{"id":357189,"date":"2025-12-19T00:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T00:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/357189\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T00:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T00:51:07","slug":"prime-minister-announces-largest-gun-buyback-scheme-since-howard-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/357189\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime minister announces &#8216;largest&#8217; gun buyback scheme since Howard era"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a national gun buyback scheme, labelling it the largest such measure since John Howard initiated a similar plan in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The buyback initiative would be consistent with the 1996 approach, Mr Albanese told reporters in Canberra on Friday, and target surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">He said the government would introduce legislation to provide the funding for the initiative and that the Commonwealth would split the cost with the states and territories on a 50:50 basis.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The states and territories would also be responsible for the collection, processing and payment to people handing over their weapons, under the prime minister&#8217;s proposal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Mr Albanese said there were more than 4 million firearms in Australia, which is more than at the time of the Port Arthur massacre.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;The terrible events at Bondi show we need to get more guns off our streets,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">&#8220;We know that one of these terrorists held a firearm licence and had six guns, in spite of living in the middle of Sydney&#8217;s suburbs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no reason why someone in that situation needed that many guns.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">National cabinet \u2014 which is made up of the prime minister and state and territory leaders \u2014 agreed to look at ways to bolster gun laws on Monday,<a class=\"Link_link__kR0xA Link_link__5eL5m ScreenReaderOnly_srLinkHint__OysWz Link_showVisited__C1Fea Link_showFocus__ALyv2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.abc.net.au\/news\/2025-12-15\/albanese-proposes-tougher-gun-laws-after-bondi-attack\/106143310\" data-component=\"Link\" data-uri=\"coremedia:\/\/article\/106143310\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> including the possibility of restricting licences to Australian citizens<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">The federal and New South Wales governments have also declared Sunday, December 21, a day of reflection to honour the victims of the deadly antisemitic terror attack a week earlier.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">Flags on all New South Wales\u00a0and Australian government buildings\u00a0will be flown at half-mast on Sunday, he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph__iYReA\">He added that the government would also work with the Jewish community to arrange a national day of mourning to be held.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more on the Bondi Beach shooting:Loading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a national gun buyback scheme, labelling it the largest such measure since&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":357190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[8932,64,63,193614,193223,195530,69,195529,1788,44,84,5316],"class_list":["post-357189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-albanese","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bondi-beach-attack","tag-bondi-terror-attack","tag-day-of-reflection","tag-federal-government","tag-gun-buyback-scheme","tag-labor","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/357190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}