WA premier defends gun reform focus after Bondi mass shooting

2 months ago 6

West Australian Premier Roger Cook has defended the political attention on gun reform following the Bondi terrorist attack, saying it was a natural area of focus in the aftermath of such a horrific event.

Cook will join NSW Premier Chris Minns as leaders in the national gun reform response to the attacks, where Sajid Akram, 50, and son Naveed, 24, used legally acquired firearms to kill 15 people celebrating Hanukkah at an event on Bondi Beach on Sunday.

Following a national cabinet meeting on Monday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a raft of changes to bring state and federal gun laws to the same level, including caps on gun ownership, fast-tracking a national firearms register, and improving information sharing between federal and state agencies.

But critics, including former prime minister John Howard and other political opponents like Liberal backbencher Andrew Hastie, said the focus on gun reforms was a cynical ploy by the NSW and federal governments to distract from a failure to tackle festering antisemitism and immigration issues.

On Tuesday, Cook conceded the state could not always stamp out individual extremism, and that gun reform was an important part of community safety.

“We cannot always guarantee that we have awareness or that we have in control people with ill intent or violent intentions, but we can make sure that as a community, we can do what we can to ensure that we keep guns and weapons of that nature away from those sorts of people,” he said.

“So naturally, that is an area that you’d have to consider in the aftermath of this horrible event.”

Cook said tackling antisemitism was a community responsibility, though he conceded it was “easier said than done”.

High-profile Jewish leaders including Jewish Community Council of WA president Marcus Levitt said Monday that antisemitism had been allowed to grow in Australia, in particular through demonstrations in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks.

Levitt, who has praised WA Police and the state government for its stance on antisemitism, claimed marches on the Sydney Harbour Bridge this year and at the Opera House in 2023 were blatantly antisemitic.

“None of this should be tolerated. Instead, it was celebrated. In fact, it was celebrated as a peaceful march. If you draw the dots from the Opera House to the Harbour Bridge to Bondi Beach, is there a surprise?” he said.

Cook declined to reflect on whether rallies had “elevated the level of tension” or increased the likelihood of events such as Sunday’s mass shooting.

“I will just say that it’s important that we all take the opportunity to, on one hand, express our democratic rights, freedom of expression, but at the same time make sure that we don’t allow poison to invade our community through hate speech,” he said.

“Obviously, when you have a rally, when you have a situation where people are responding to conflict overseas, it’s easy for that to spill over into our community.

“But I just want to emphasise Western Australia is a great place to live. It’s a peaceful place to live, and we all have a role to ensure that that happens.”

Can WA’s tough gun laws be applied nationally?

Cook said not every aspect of WA’s gun laws would transfer to the rest of the nation.

“I would never say that what we do in WA is fit for everyone, and I would never say that our workaround gun law reform is complete, but we have had got some recent experience, and obviously we’ll bring that experience to bear in those conversations,” he said.

He said he was most keen to see the federal government intervene on the types of guns allowed to be brought into the country.

“The key opportunity for the national cabinet will be to integrate intelligence sharing and to make sure that there’s uniformity across the higher levels of those gun laws that will also provide the Commonwealth with the ability to restrict the importation of certain styles and types of weapons,” he said.

Cook said there was no timeframe set on when the reforms would be enacted.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the government intended to bring forward the national firearms register by two years to the second half of 2026.