SYDNEY: Australia’s most populous state was set on Tuesday (Dec 23) to approve sweeping laws cracking down on guns and giving authorities the power to ban protests after the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in decades.
Father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram are accused of targeting a Hanukkah event on Bondi Beach, killing 15 people in what authorities have said was an antisemitic terrorist attack.
Facing growing political pressure over the attack, state and federal governments have proposed changes to gun laws and a broad hate speech ban.
The government of New South Wales – where the shooting took place – has recalled its parliament to introduce what it called the “toughest firearm reforms in the country”.
The new rules will cap the number of guns an individual can own to four, or 10 for exempted individuals like farmers.
The legislation will also ban the display of “terrorist symbols”, including the flag of the Islamic State, which was found in a car linked to one of the alleged shooters.
And it will give authorities power to prohibit protests for up to three months following a terrorist incident.
The reforms are expected to pass the upper house of the New South Wales parliament on Tuesday evening or early Wednesday.
State Premier Chris Minns said the laws will “keep the people of New South Wales safe”.
“Whether that’s on gun regulation in New South Wales, or secondly, changes to protest, in order to lower the temperature in Sydney,” he told reporters.
A broad coalition of groups has vowed a constitutional legal challenge to the anti-protest laws.
Palestine Action Group Sydney, one of those involved in the challenge, accused the state of having “pushed through legislation without due process, attacking our fundamental right to protest”.
It also accused the state of making “unsubstantiated and plainly dishonest links between antisemitism and the Palestine solidarity movement”.
Australia’s federal government is at the same time pushing for new laws creating an aggravated offence for hate preaching, penalties for those deemed to have sought to radicalise minors and a new register of allegedly extremist groups it will become illegal to join.
It will also pay gun owners to surrender “surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms”.
It would be the largest gun buyback since 1996, when Australia cracked down on firearms in the wake of a shooting that killed 35 people at Port Arthur.
