Queensland’s state government “ignored” a recommendation to introduce mandatory mental health checks for gun licence applicants from the Wieambilla coronial inquest, according to the state opposition.
The government tabled legislation on Tuesday responding to the Bondi terror attack, which deals with firearm ownership and antisemitism. The bill also responds to the Wieambilla inquest.
The state coroner, Terry Ryan, released his findings into the 2022 killings of police constables Matthew Arnold and Rachel McCrow and neighbour Alan Dare in November.
They were gunned down on a rural property by a trio suffering from a shared delusional disorder. Some of the firearms used in the shooting were possessed lawfully, Ryan found, despite the owner, Nathaniel Train, being mentally ill.
Ryan recommended last year that the government consider “the feasibility of the introduction of mandatory mental health assessments for weapons licence applicants”.
The police minister, Dan Purdie, said there had been “issues” with the system in Western Australia, where a similar requirement applied.
“In WA the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has raised concerns about whether GPs have the proper skills to do that risk assessment, and that has posed issues where this has been done in other areas,” Purdie said.
“I’ve been told that that’s more assessed to a forensic psychologist or forensic psychiatrist, of which we don’t have too many of them scattered across Queensland.”
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The shadow attorney general, Meaghan Scanlon, said the government had “clearly buckled to the gun lobby”.
The Queensland government had also opted to not take part in the national gun buyback, and rejected putting new restrictions on the number or type of firearms that people can own.
“The LNP have ignored the recommendations from the coronial inquest, and they have ignored the families of Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold,” Scanlon said.
“None of these reforms would actually have prevented the fatalities that occurred in Bondi or Wieambilla. The reforms that David Crisafulli has put forward effectively just put in place things that already exist.”
The McCrow and Arnold families said in a statement they “welcome any policies or procedure changes designed to better protect QPS officers”.
“The families will always continue to advocate for improved training, communication and protective equipment.”
Instead the government opted to change the rules to make it mandatory for carers in the public health system to report high-risk patients to Queensland police.
Clinicians already have that power, but have the choice whether to use it. About 550 people were reported through the current system last year, according to the health minister, Tim Nicholls.
The government would also simplify the paperwork requirements for police to issue a firearm prohibition order, and act on other coronial recommendations by investing $5.3m in drone technology, improving intelligence-sharing between Queensland and federal police and investing in better communications for police.
The coroner found the Wieambilla shootings “were not a consequence of a systems failure, because the Trains were “not known to” any health professional.
A senior advocacy adviser of the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, Stephen Bendle, said the government had not considered any preventive measures “whatsoever”.
“There is still nothing in there that goes any way towards preventing firearm violence or reducing the number of firearms in the community, which is what the majority of Queenslanders expect,” he said.
Power to ban slogans
The government also unveiled its hate speech reforms on Tuesday.
The legislation grants the attorney general the power to ban slogans, which she has said she would use to prohibit “from the river to the sea” and “globalise the intifada”.
The legislation is subject to a number of restrictions, including that the minister is satisfied that a prohibited expression “is regularly used to incite discrimination, hostility or violence towards a relevant group”.
Justice for Palestine said on Monday it was considering legal action in a bid to overturn the laws.
Anne Twomey, a professor of constitutional law, said it was difficult to say whether the “proposed offence of reciting, publishing or displaying prohibited expressions” would be upheld or not.
“On the one hand, the proposed laws permit regulations to be made to prohibit particular expressions. As this is not ‘content-neutral’, but rather directed at specified expressions of political views, it will require high level scrutiny by a court and a compelling reason to survive that constitutional scrutiny,” she said.
“On the other hand, the offence is subject to a number of restrictions in its operation which tie it to serious harms and it also permits exclusions based upon a reasonable excuse.”
Twomey said the law protected a much broader range of groups than recent commonwealth legislation, including religion, sexuality, sex characteristics or gender identity.
“So a banned expression could be one that is regarded as inciting hostility towards people who have transitioned, for example,” she said.
The legislation also allows police to detain and search a person reasonably suspected of the offence without a warrant.