Shooters Union has made a submission AND an in-person hearing appearance on behalf of our members regarding the Police Legislation (Efficiencies And Effectiveness) Amendment Bill 2021.
Some of the issues the Bill deals with includes extending the time firearms may be held in safekeeping by another licensed shooter or dealer from three months to six months, and changes to the Firearms Amnesty legislation to allow dealers to retain anonymously surrendered firearms while PTAs are being processed.
Our submission, which you can read here, was essentially that while we support extending the safekeeping time from three to six months, we are deeply concerned Weapons Licensing will then use it as an excuse to be even slower at processing licences or resolving licence issues than they currently are now.
We were joined at the public hearing by SIFA, who also provided a written submission, and the Firearms Dealers association of Queensland had provided a written-only submission, but were somewhat surprised to see we were the only Queensland-based firearms advocacy group to both make a written submission and appear at the public hearing.
Our involvement with this inquiry is just one of the countless things we do to represent shooters, and we’ll be sure to keep you posted on any developments from it.
A copy of the Bill itself can be found here, and the explanatory notes are here.