The prime minister’s March deadline for national gun reform has come and gone, with more than half the states and territories still opposed to parts of the plan announced in the weeks following the Bondi terror attack.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Only four jurisdictions have signed up to the government’s gun buyback scheme, despite the federal parliament passing legislation to establish its funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It has been 108 days since the mass shooting in Bondi shocked the nation and prompted the government to push reforms which would make it harder to get a gun licence in Australia, as well as reduce the number of guns a single licence holder can own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anthony Albanese had hoped to achieve those goals by updating minimum standards under the National Firearms Agreement, and set a timeline for that to be done by the start of April.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He initially secured agreement from the national cabinet to strengthen laws, but in the months since, state and territory leaders have walked back from that commitment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jurisdictions including the Northern Territory and Queensland say they will not participate in a buyback, which the Commonwealth had proposed a 50:50 funding model with the states and territories.<\/p>\n
Here’s what we know about the new gun buyback scheme<\/a><\/p>\n Days after the Bondi terror attack, the federal government has announced a new national buyback scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n Both have introduced legislation to strengthen gun control, but stopped short of capping the number of firearms a person can own.<\/p>\n WA completed its own buyback and Tasmania is currently administering one, while New South Wales and the ACT have also signed on.<\/p>\n In Victoria, Premier Jacinta Allan has been noncommittal, and is waiting for a rapid review of existing laws to hand down its findings.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the days before the South Australian election last month, Premier Peter Malinauskas reportedly told a gun lobby<\/a> he would not tighten gun laws despite agreeing to a federal crackdown. The state is also yet to commit to a buyback.\u00a0<\/p>\n The federal government said gun laws would only be as strong as the “weakest state” in its statement announcing the gun buyback scheme in December last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n “Having laws that are national and consistent, is vital to their effectiveness,” it said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Buyback cost still a sticking point<\/p>\n The Queensland, Northern Territory and Tasmanian governments were quick to distance themselves from a buyback, in part because they said it would cost too much.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Queensland Premier David Crisafulli also said his state would not participate because the scheme failed to address underlying issues of antisemitism and hate.\u00a0<\/p>\n “[The buyback] doesn’t focus on keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists and criminals,” he said on January 21.<\/p>\n “There’s been a big vacuum in leadership in this space, and on the back of it we have seen what could have been nipped in to the bud turned into an inferno that has infected who we are as a nation.”\u00a0<\/p>\n In February, Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff had a change of heart, announcing the state would have a buyback <\/a>which would include guns reclassified as illegal under toughened laws. There remains no limit on the number of guns a person is allowed to own in Tasmania if they have a licence.\u00a0<\/p>\n New South Wales has already legislated the stricter gun controls<\/a> set out by the national cabinet, including limiting the number of firearms a person can own to four, with a carve out for primary producers who are entitled to hold ten.\u00a0<\/p>\n It brought the state broadly in line with WA, which already had more restrictive gun laws legislated in 2024 following a shooting in the Perth suburb of Floreat which left a mother and her teenage daughter dead.<\/a><\/p>\n WA completed the scheme in January with more than 83,000 firearms surrendered at a cost of $64.3 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n Roughly a quarter of Australia’s guns \u2013 244,000 of 974,000 \u2013 are in Victoria.\u00a0<\/p>\n The state had said it would participate, but has been noncommittal about a timeline and provided no detail on how the buyback would work.\u00a0<\/p>\n