SSAA (Vic) comment on Victorian Election result
The Morning program
3WL radio
21 September 1999
PRESENTER....Well, did the Kennett Government get special treatment from the shooters of Victoria, the gun owners of Victoria, at the election? Now, it's not an issue I would have thought of raising until we had our talkback yesterday, and we had several callers ring up and say they voted against the Kennett Government, they.. some voted Labor, because of concerns about the tightening of gun laws in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre and what they saw as the unfair imposition of tighter laws on them as law-abiding gun owners. It's not an issue anyone's mentioned ec.. since the election either, except for our talkback callers, but is there something in this?
Sebastian Ziccone is the Executive President of the Sporting Shooters Association. Good morning to you.
SEBASTIAN Ziccone....Good morning.
PRESENTER....Why did we not hear anything from.. from the major parties or even from the major lobby groups before the election on guns?
Ziccone....Well, there may not have been any public discussion of the firearms legislation in Victoria, but there was certainly a lot of private discussion. There was discussion between my Association and both the.. the then Police Minister and the Shadow Minister, and what might happen after an election. In my newsletter to all my members, approximately twenty-five thousand of them, I emphasised to them that we had been badly treated by both the Coalition and the Labor Party in the imposition of the 1996 Firearms Act and that maybe they should seek their political refuge in Independents. And obviously that's happened, especially in the north-west.
PRESENTER....Well, are there any seats where you can point to the.. the gun owners actually affecting the result?
Ziccone....Well, the north-west, Mildura, Swan Hill. In the.. in the east, the Independents' grip on the.. on the votes, of the tally, as they are at the moment. I think that that.. that general dissatisfaction, that feeling of disenfranchisement, that the shooters had and the portrayal of them as less than worthy citizens, especially in '96/'97, left them well and truly frustrated and angry.
PRESENTER....Now, there was an Independent candidate in the seat of Wimmera who did run openly on.. on.. with guns as an issue, one of the things he was advocating was the return of semi-automatic weapons, and he only got six hundred votes.
Ziccone....Well, maybe the.. in that area, the.. the issues were more than their guns were required. I don't suggest for one moment that guns were the major issue in this election, but they certainly added to the.. to the dissatisfaction that the.. the community felt.
PRESENTER....When you had talks before the election with the Government, what did you specifically say about the 1996 legislation?
Ziccone....Well, for a starter, it was unnecessary. Victoria's legislation prior to '96 was..
PRESENTER....Can I.. sorry, can I just pull you up there. For those that aren't familiar with it, what were the changes made in '96 that you were specifically concerned about?
Ziccone....Well, they banned semi-automatic firearms in Victoria, and Victoria had at the time the most restrictive access to semi-automatic firearms of any state. They banned the.. even.. there.. there was no capacity in the Act to allow for use of those firearms for competitive use other than for the Clay Target Association. There've been amendments to that Act that have changed that a little, and they've given the Field and Game Association access to semi-automatic shotguns for competition, but there are other competitive sports out there that are denied that and we felt that that was singling out people, possibly as payback, possibly as bribes. I don't know. The Act was implemented hastily. There have been four amendments to that Act since '96 when it was implemented, it's still not right, there are still a lot of a anomalies. There's an.. an enormous amount of bureaucratic paper shuffling that goes on with the Act, and none of it, absolutely none of it, has any effect on the se.. security of the community. The community isn't any safer now than it was before '96. All that the Act has done is made the access to firearms so restrictive that, unless you are a dedicated shooter, you.. you decide to give it away.
PRESENTER....But what.. what has voting Independent achieved though? Because the Labor Party is not going to side with you, and it's going to side with the Government on the gun laws, so even if Independents are elected, it's not going to achieve much politically for you.
Ziccone....Well, what Independents have done for us.. and the Independents that are there now and were there before have spoken up for us. Russell Savage was the only one who was brave enough to call for a division when the '96 Act was voted on, and he crossed the floor, he was the only one who voted against it, not necessarily because he has any love of guns, but because he saw the Act as punitive, restrictive and unnecessary. Now, the.. Susan Davies has spoken for us, especially during the amendments, and I appreciate that. She saw that some of those amendments were fair to some sections of the shooting community and unfair to others. So, what Independents do for us is that they bring an independent voice to it. And I've always believed that the party political system makes the representative a pawn of the party. He has no say. He has to follow the party line.
PRESENTER....In retrospect, do you regret that, unlike some previous elections, there was no specific Shooters Party or.. or.. or similar party candidates running in this election?
Ziccone....Well, we considered that and, as a shooting association, we decided that there was enough out there in the community to.. to cause a degree of protest vote.. and we were hoping that at least another Independent would get up, and that's a possibility at the moment.. so we felt that together with everything else that had gone in the last seven years, the gun issues would still be remembered. And in my newsletters, I.. I emphasised that point, so maybe those newsletters had an effect.
PRESENTER....Well, thanks for talking to us today and.. and raising an issue that.. there's obviously something subliminal in this campaign.
Ziccone....It always has been.
PRESENTER....Thank you very much.
Ziccone....Thank you.
PRESENTER....Sebastian Ziccone, from the Sporting Shooters Association.
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