Less than 24 hours after the Bondi beach terrorist attack, the NSW Labor Government – led by Premier Chris Minns, signalled its intention to introduce sweeping new restrictions on lawful firearms ownership.
Rather than addressing the systemic failures that allowed the attack to occur, the government moved immediately to target law abiding firearms owners – Australians who were not involved in the incident and who already operate under some of the most stringent regulations in the world*.
In response, I wrote directly to the Premier to highlight the double standard in how firearms risk is assessed and regulated. Specifically, the lack of scrutiny applied to NSW Police officers and their access to service weapons.
A copy of that email is attached below.
*Editors note: In my opinion, the terrorist with a firearms licence should not have been afforded the privilege due to residing with his son – A man who was flagged by Australian security agencies as a probable terrorist threat. Therefore, I will not be referring to him when using the phrase “licenced firearm owners”.
Subject: Public safety requires accountability, not scapegoating
Dear Premier Minns,
In the wake of the Bondi terrorist attack, you have announced your intention to further tighten NSW firearms laws. This comes despite the catastrophic failures of the NSW Firearms Registry and national security agencies to identify and stop an attack that was plainly preventable.
Rather than address those failures, you have chosen the familiar political reflex: punish licenced firearms owners who had nothing to do with it.
If public safety is genuinely your concern, then let’s talk about firearms use where demonstrable harm has actually occurred.
During the Bondi attack, a police officer shot and wounded a Good Samaritan who was attempting to disarm the attacker in the final moments of the incident. He was shot not because he posed a threat, but because he was close to the offender – and because he was wrongly perceived as one. This is the real-world outcome of rushed decision-making and racial profiling by an armed officer.
Less than two years earlier, in February 2024, NSW Police officer Beaumont Lamarre-Condon used his government-issued firearm to murder his former partner and the man’s new partner.
These are not hypothetical risks. These are not speculative harms. These are documented killings and injuries caused by police officers using legally issued firearms.
So if you are prepared to rewrite firearms law on the basis of individual actions, answer this plainly:
Will you apply the same standard to police?
Will you:
- Disarm non-citizen police officers
- Subject officers to frequent, mandatory background and psychological screening
- Restrict magazine capacities on service weapons
- Require functional manual safeties
- Ban “weapons of war,” including pump-action and semi-automatic firearms, from police use
Because by your own logic, police officers represent at least the same – if not greater risk to public safety as licensed civilian firearms owners.
If sweeping, reactionary law-making is now acceptable, then fairness demands it be applied universally. Anything less is not public safety – its political theatre, scapegoating, and double standards dressed up as compassion.
Final thoughts
This was not written to provoke outrage or score political points.
It was written to make a clear, evidence-based argument: public safety cannot be improved through selective accountability. Laws that apply to one group while exempting another do not build trust, nor do they address the failures that actually place the public at risk.
Oz Fish & Game exists to represent lawful, responsible hunters and fishers – and that means pushing back when policy is driven by optics rather than facts.
We will continue to advocate for fair, consistent, and evidence-based firearms policy, and we will continue to speak up when licenced firearms owners are used as a convenient substitute for genuine reform.
