The scale of New South Wales’ gun buyback scheme has been laid out.
On Sunday morning, Anthony Albanese was joined by New South Wales Premier Chris Minns and the state’s Police Minister Yasmin Catley as he spoke about the initiative.
Mr Albanese said the scheme would be split evenly between the State and Federal governments.
New South Wales will be the first jursidiction involved and it will come into effect nearly a year after the mass shooting at Bondi Beach on December 15.
Mr Minns said he expected the scheme would remove 274,000 guns from the streets of New South Wales.
“To put it into perspective the Howard era buyback took around 160,000 guns out of circulation in NSW,” he said.
“This program alone will see 274,000 guns out of circulation in NSW.
“It’s far bigger in scope.”
Under the scheme, gun owners will be compensated up to $1000 per firearm.
Mr Minns said he believed it would be the “toughest gun laws” in Australia.
“We believe NSW will have the toughest gun laws of any state in Australia,” he said.
“Some of the toughest gun laws of any place in the world.
“We are doing this deliberately to get guns out of circulation in our community to ensure we don’t have another terrorism event... in our state.”
While it remains unclear exactly how much the scheme will cost, Mr Minns told reporters he estimated it could be “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
“It is largely demand driven, the costs are split 50/50 so we don’t have an exact cost today but its hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.
“I’m not gonna skirt it, it’s expensive.
“But it’s a price worth paying.”
When asked if other states were likely to adopt a similar scheme, the Prime Minister criticised their licensing laws.
“These arrangements are available to every state and territory, and this reform comes on top of previous reforms that’s been undertaken by my government in partnership with states and territories,” he said.
“I think it is somewhat farcical that some states were still... having paper licences that therefore couldn’t be traced,” he said.
To which, Mr Minns added that New South Wales could not “wait for every state to come on board”.
The comments come as One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, a gun owner herself, revealed to News24 that she opposed the scheme.
“We’re actually crucifying those legal gun owners here,” she said.
“It wasn’t the guns; it was the people behind the guns
“People can only buy one gun at a time. So these are law-abiding citizens that have lost their guns or are going to lose them.
“And then again, why should the taxpayer be paying for this as well? We’re talking about over a billion dollars. So I think it’s wrong to be heading down this path.”
A fixed price schedule will apply for individual licence holders beyond the new legal limit to return their firearms in exchange for compensation.
Eligible businesses and dealers will be offered up to $25,000 in grants and one-off licence fee relief worth $500 over two years per dealer.
Early 2027 will see a pathway to compensation, for a fee, for eligible higher-value firearms with an indicative market value above $3000 and capped at $10,000 per firearm.
It’s estimated up to 274,000 registered firearms or about 24 per cent of the total number of registered guns in NSW - and some 50,000 licence holders are affected by the new limits on ownership.
“After Bondi, we promised ... we would introduce the toughest gun laws in the country and that’s exactly what we did,” Mr Minns said.
“The next step is getting the guns that are no longer permitted under those laws out of circulation and permanently off our streets.”
This scheme is informed by the recommendations of the anti-Semitism royal commission.
- With AAP
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