The One Nation Factor
by Paul Peake
Australian Shooters Journal
August 1998
The result in the recent Queensland state election has reinforced two important points, both of which are deeply significant for all firearm owners and Australia's various state and Federal administrations alike. The first of these is the fact that John Howard's intransigence on the question of firearms regulation, and the apparent willingness of individual state governments to capitulate on the issue, has proven to be an unmitigated political disaster for the Coalition in Queensland. The second is that the One Nation Party is a genuine political phenomenon which has changed the scope of Australian politics irreversibly.
Part of the reason for independent state administrations within a federated system such as ours is to ensure against the persecution of remote central governments. In May, 1996, however, individual state authorities in Australia lined up behind their Federal counterparts in order to pursue one of the most ill-conceived bouts of public policy manipulation ever visited upon a section of the community. Under the Howard government's 'buyback' confiscation scheme hundreds of thousands of law-abiding people, who in many cases had owned particular firearms for decades, were forced to relinquish their private property under threat of criminal sanction. In the process, long established features of the Australian way of life were overthrown and a significant portion of the community were unjustly made the objects of national scorn.
"Neither of the major parties . . . ."
This considered, the outcome
in Queensland as far as it pertains to the issue of firearms is not hard to
understand. The Coalition in the north broke faith with shooters at the critical
point when they should have been working to protect them from the ultimatums
of an out-of-touch Canberra regime. The Liberal and National Parties in Queensland
abandoned sound policy principles in deference to what they wrongly perceived
to be political profit. There are sound reasons why the nation's founding
fathers did not give the Federal Government the Constitutional prerogative
to control firearms. The Queensland Coalition along with their concomitants
in other states chose to disregard them all.
The point notwithstanding, even as late as June of this year in reply to a letter from the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia pointing out that the overwhelming majority of Queensland parliamentarians had voted in favour of prejudicial amendments to the Weapons Act, then Deputy Government Whip and now the former Member for Mansfield, Frank Carroll MLA, was seriously arguing that shooters ought to support the Coalition anyway, because - quoting from Mr Carroll's correspondence - "neither of the major parties are prepared to consider revocation of the 1996 Legislation." In other words, you have nowhere else to go so give us your vote!
In his critique of the Australian character entitled The Lucky Country, noted author Donald Horne lamented the fact that the greatest misfortune to befall Australians was to have "their affairs controlled by second-rate men . . . . who cling to power but fail to lead." (1) The political price for the Queensland Coalition's self-seeking on the issue of guns has been one of the greatest swings against an incumbent government in Australia's political history, driven in no small measure by the indignation of tens of thousands of law-abiding Queensland shooters and their families, who between them were compelled to surrender 128,783 (2) lawfully held firearms or face prison - their state representatives apparently assuming that in the absence of an alternative place to put their vote, the support of gun owners could be taken for granted irrespective of what had been done to them.
Political non-issue
The lesson for governments
and oppositions around the country is both explicit and obvious. By and large,
firearms are a political non-issue, inasmuch as no one is likely to change
their vote to a particular party because they are supposedly 'tough on guns'.
A mulish approach to the subject did not help the National Party in the May,
1996 New South Wales by-elections where party leader Ian Armstrong admitted
that the Nationals' position on guns had worked heavily against them. (3) It did not aid John Olsen and the South Australian Liberal Party in the October,
1997 state election where there was a 13% swing against the Coalition, (4) despite being one of the first groups to embrace the Federal government's
anti-firearm policies.
The recent Queensland election clearly demonstrates that for the bulk of the non-gun owning public the issue of firearms is a long way down the list of electoral priorities. On the other hand, a great many shooters aggrieved at the major parties' handling of the issue appear ready and willing to direct their ballot against sitting members when presented with an opportunity to place it somewhere else.
There is no doubt that the votes redirected towards the One Nation Party comprise the most significant factor in the Queensland election. The Party's rising stocks constitute one of the most extraordinary developments in Australian politics for a very long time. (5) From the firearm owner's perspective the potential implications of One Nation's performance are profound.
