns.org in 2016 to coincide with the 20-year anniversary of the 1996 Port Arthur mass shooting. The website shows the extent of gun ownership across New South Wales. David was a staunch advocate for gun‑control when he was a member in this place, and he has continued that advocacy as a Federal senator.

Data obtained by The Greens shows that there are now more guns in Australia than there were at the time of the Port Arthur massacre. More than 100 people in New South Wales own more than 70 guns, and dozens own more than 100 guns each. An individual who lived in Cremorne a few years ago—just a few kilometres from the building we are in right now—owned 352 firearms. Despite the hyperventilation and screeching of the "Sad Fragile Flops" party, the people of New South Wales are not labouring under the excessive over-regulation of gun laws.

I remember the day of the Port Arthur massacre where 35 people were killed. Within 12 days of the massacre, John Howard announced a scheme for uniform gun laws throughout Australia. He is not a person that I remember fondly for many other things. I am a keen observer of United States politics. When yet another gun massacre occurs in the US, political commentators speak about Australia's gun laws that were introduced under Howard and how they wish that such laws could be implemented in the US because of how many lives could be saved.

The simple truth is that this bill is a dangerous step back from the national agreement reached in 1996, and it could not come at a worse time. Members need only to look at recent news to see how dangerous deregulating gun laws can be. Fringe ideologies are fuelling dangerous gun ownership practices. Just last month, police seized more than 1,000 guns and firearm parts and made 184 arrests as part of a national sting that revealed the scourge of untraceable 3D-printed weapons. A full spectrum of sovereign citizens, tech heads and gangsters were represented in the policing blitz.

I note the tragic shooting committed by accused police-killer Dezi Freeman in Porepunkah, Victoria earlier this year. "Freeman" is not his original name; it is a name he assumed as part of his sovereign citizen fringe views. This antisocial ideology often crosses over with preppers, who are strongly represented within hunting subcultures. In Australia, we forget how important our gun laws are because we have not seen a massacre for a little while. In 2017, people handed in 26,000 guns in the first amnesty held since 1996. It came in the wake of a really horrific event in 2014 when two hostages were killed after a 16-hour siege in Sydney.

I had the immense pleasure of starting my legal career at what was then called Mallesons Stephen Jaques. It was a good start in life. I was one of 40 people taking part in a summer clerkship program, and there were similar groups of clerks at other law firms. We really had a blast that summer. One of the fantastic people I had the pleasure of meeting, working and partying with during that time was Katrina Dawson, who was killed at the Lindt Café. She met her husband Paul when the two of them were summer clerks with us. I remember how delighted we were when they got together because Katrina was just the smartest person. She was so generous and kind and had the most wicked sense of humour—that Paul understood. When the two of them got together, it was a union that I knew would not be broken easily. They went on to be married and have children. I am sure they would still be very happy in that relationship if it had not been broken by Katrina being brutally shot in the siege in Sydney at the Lindt Café. That could not have happened without a gun being in society.

I am not saying that our gun laws will stop every single person getting a gun, but it would be a lot harder to get a gun if we strengthened our laws rather than tried to weaken them. It has been 11 years since that amazing soul was taken by a gunman, and this country has forgotten again that guns kill and that the moment we weaken our resolve and allow a proliferation of guns in all different places. I do not care what people say they are planning to do with them if the bill was to pass; the fact remains that we are putting more guns in people's hands. We are giving people a licence to own more guns and, ultimately, to use them against people that we love.

I reflect on the last time a shocker of a proposal such as this came around. In May 2012 Barry O'Farrell announced a deal between his Government and the then named Shooters and Fishers Party to deliver two outcomes the majority of citizens of New South Wales did not want: privatisation of the State's electricity generators and recreational hunters in national parks. This was not an implied arrangement; it was a blatant horsetrade. The Premier said in his media release at the time:

… the Government had decided to expand the culling program to allow smooth passage of legislation to sell the State's power generators.

As well as being a grubby deal, the announcement of hunting in national parks makes a liar of Barry O'Farrell who, when asked about hunting in nationals parks, said in April 2011, "The Coalition will not trade policies for the sake of sectional interests." At least the former Liberal Government had the integrity to stab us in the front and cop up to its dirty deals, unlike this Government, which professes there is no deal being done for its support of this legislation—as if it thinks it makes it better. Really, it is worse. The Government insists it is not holding its nose and supporting the legislation in order to pass some of its own interests and the sectional interests of the business lobby's awful priorities. It is promising us that it just thinks this is a good idea. I hope it realises that that is worse.

Unfortunately, these types of deals have become a common feature of New South Wales politics. It appears that both the former O'Farrell Government and the preceding Labor Government, rather than debate and negotiate each piece of legislation on its merits, horsetraded with the former Shooters and Fishers Party and other right‑wing micro parties to push through contentious legislation in return for concessions in other areas. These deals have consequences—the overarching one being the slide towards a pro‑gun and hunting culture in New South Wales. Following the 1988 election loss of the Unsworth Government, the New South Wales Labor Party foolishly related the result to the attempt by the then Premier to tighten gun laws.

