Our South Australian president Peter Heggie has been involved in some very productive discussions with the South Australian Police Firearms Registry as we work with them to resolve the current firearms licence and permit backlog.
You may have seen recent media stories highlighting the lengthy delays in processing firearms licence applications and renewals (well over six months at present) and Permits To Acquire (around two months) in South Australia, and there’s no denying the situation is causing serious issues for firearm dealers and shooters alike.
Peter has been in touch with South Australia Police's Firearms Registry to get an explanation, and the Firearms Registry team have been very communicative with him about the matter.
We understand the SA Firearms Registry has recently had a number of staff depart, taking their experience and expertise with them, and are in the process of replacing them and training new team members – which is obviously not helping with processing delays.
Peter is scheduling meetings with senior Firearms Registry staff very soon to table some practical and effective solutions to the backlog, and we believe SAPOL are genuinely committed to fixing the licence and permit processing delay issues.
We also understand there have been some internal staff changes, which we believe will result in improvements for processing times as well.
We’d like to thank SAPOL for engaging with us in good faith over this issue and committing to work to resolve the situation – and we hope to have more positive news to report soon.
