Chris Minns – Compare and Contrast
Content warning – this article discusses domestic violence.
Some of the most critical things to contemplate when considering policy change are “is the system broken”, “what part of the system is broken” and “how can it best be fixed”.
After a flurry of activity and rapid firearm policy change through December and January following the catastrophic Bondi terrorist event, we are now starting to peel back the onion in relation to where the system may actually be broken.
Following the release of the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion Interim Report, hearings have recommenced in the past week, including evidence provided by ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess.
Among his evidence, it was revealed that the Bondi offenders were never re-examined by ASIO following a 2019 investigation for suspected links to terrorist sympathisers, despite actions such as travelling to former terrorism hotspots in the Philippines.
In the submission, Mr Burgess also confirmed that “ASIO has never received a referral from a firearms licencing authority and has never given a security assessment relating to a firearms licencing decision.” This is despite recommendation 39 from the Coronial Inquest into the deaths arising from the Lindt Cafe Siege in 2014, that spoke to the need to review existing information sharing arrangements between federal, state and territory agencies related to terrorism.
Also at the commission this week, NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Kirsty Heyward, who oversees NSW licensing enforcement, told the commission that a “clunky” spreadsheet was used within the firearms registry, which meant multiple people were involved in assessing a single application for a licence, and that this presented a risk of a “slip or miss of information” between assessments of different adjudicators.
Heyward was also asked about a 2021 internal review into the NSW firearms registry which found the intelligence analyst role was “underutilised, only reactive, and duplicated the work of the adjudicators”. This review stated the lack of an in-house intelligence capability presented a “significant risk to both public safety and the NSW police force”.
This brings us back to contemplating “is the firearm licencing system broken”, “what part of the firearm licencing system is broken” and “how can firearm licencing best be fixed”.
Let’s park that matter for a minute and compare and contrast recent statements from the NSW Premier in relation to an awful domestic violence incident and the urgency of policy change implied.
On the 18 May, a Sydney man was charged with murder over the death of a women and two children aged 12 and 4 who were confirmed by NSW Police to be his wife and children. NSW Police also advised media that the three victims “sustained significant injuries and it was a particularly violent crime scene.” It was also noted that no firearms were located.
In response to this incident, the NSW Premier stated, “We’ll look at it very closely, I’ll try and do everything I possibly can to ensure that we don’t see repeats of this, but I can’t promise it.” A very different approach to his sprinting determination to change firearms laws post Bondi.
This is despite the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research “Domestic Violence Related Murder in NSW – Trends to December 2025” documenting that there were 32 domestic violence related murders in the 12 months to December 2025 in NSW.
To be very clear, domestic violence and terrorism are highly complex policy areas often with devastating outcomes for Australians. It is also critical to emphasise that there should never be a competition between which victims of violence deserve more sympathy or attention.
What this does raise is the need for those charged with the responsibility of setting policy and protecting the community to do so consistently in a considered, thorough and evidence-based manner, otherwise community safety is compromised.
It is sadly impossible to bring back the 51 souls taken in 2025 between the Bondi terrorist attack and through domestic violence related murder, but it is critical for our elected leaders to fulfil their responsibility to take best-practice approaches to setting policy in a methodical and evidence-based fashion.
Politicians must be committed to at least the very basics of establishing “is the system broken”, “what part of the system is broken” and “how can it best be fixed” in all scenarios, and without that, the safety of all of us is at risk.