Why do we need any more semi-automatic pistols in Australia?

Samantha Lee | National Times | April 18, 2012



Remembering the Port Arthur massacre ... as the law now stands, a licensed gun owner may legally purchase a military-style, semi-automatic pistol with a magazine capacity of 10 rounds.

April is an eerie time of year. Sixteen years ago this month, Martin Bryant opened fire at historic Port Arthur in Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounding 18 others.

This month also marks the anniversaries of the Columbine massacre of April 20, 1999 in the US, where 13 people were killed and at least 21 injured, the Virginia Tech massacre of April 16, 2007, where 32 people died and 25 were injured, and now Oakland's Oikos University massacre, which happened two weeks ago, in which seven were killed and three injured.

Timing is not the only factor these atrocities have in common; the other is the use of semi-automatic firearms.

A semi-automatic gun, also known as a self-loading firearm, is used in most of these types of massacres because of the weapon's automatic reloading capability. Each time the trigger is pulled, ammunition is automatically loaded into the chamber. A person can fire up to 20 shots without needing to stop and reload.

There are two main types of semi-automatics: longarms (also known as rifles and shotguns) and handguns (also known as pistols).

After Port Arthur, Australia banned semi-automatic longarms, but did not extend the ban to semi-automatic pistols. Why?

The explanations that various analysts have provided include that Bryant used semi-automatic longarms, not handguns; that in 1996 the law on handguns was near to uniform across Australia; and that it would have made it extremely difficult to obtain the National Agreement on Firearms if pistols were included.

Whatever the reasons for putting to one side the issue of handguns, this ongoing legal anomaly has become a major public concern for Australia, requiring immediate attention.

Ending Sydney’s law-and-order auction

Robert Milliken | Inside Story | 3 April 2012 

The NSW attorney-general has taken the politically risky step of trying to reduce the prison population, writes Robert Milliken


NSW attorney-general Greg Smith (above, right) and security manager Patrick Aboud viewing the 300-bed drug treatment facility for prisoners at the state’s John Morony Correctional Complex.
Photo: Kate Geraghty/ Fairfax

WHEN Sydney’s southwest suburbs suffered a wave of drive-by shootings early this year, the city’s tabloid press and notorious radio shock jocks went into overdrive. Their target was Greg Smith, who is about to complete his first year as attorney-general in Barry O’Farrell’s state government. In most respects, Smith is a classic conservative Liberal: a barrister, and former public prosecutor, who represents the leafy electorate of Epping. His Sydney north shore constituency is a world away from the streets on the other side of town where rival gangs of young men shot up each other’s homes in an intimidating display of turf warfare.

In one regard, though, Smith is something of a radical. After sixteen years of state Labor governments, he came to power promising to reform the state’s prison system. Instead of locking more people up, Smith has pledged to find formulas to allow many minor offenders and young criminals to be rehabilitated and then let go.

Sydney’s Daily Telegraph has waged an unrelenting campaign against Smith. It calls him “Marshmallow Smith,” and accuses him of going “soft on crime.” In one extraordinary front page splash in early February, the paper claimed: “Exclusive: Gays, Minorities Get Bail but the Rest… Go Straight to Jail.” The piece claimed to be based on a draft report by the NSW Law Reform Commission, which Smith had not seen. Media hype of this sort threatens to unsettle the government, in a political climate in which law-and-order auctions are the name of the game: both sides compete in proving to voters that they are the toughest on crime.

Smith claims to be unmoved. “The whole hardline approach against crime has been a failure in many places,” he tells me. “This attempt to make me look softer misrepresents what I am trying to do. I am trying to turn people away from crime. It’s not soft, it’s being more pragmatic.”

The challenge Smith faces in testing his pragmatic approach is daunting. Australia spends $11.5 billion a year on law and order, about $511 a year per person. The dubious honour for the biggest spending goes to New South Wales. In evidence late last year to a parliamentary estimates committee, and in a speech to a solicitors’ conference in Sydney, Smith painted a chilling picture.

Within two years of their release, 43 per cent of NSW prisoners reoffend, compared with just under 37 per cent in Victoria, for example, and less than 30 per cent in Tasmania. (The Australian Capital Territory will start reporting on recidivism from 2011–12.) This high recidivism rate accompanies another grim profile: of 15,000 people taken into custody in New South Wales in 2007–08, almost two-thirds were affected by drugs or alcohol when they committed their most serious offences.

Smith’s state also has the highest number of prisoners on remand in Australia. Over the ten years to October 2011, the number of adults held on remand rose by 86 per cent. More worryingly, more than four-fifths of the juveniles held on remand were eventually set free with non-custodial sentences. Locking these young people up, when their crimes are finally found not to deserve such punishment, simply creates more problems, says Smith: “They spend a long time being exposed to a university of crime among prisoners.”

When it comes to crime, harsher punishment doesn't pay

Anna Patty | SMH | March 14, 2012

LENGTHENING prison terms will do nothing to reduce crime in NSW, one of the most comprehensive reports on the criminal justice system conducted in Australia shows.

The study by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research found that increasing the risk of arrest and imprisonment were much more effective.

Another major reason for falls in crime in the past decade was an improved economy and employment levels, which provided strong disincentives to crime. A 10 per cent increase in household income was estimated to produce an 18.9 per cent reduction in property crime and a 14.6 per cent reduction in violent crime.

The bureau's director, Don Weatherburn, said the study suggested governments should focus more on strategies to increase the risk of arrest and less on increasing the severity of punishments.

The study looked at whether Australian taxpayers were getting value for the $11.5 billion they spend each year on law and order.

It reviewed changes in the risk of arrest, the likelihood of prison and the average prison term on trends in property and violent crime across all 153 local government areas in NSW between 1996 and 2008.

''Increasing the risk of arrest and the likelihood of going to prison produces modest reductions in property and violent crime,'' Dr Weatherburn said. ''But increasing the length of prison sentences exerts no effect at all.''