Nash StuartHon STUART NASH (Minister of Police): I'm going to answer the questions put to me and certainly address the Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) tabled by that member—that's SOP 449 on pest control and SOP 450 on sport shooters. I just want to make one thing clear before I start. Keeping in mind the aim of this legislation is to keep the guns out of the hands of the bad people and as that member alluded to I think in his opening sentence how the bad guys get these guns is by stealing them off the good guys. If we remove these guns from our communities by and large they can't fall into the hands of the bad guys. So what we want to achieve here is to limit the number of people who actually have access to these guns.So let me talk about farmers; let me talk about SOP 449. What the member has alluded to is that every farmer should be allowed to go out and buy one of these guns. Now keep in mind these guns are primarily designed to kill people. Let's be honest about that. These guns are not primarily designed to kill goats or possums or rabbits or pigs or deer. The AR-15 is the civilian equivalent of the M16—it's the civilian equivalent of the M16. That's what these guns are designed for. So what I want to talk about is pest exemptions.Now the last speaker Brett Hudson got it wrong. The farmer does not need to wait until their business has been detrimentally affected to a significant extent until they can obtain an exemption. What they have to do is prove that in fact this would be the case. So what they will do is they will get a pest management plan signed off by the relevant territorial authority that says they have a pest management plan and the only way to deal with this is through a prohibited firearm. Now how we arrived at this was by talking to a group who I think understands the issues pretty well. We canvassed them. We talked to them. We looked at what the regime may be. That organisation is called Federated Farmers. Now when we talked to Federated Farmers we said What sort of regime do you think would work?" because initially in the bill we said you had to set up a business. Federated Farmers submitted to Finance and Expenditure Committee. Ron Mark put forward a very good submission and we looked at this and said "You know what? That actually makes sense." What Fed Farmers said makes sense. What Ron Mark submitted that actually makes sense. If a farmer has a real pest control problem and that farmer has signed off and worked with the territorial authority to actually state yes this is the best form of pest control then they can have a prohibited weapon. Of course they've got to enter the prohibited firearm regime but of course that's what we'd expect them to do. The last thing we want is for every farmer who thinks they have a rabbit problem and needs one of these to be able to access one which is what that member's SOP number 449 says. Hence the reason why I do not support SOP 449.Now let's talk about sport shooters. Let's talk about sport shooters. I'm the first to agree from what I am told pistol clubs manage their ranges incredibly well. They're good law-abiding citizens and they do a good job—they do a good job. And we've worked with them we've had a look at their regime. In fact that's the model we set up the whole regime around ranges on. They do a very good job but sport shooters if we gave this exemption for a person who is a bona fide target sports competitor in an internationally recognised discipline and who is a member of a target shooting club offering training—this is what this thing wants to do—there is no limit on the number of people who can do this. Keeping in mind there is no Olympic and no Commonwealth discipline that requires these prohibited firearms—no Olympic no Commonwealth discipline that requires these banned firearms—even if we limited this to three-gun competitions it would still amount to around about 2000 licence holders 2000 licence holders. What we have said is "You know what? We want to remove these guns from our community."Now I remember when I brought this up in an answer to an oral question in the House and I got laughed at. So we went away and researched this. There is no reason why the National Rifle Association under the SOP from that member could come over here and set up a bona fide club and a bona fide competition—a bona fide club and a bona fide competition. We don't have the ability to prevent that if the member's SOP came into force. That is the reason why we have said no to this. We have said no to this keeping in mind we have all made a decision because we all voted against the first legislation that said we wanted these firearms out of our community because we do want these firearms out of our community and to get them out of our community this is what we need to do.We debated this long and hard. The select committee looked at this and debated long and hard I know this. They considered the submissions and in the end I believe they have fallen on the right side of the objectives of this legislation. Hence the reasons why I will not support SOP 449 on pest control and I will not support SOP 450 on sport shooters."