Recognising the opportunity to maximise the shooter's vote, former Sporting Shooters Association of Australia National President Ted Drane has even gone so far as to counsel in favour of a formal merger between the Australian Reform Party and One Nation. (6) The impetus is understandable. One Nation's comprehensive firearm policy released a month before the election includes a number of important points which the SSAA has argued in favour of for several years, including the notion of a prohibited persons' register and the abolition of blanket gun registration. Similarly, the issue of self defence features heavily in One Nation's platform.
The Party supports the right of Australians to defend themselves and their families in their own homes, linking it definitively to the legitimate freedom to own firearms. Few issues have generated as much discontent among sections of the gun owning public as the Federal Government's arbitrary removal of the right to self defence contained in its 1996 Australasian Police Ministers Council edicts and slavishly supported by Australia's various state administrations.
Shooters take "revenge"
It is easy to understand
how the support of disgruntled Queensland shooters contributed to One Nation's
electoral success, a point readily admitted by the Queensland National Party
president, David Russell, in comments to the Sydney Morning Herald. (7) Russell openly blames John Howard's treatment of the gun laws for firearm
owners' outright rejection of the Coalition, arguing that shooters had "taken
their revenge". (8)
One Nation appears to have struck a substantial chord with gun owners right across the country, irrespective of the theories which usually apply to political prediction.
Real movement
While it is important
for shooters and their representative organisations to remain vigilant and
mindful of particular bureaucracies and international structures, the notion
that government functionaries and academics with a role in firearm policy
development can be persuaded to adopt a more balanced view of the issue is
naive. Many of the individuals who frequent both sectors at the national and
international level have built their reputations on chiefly anti-gun platforms;
hence, they have a strong professional motivation for maintaining an anti-firearm
position. Moreover, public policy formulation is an interactive enterprise;
politicians frequently bring particular agendas to their portfolios and consequently
there is an impetus on the part of those charged with providing policy advice
to offer up what they think a particular minister or department head wants
to hear. An agency is highly unlikely to advise a staunchly anti-gun attorney-general
that his basic assumptions about firearms regulation are thoroughly flawed.
The Queensland result reinforces the argument that the ballot box is the only sure way to secure the future of private firearms ownership in Australia. It is only when politicians perceive that there is more to be lost than gained by harassing law-abiding shooters that real movement is forthcoming.
Delivering a wake-up call
The immediate task for
the One Nation Party is to work towards converting the support which it obviously
enjoys in Queensland and across the rest of the country into both Senate and
House of Representatives seats. For all firearm owners, state and Federal
members genuinely empathetic to the expectations of shooters are vital if
the United Nations-led efforts to invalidate shooters' rights are to be thwarted.
Over the last two years law-abiding firearms owners in Australia have been forced to endure insult heaped upon injury, the bullying of media demagogues, the confiscation of their assets, the partial destruction of their sport and the thoroughly unreasonable overthrow of their rights. One Nation's ascendancy in Queensland coupled with its sensible firearm policy may well provide the opportunity they have been waiting for.
After years of artful assurances designed to garner support from the organised firearms fraternity and cajole average shooters into supporting them, both major parties have finally been delivered a conspicuous wake-up call on the issue. What the Queensland result clearly demonstrates is that John Howard was wrong-headed in his stubborn stand on firearms, the states were ill-advised to blindly follow the Prime Minister's demands and if both do not swiftly re-think their position electoral calamity could be just around the corner.
1. Horne, D. The Lucky Country. London: Angus & Robertson, 1978 p. 33.
2. 'The Great Australian Gun "Buyback", Australian Shooters Journal, Dec. 97.
3. 'Voters take a shot at National Party', The West Australian, May 27, 1996.
4. 'Counting continues in SA election', http://www.abc.net.au/news/97/10/13/971013_15.htm
5. See: Summers, J., Woodward, D., Parkin, A. Government, politics and power
in Australia. Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1990 p. 157.
6. Porteous, C. 'Shooters aim for Hanson merger', The Herald Sun, June 16, 1998.
7. Roberts, G. 'Shaken Nats' Wik warning', The Sydney Morning Herald, June 15,
1998.
8. Ibid.
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