Shooting representatives are quietly cheering after Western Australian MP Paul Papalia lost his position as Police Minister in a reshuffle of the state government’s cabinet — and good riddance to him.
Papalia strutted like a strongman as he implemented the new gun laws without proper consultation and by disingenuous means, demonising law-abiding shooters but never demonstrating how his laws might genuinely benefit public safety.
However, his departure does not mean we’re necessarily going to see any improvement in the situation for shooters in the state, who are staring down the barrel of the brutal new gun laws Papalia dumped on them.
Other crucial things have not changed:
1. Western Australian police have been set against the shooting sports for decades, and were as complicit as Papalia in the production and enactment of the state’s Firearms Act 2025. The active anti-gun stance of WAPOL (an unelected body of supposed public servants) is our biggest hurdle.
2. No WA government in modern times has looked favourably at shooting.
3. Premier Roger Cook spent time standing in front of his former Police Minister in press conferences, spruiking the new gun laws.
Meanwhile, there is no indication whatsoever that the new police minister, Reece Whitby, will give us anything better than what we’ve been dealt by his colleagues in the past.
As Environment Minister, Whitby led the implementation of the Labor Government’s marine parks, which threaten to shut off massive amounts of ocean to fishing.
He was was accused of lack of consultation by fishers, and there are serious doubts that science played much of a role in design of the parks, which reek of political ideology.
He was almost as polarising as Papalia but he did give ground, cutting the no-fishing zone from 25% to 20% of the 1.3 million hectare marine park.
A journalist for 20 years, Whitby says, “I often reported on battlers standing up for a fair go, which encouraged my interest in the potential for the political system to help create better, fairer communities.”
Let’s hope that’s more than just the usual hollow political posturing, because any fool can see WA shooters have not had a fair go from its government, which has most certainly not been better or fairer towards the shooting community.
Meanwhile, Papalia continues to look after the defence industries portfolio for the government, and takes on emergency services.
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