That myth fuelled close relationships between the shooters movement and some senior Labor leaders. From 1999 to 2003, with 13 crossbenchers in the New South Wales upper House, Labor had its work cut out securing enough support to pass legislation. In return for former Shooters Party MP John Tingle's support on many issues, shooting organisations made many gains. From 1998 to 2001 the Shooters Party secured more than $5 million in additional funding for shooters clubs. Several new shooting ranges and regional shooting complexes were built by taxpayers. As John Tingle said:

It should be said that one or two anti-gun oriented media persons have grumbled about "so much" money being given to shooting. let them grumble! I have lobbied the Government very hard for this funding, and I apologise to nobody for getting it.

In 2002 a deal between the Shooters Party and the then Labor Government saw the establishment of the Game Council NSW, which nominally oversaw the regulation of amateur and recreational hunting of feral animals on public land in New South Wales. Both Robert Brown and the Hon. Robert Borsak, members of the Shooters Party who were then in Parliament, are former chairmen of the Game Council. That statutory body was supposed to be self-funding, but it has since received an average of $1 million a year in public funding from government. It had no independent monitors, regulators or oversight.

In fact, the shooters policed themselves. The creation of the Game Council gave false legitimacy to the fringe views of the shooting lobby and saw an endless stream of publicly funded lobbying for the introduction of fringe right-wing pro-gun laws. These efforts included—but are in no way limited to—the introduction of silencers, the creation of game parks, sneaking pro‑hunting materials into primary schools and a proposal to allow children as young as 12 to hunt unsupervised on public land. The Game Council also delivered the return of duck hunting under the Orwellian guise of a "game bird mitigation program". As a result of the creation of the Game Council, 142 State forests were declared open for hunting for recreational hunters.

Four years later, in 2006, another 39 State forests were opened, again for a five‑year period. More than two million hectares of State forests were opened for hunters in which to stab, spear, shoot and use their dogs to gore wild animals. The Hon. Robert Brown stated that the Shooters and Fishers Party supported the government of the day, as long as its "constituents receive an occasional concession". Those occasional concessions are having a direct impact on our State. Gun numbers in this State continue to grow, meaning more hunters with more and more access to public land. Welcome to politics, New South Wales style—you had better bring a flak jacket.

We cannot possibly ignore the correlation between firearm ownership and domestic and family violence. We have long known that having a firearm in the home significantly increases the risk of escalation of violence and homicide. It does not take a genius to work that out. Putting a gun in the hands of someone who is angry and willing to attempt to control another person is a recipe for disaster. I do not feel I need to explain that. The average person would understand that full well. In the United States, every 12 hours someone is shot and killed by a current or former intimate partner, and the mere presence of a firearm in a domestic violence situation increases the risk of homicide by 500 per cent. Those are shocking figures in a country where firearms are far too readily accessible.

In Australia, there are very few domestic and family violence-related homicide deaths involving firearms, which is undoubtedly attributed to our strong gun safety laws. But there have been high-profile cases of police committing domestic homicides because of their access to guns. Again, it does not take a genius to work out why. The United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women sounded the alarm on the correlation between increased civilian access to firearms and gender-based violence in 1996, shortly before Port Arthur, and has continued to maintain that strong gun laws are a critical component of domestic violence prevention. That is why we saw a strong submission to an inquiry from Lucy's Project, which made the connection incredibly clear. That was backed up by all the peak domestic and family violence sector agencies as well as predominant advocates in the space.

Labor's support for the bill represents a fundamental betrayal of its stance against gender-based violence and its claims to be a progressive party for women. The fact that there is a possibility that we could see the creation of a Minister for hunting and fishing and a bounty council before we see a Minister for animal protection and an independent office of animal welfare or any kind of dramatic long-term investment in women's safety is truly absurd. That demonstrates just how morally bankrupt the Minns Labor Government has become and where its priorities really sit. I call on the New South Wales Labor Government to stand on the right side of history and reject any attempts from the shooting lobby to undermine the safety and protection of people and animals. We must ensure that public money is invested in evidence-based policies that meet community expectations. The bill before us would take us backwards in achieving that.

I was not fortunate enough to attend the inquiry into the bill, but I understand that a lot of people were upset that there was not enough opportunity to hear strong views from all of the different angles. Whether it be the animal welfare angle, the public safety angle or the domestic and family violence angle, those who have been lobbying for tighter gun laws did not feel they were given a real chance to be heard. When we look at the impact that Walter Mikac had in getting concessions from the Premier, it is clear to The Greens that the Government does not understand what it is doing. If there is not a deal, the fact that the Government is so willingly taking this step and putting more guns out into the community and into the hands of people who find it fun to hunt animals in their spare time is completely inexplicable. But I want to give the Government the benefit of the doubt, and I think another inquiry on this bill would really help. Therefore, I move:

That the question be amended by omitting "this bill be now read a second time" and inserting instead:

"this bill be referred to the Animal Welfare Committee for inquiry and report, including the examination of the impact of the bill on animal welfare, public safety, domestic and family violence and gun law reform in New South Wales.

(2) That the committee determine its own reporting date."

The Greens oppose the bill and urge other members to do the same.

Read the debate in Hansard here.

19 November 2025