Queensland Police Minister Dan Purdie has been called a “liar or incapable of managing his portfolio” after giving a non-answer in parliament to dodge issues about the state’s beleaguered Weapons Licensing Group (WLG).
WLG have been facing constant calls for accountability and explanations after recent changes to its policies — signed off in May 2024 — which now involve, among other things, asking Category B PTA applicants for excessive information regarding exactly where they’re planning on using the rifle, what animals they are hunting, and why one of their existing guns isn’t suitable.
KAP MP Nick Dametto addressed Mr Purdie in parliament on 29 April.
“Firearms licence holders are reporting ongoing issues with the apparent change of procedure for the Weapons Licensing branch while assessing permits to acquire,” Mr Dametto said.
“Will the minister inform the House if the assessment process has changed and, if not, explain why licence holders are being denied PTAs or being made to answer previously unrequired questions to satisfy a PTA application?”
In his response, Mr Purdie acknowledged the importance of the issue and that he had received a great deal of communication from shooters, MPs and regular Queenslanders over the matter, and reiterated there had been “no change to the policies and procedures [at Weapons Licensing Group] since we came to power after the election last October”.
Mr Purdie then stated, inaccurately, that in “2022, under [the ALP Government], there were 95,000 PTA applications outstanding at Weapons Licensing and a 24-week delay in responding to those applications. In the short time we have been in government, the Weapons Licensing branch has the reply time down to seven weeks and the backlog is negligible… We have the reply time down, as I said, to a matter of only seven weeks — the best it has been in a decade.”
Mr Purdie’s response has been criticised across the shooting community for being a ‘non-answer’ which dodged the issue, particularly by its qualifier of “since we [LNP] came to power after the election last October”.
Right To Information (RTI) documents seen by Sporting Shooter show that WLG’s current Permit To Acquire application policy was drafted by WLG’s director on 11 May 2024 and approved on 31 May 2024.
The figures Mr Purdie gave regarding backlogged PTA applications in 2022 are also questionable — there were almost certainly not 95,000 PTA applications backlogged at WLG that year.
RTI documents show that in 2019 there were 52,228 PTA applications in Queensland, and 27,855 for the first six months of 2020. It is understood the average number of PTAs processed annually in QLD is currently around 65,000.
It is true, however, that there were significant delays in processing PTAs in 2022, which resulted in WLB recruiting extra staff to get processing times down — but those delays were generally in the region of 1-2 months, not six months.
The claim that the PTA reply time is down to seven weeks and that is the best it has been in a decade is also wrong on both counts — per WLG’s own website, the average PTA application processing time is 30 days as of 27 April 2025, and PTAs for Category A and B firearms have historically taken around two weeks to process, with a period a few years ago when they were being issued in a few days in many cases.
Townsville-based Pagan Firearms owner Anthony Pagan encapsulated the frustration of Queensland shooters in his criticism of Mr Purdie’s response, straight out saying the Minister was “either a liar or incapable of running his portfolio”.
“Thousands of LAFOs [law-abiding firearms owners] across the state don’t suddenly start complaining about the same PTA issue because ‘nothing has changed’,” he said.
“[Premier] David Crisafulli: Replace this Minister with someone who has the tenacity to whip WLB back into line, and not just accept the word of a few bureaucrats looking to save their skin.”
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