Nationals leader David Littleproud. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, it is a sad sign of the times that we have now reached a point where police need long arm weapons,\u201d he told Nine\u2019s Weekend Today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason is that side-arms have about a 15m effective accuracy range, so these longer weapons keep police safer and also allow them to respond more quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is a precautionary measure and it is the right one to take, but it is sad that our society has reached this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to the Bondi attack to show \u201cwhy [these] precautions are necessary\u201d.<\/p>\n
Fifteen innocents were killed in the shooting at a Chanukah gathering on December 14, with dozens more injured and tears ripped in Australia\u2019s multicultural social fabric.<\/p>\n
Many have questioned why only three police officers were on duty at the time, especially a Jewish security group revealed it wrote to NSW Police expressing their concern.<\/p>\n
With the country\u2019s law enforcement and intelligence agencies under scrutiny, the Albanese government has announced a departmental probe into how federal and state services co-operate.<\/p>\n
Littleproud said Victoria Police\u2019s decision \u201cgives people extra confidence\u201d.<\/p>\n
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor\u2019s Picks<\/a>, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week\u2019s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nationals leader David Littleproud. Photo \/ Getty Images \u201cLook, it is a sad sign of the times that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[45621,7814,1975,1135,6284,84796,8224,2082,23785,13489,136069,71084,111,139,69,23421,5493,675,121447,81396,6302,312,136068,7806,213,14005,61,2821,1533],"class_list":["post-228249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-announcing","tag-armed","tag-at","tag-australian","tag-david","tag-deploy","tag-deployed","tag-for","tag-heavily","tag-leader","tag-littleproud","tag-nationals","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-officers","tag-open","tag-police","tag-rifles","tag-sad","tag-safety","tag-says","tag-semiautomatic","tag-sign","tag-sports","tag-times","tag-to","tag-victoria","tag-will"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}