Tuesday 24 March 2026- NSW Parliament Legislative Assembly - Tuesday 24 March 2026
Public Interest Debate Firearms Legislation
Mrs JUDY HANNAN (Wollondilly) (17:40):
By leave: We all agree on one thing: Public safety matters. This public interest debate is no solution to the difficulties introduced late last year by the tighter gun laws, which were supported by both the Liberal and Labor parties. There has been no consultation on how we make them effective, fair and workable in the real world. The quick introduction of tighter gun laws was a response to a serious incident. While the intention may have been to improve safety, we must be honest about the outcome. Will the laws improve public safety, and what about unintended consequences?
Too often, rapid changes to legislation lead to unintended consequences, adding layers of complexity without delivering meaningful improvements in public safety. That is what happens when laws are made reactively rather than thoughtfully. When policy is rushed, without proper consultation or scrutiny, it misses the mark.
Compliance suffers, not because people reject safety but because the rules become unclear, inconsistent or impractical. The Bondi incident was awful, but we still do not have clear answers. How were the individuals able to obtain firearms and licences after travelling overseas for training? What removed them from watchlists? Those are not minor administrative questions; they go to the heart of whether our system was working as intended. Tightening laws further means little if enforcement gaps and oversight failures remain unaddressed. At the same time, many law-abiding citizens—farmers, and sporting and recreational shooters in my electorate—have expressed deep frustration.
They were not consulted. They are being affected by changes that do not take into account the realities of their work and responsibilities. In fact, we do not even have clear definitions in some cases. For example, what constitutes a "farm" in terms of acreage? Yet we are layering on regulation. Then there are the unintended consequences. Consider security operators who are responsible for transporting cash. They are highly regulated professionals, operating within strict insurance and legislative frameworks. They had approvals in place to carry the firearms necessary to do their jobs safely but, under the changes, those approvals have been withdrawn pending unclear parameters that are yet to be finalised.
The result is those operators are now unable to meet their work commitments or comply fully with the very regulations that are designed to ensure safety. That is not improved oversight; it is operational uncertainty. Tuesday 24 March 2026 Legislative Assembly- PROOF Page 49 We must ask ourselves are we truly making people safer or are we creating a system that is harder to navigate, harder to enforce and ultimately less effective? Good policy requires balance. It requires evidence, consultation and clarity. It requires us to fix the weaknesses in our current systems—licensing processes, monitoring, intelligence sharing—before simply adding more rules on top.
If we want laws that work, we must build them with the people they affect, not impose the laws upon them. We must ensure that every change strengthens both safety and trust. Without public confidence, without practical implementation and without clear oversight, even the strongest laws on paper will fail in practice. I urge members to support the amendment of my colleague the Member for Barwon.