Disallowance motions relating to Western Australia’s new gun laws have been tabled in both houses on the first sitting day the new parliament.
In the lower house, Nationals MP Shane Love kept his election promise to move, on the first sitting day, a motion disallowing the Firearms Act 2024 — a hated piece of legislation that has been the subject of several articles in Sporting Shooter this year alone.
“I’ve moved to disallow the Firearms Act 2024, a law that piles on red tape without making our communities any safer,” Mr Love said.
“It’s time for Labor to back law-abiding, responsible firearms owners and scrap these flawed laws.”
In the upper house, Legalise Cannabis Party MP Dr Brian Walker moved that the Firearms Regulations 2024 be disallowed, a motion which, if successful, would essentially render the Firearms Act inoperable.
“Why did I do that? Because we deserve the chance to debate these [gun law] changes properly, and we were denied that last year, when Labor flexed the massive majority it no longer has,” Dr Walker said, adding that debate on the motion was anticipated “in the coming weeks”.
As important as it is for these motions to be lodged, it is worth remembering that Labor has an absolute majority in the lower house and is thus unlikely to decide that laws which it championed, guillotined debate on, and rammed through are in fact flawed and need to be repealed.
However, in the 36-seat upper house, Labor does not have a majority.
It has only have 15 available votes (due to one Labor MP being the house president), but the balance of power lies with the Greens (with four votes) who are unlikely to decide that draconian gun laws introduced without proper consultation or consideration are a bad thing.
Shooters Union Western Australia state advocate Steve Harrison said he was pleased to see Mr Love keeping his word on the issue and Dr Walker continuing his opposition to the way the legislation had been forced through parliament.
“The possum is officially stirred, and I know that there are other parliamentarians who are champing at the bit to fix the stupidity of this new, overbearing, unnecessary and intrusive legislation,” he said.
“There is a need for politicians to get back into the fray and this is a good start.”
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