NEWSLETTER FROM THE OFFICE OF JOHN TINGLE MLC 15.10.03
CD
15.10.03
BUYBACK BACKUP
Some interesting horror stories are emerging from the great pistol "buyback"
*. What is abundantly clear, after the first two weeks of it, is that it
has no hope of being completed by March 31, 2004. It is taking much
longer to process each owner's firearms than had been expected.
The slowness of the process is creating huge delays at the buyback vans, and
a number of people have become exasperated at the delay and have walked
away. This is absolutely understandable, but it just means they will have
to go back another day.
One man wrote to tell me he had arrived at 9.00 a.m. at the van, had been
given ticket No 36, and had finally got into the van at 3.15 p.m. Having
taken a day off work to go to the van, he was less than impressed. I have
also heard from someone who got there at 7.45 a.m., on a particularly busy
day, and got into the van at 3.00 p.m., even though his ticket was No.19!
There have also been arguments about whether particular pistols are
prohibited, with, in one case, a Hammerli Co2 single shot air pistol being
identified as prohibited at the inspection. The owner had to sign the
abandonment form. But then the next van official on the line, looked on the
computer and found the pistol was not prohibited after all, meaning they
could not legally pay the owner the $400 he had been offered in
compensation. This caused a gridlock, while they tried to work out some
sort of procedure for undoing the abandonment form and giving him his gun
back. He wrote to me reporting this incident, and he will now receive a
letter of apology from the police, together with an assurance that the
pistol has remained legally registered to him.
If the van(s) ever do come to your area, get there early, and take an esky
and a cut lunch. When they realise the queue is as big as they can handle
that day, they put up a notice indicating that people arriving after the
notice goes up will not be able to be processed that day. It's going well
beyond irritation and inconvenience to become a major mess for all of us!
BIG CALIBRES
My emails are chock-a-block with queries about the details of the new pistol
laws, the buyback, and the amnesty, and it's proving a big workload to try
to answer them individually.
I am worried at the number of queries from Single (Western) Action and
Metallic Silhouette shooters seeking to confirm that they can continue to
use their pistols of above-.38 calibre, because they believe they are
"exempt". They are not, until the owners get a Commissioner's Permit for
those larger calibres. There is no automatic exemption for calibres above
.38. Application forms for the Commissioner's Permit were attached to the
letter sent to all shooters at the start of the "buyback."* You should get
these forms in without delay, because if the Firearms Registry is able to
process the application in time having the Permit could save a lot of
arguments.
ON A BOND
I have given notice of a Bill to change what happens when a firearms owner
is put on a Good Behaviour Bond, and his Firearm Licence is automatically
revoked for the period of the Bond. This is absolutely unjustifiable in
many cases. When somebody appears before a court, a Bond is supposed to be
given only when the offence is relatively minor; when the defendant has a
previous
NEWSLETTER FROM THE OFFICE OF JOHN TINGLE 15.10.03
Page 2
good record; and where the Court believes the defendant is unlikely to
offend again. In a sense, the court is saying "We believe you did what you
are charged with, but we believe it was probably an isolated incident. So
we are putting you on a Bond to be of good Behaviour for (x) number of
years, to demonstrate that you won't do it again."
So, the court appears to be accepting the defendant's good intentions. I
believe it is, therefore, ridiculous to take away legally owned firearms,
unless the defendant was charged with something involving firearms or
violence, and that is what my Bill sets out to change.
This Bill will follow the two Bills of which I have given notice, namely the
Bill to provide penalties for vexatious or frivolous AVO's, and to change
their effect on firearm owners; and the Bill to set minimum standards of
bushfire hazard reduction in National Parks.
PERMITS TO ACQUIRE
A glitch in the system has confused the arrangements for issuing Permits to
Acquire; and this is developing into yet another major problem for the
stressed-out Firearms Registry.
Their computer cannot issue a Permit to Acquire to somebody who does not
have the appropriate category of licence; or whose licence is about to
expire. I am hearing from lots of people who want to know why it's taking
weeks, or even months, for the PTA to be issued, when the waiting period is
supposed to be only 28 days. The reason is, of course, that the massive
backlog of five-year licence renewals, caused by the under-resourcing of the
Registry, is holding up PTA's because they can't be issued until after the
licence renewal is issued.
However, I understand the Registry now has legal advice that it must issue a
PTA as soon as practicable after the expiry of the 28-day period. To
comply with this, the Registry will now have to issue all the lodged PTA's
manually. This is a slow and messy process; and, obviously, while Registry
staff are doing that they can't be processing licence renewals.
And so it goes. I reckon the Registry must be slipping back two or three
days every day!
THE 1800 NUMBER
Last Monday, October 13, the 1800 Hotline Number for the buyback failed in a
big way. People trying to ring it to get information then did exactly the
wrong thing, and rang the Registry freecall number. Again! - the Registry
is NOT handling the buyback and can't answer queries about it.
NEWSLETTERS
One of the major frustrations of this job is the huge number of queries I
get which have already been answered in my newsletters. The newsletters are
probably the only reliable information updates that shooters get, and it
saves time, money and effort if they are distributed as widely as possible.
So if you are reading this only because someone has passed it on or emailed
it to you, you could save time by putting yourself on our emailing list.
Our address for this is below.
John Tingle MLC
The Shooters' Party, Parliament House, Sydney
Phone (02) 9230 3059 Fax: (02) 9230 2613
Email: cti...@parliament.nsw.gov.au (use this to receive Newsletters)
Shooters' Party information website: www.shootersparty.org.au
* For "Buyback" read "confiscation"