The Northern Territory appears to be advancing its plans to join the National Firearms Register (NFR), which is being pitched as an “important new initiative that will enhance both police and community safety across Australia” and theoretically is supposed to be implemented in mid-2028.
Shooters in the Territory received an email from NT Police on 28 February advising them of the implementation of the Northern Territory National Firearms Registry program.
“The Northern Territory NFR project aims to modernise legislation, policies, business processes, technical systems and streamline data to ensure national consistency,” the letter says.
“This will include the development of online portals for firearms licence holders and dealers, as well as a moving away from paper-based processes,” the letter reads.
“In the coming weeks, we will be asking all firearm licence holders to complete a simple self-check form. This form will require basic information about the licence holder and details of any firearms owned, such as serial numbers and photographs.
“This will enable records to be checked before they are uploaded to the NFR, giving peace of mind to licence holders that their information is complete and in accordance with the NFR requirements.”
A National Firearms Register was agreed to in the wake of the Wieambilla incident in 2022, and was initially understood to be a form of real-time data sharing between the state and territory firearms licensing branches.
However, sources indicate the NFR is evolving into something much more complex, involved and expensive — and unlikely to improve public safety in any significant way.
Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park said while it was good the NT was modernising its licensing processes, there were serious concerns about suggestions shooters would be required to provide photographs of their guns, and it set off alarms about what might be on the cards as other states and territories started bringing their registries in line with the NFR.
“It’s well known that most police officers know barely anything about guns, so photographs of a licence holder’s individual firearms aren’t going to help police at all, but they will unnecessarily compromise shooter’s privacy and safety,” he said.
“Most modern bolt-action hunting rifles look more or less the same to the untrained eye, so if someone from the police wants to know what a Howa 1500 rifle looks like, they can look it up on the internet. They don’t need a picture of the specific one John Licenceholder has.
“As the shooting industry, we get told the NFR is supposed to be a way of getting all the state firearms registries to talk to each other effectively, but it’s clear that something with much further reach is planned, and it’s not going to benefit responsible firearms users.”
He also said this over-reach was exactly what Shooters Union was afraid of, and the various firearms registries were so hopelessly inaccurate that it was unlikely to be possible to fix them.
“There’s no information about who is overseeing these NFR harmonisation projects or what firearms knowledge they have, and even in the shooting industry there can be multiple ways of correctly recording the information for a particular firearm – which is going to complicate an already complicated and unnecessary undertaking even further.
“We have said for years that the solution is to do away with individual firearms registration, and stick to licensing the person, as New Zealand and Canada do.
“It’s much easier to keep track of, costs a lot less and still ensures public safety by making sure only fit and proper people have access to guns.”
More information on the NT Police NFR project is available at https://pfes.nt.gov.au/nationalfirearmsregister.
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