The recently appointed new CEO of SSAA, Tom Kenyon, believes tougher gun laws will be rolled out across Australia in the wake of Western Australia’s imposition of harsh new laws, under pressure from police and the bureaucracy.
Mr Kenyon, who served for 12 years as a Labor MP in the South Australian parliament before founding the Family First party, made the comments at the National Gun Conference.
With his political background, he brings to the SSAA a deeper insight into the workings of government, something that has raised hopes among other shooting representatives that the organisation may play a stronger and more cooperative role in lobbying on behalf of shooters.
Mr Kenyon spoke of the need for co-operation between organisations, saying SSAA was facing exactly the same problems as everybody else politically.
“[We’re] probably woken up by Western Australia and realising that they’re not going to leave us alone, that we can’t just go about running our club and putting out magazines and everything else, and expect them just to leave us alone and everyone to think it’s great,” he said.
“I think the politicians in general see [shooters] as a bit of an easy hit.
“There’s a lot of pressure from people, particularly from inside the police, but through the bureaucracy as well, to always reduce the number of firearms.
“I think what we’ve seen in Western Australia is going to be attempted to roll out nationally and we [shooters] have got an opportunity now to try and scramble and get ourselves organised.
“I agree … that we need to work together in a way — not a new organisation — but I think the key is to work together in our own interests.
“Those interests of the survival of our sport go across all clubs, all organisations and everything else — so really, what we really need … is common messaging so that whenever we go to meet with politicians … and communicating inside the community as well, we’re sending out common messages.”
Mr Kenyon said ensuring a unity of message from the shooting industry was important, as it was easy for government ministers to pick off fragmented industries.
From his previous experience as a politician, he gave an example of how lack of unity can be used by a politician to twist the message.
“You can have five people come and see you, and four of them can say the same thing — and one can say something slightly different and you grab that one person, you make them stand up next to you in a press conference and they say, ‘Oh no, this is all fine, you know we just want a slight change’ and it undermines everybody else’s message, especially in the public’s minds.”
He acknowledged it would take some time to get an effective industry alliance properly established, but having all the shooting organisations working together more closely would make a significant difference.
“We need to start rolling that [pro-law abiding firearms owner] messaging out in a coordinated way, and a sustained way as well,” he said.
“This is not something we [shooting organisations] can do over three months; this is something we’ll do over three, four, five, 10 years.”
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