Queensland Police Minister Dan Purdie has not made himself any friends in the shooting community with his recent performance in Parliament.
KAP MP Nick Dametto directed this question to Mr Purdie in parliament on 29 April:
See facebook video here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1597754120897886
“Firearms licence holders are reporting ongoing issues with the apparent change of procedure for the Weapons Licensing branch while assessing permits to acquire. Will the minister inform the House if the assessment process has changed and, if not, explain why licence holders are being denied PTAs or being made to answer previously unrequired questions to satisfy a PTA application?”
Given everyone in QLD knows about the issues with Weapons Licensing wanting a heap of unnecessary information from (it seems) nearly every Category B PTA applicant, Mr Dametto’s question is an important and timely one.
In his response, Mr Purdie acknowledged the importance of the issue and said he had received a lot of communication from shooters, MPs and regular Queenslanders over the matter. So far, so good.
However, he then stated explicitly there had been no change to the policies and procedures at Weapons Licensing Group “since we [the LNP] came to power after the election last October”.
He then went on to claim that in 2022 (when the ALP were in Government in QLD), “there were 95,000 PTA applications outstanding at Weapons Licensing and a 24-week delay in responding to those applications. In the short time we have been in government, the Weapons Licensing branch has the reply time down to seven weeks and the backlog is negligible… We have the reply time down, as I said, to a matter of only seven weeks — the best it has been in a decade.”
Firstly: No-one likes an asterisk with their answers – like the metaphorical one when Mr Purdie says there has been “no change to the policies and procedures since we came to power after the election last October”.
If that asterisk was any larger, it’d be wearing a helmet with wings on it and fighting humorously-named ancient Romans.
It’s well known – and we’ve got the RTI documents to prove it – that the PTA policies were changed in May 2024, having been drafted by the Weapons Licensing Group director themselves.
In other words, there absolutely has been a change to Weapons Licensing Group policies – and it only took place about four months before the current Government was elected.
Secondly: If you’re going to stand up in Parliament and provide an ‘on the official record’ response to a question, you’d hope the information you are stating is factually correct not easily disprovable.
For example, according to Mr Purdie in 2022, “there were 95,000 PTA applications outstanding at Weapons Licensing and a 24-week delay in responding to those applications.”
This is simply not true on either count. Firstly, as far as we are aware there have never been 95,000 PTA applications in any year in QLD and secondly, the average processing times for PTAs in 2022 – per a November 2023 response from then Police Minister Mark Ryan to a Question on Notice – was 20.9 days.
This was an increase from 12.5 days in 2019 and 2020, and 17.7 days in 2021, and the average processing time for December 2023 was 13.5 days.
According to RTI information, in 2018 there were 55,638 PTA applications, with 52,228 in 2019 and 27,855 in between January – June 2020. Our dealer contacts suggest around 60-65,000 PTAs were proce processed in QLD last year, which seems about right.
These are also much lower numbers than the 95,000 Mr Purdie claimed were not only processed but backlogged in 2022, and much, much shorter processing times than the 24 weeks he claimed they’d been taking.
Mr Purdie also claimed the PTA response time from Weapons Licensing was down to seven weeks with a negligible backlog – and that seven weeks, he reiterated, was “the best it has been in a decade”.
Again, not true in either case. Queensland Police’s own website says PTAs take an average of 30 days as of 27 April 2025; and the available information – both from Mr Ryan’s Hansard comments in 2023 and anecdotal evidence from pretty much anyone who had applied for a PTA in the past few years – is that PTAs took an average of two weeks, maybe three at the outside for the period 2018-2023. Many QLD shooters received PTAs in under a week around 2023 as well.
Besides that: In what universe would seven weeks for what should be a more or less instant process be something to be proud of? There is absolutely no reason – none at all – why PTAs for Category A&B firearms can’t be done instantly, and certainly not within a couple of days at most.
Ideally we’d do away with them completely -you’ve already got a licence and proven you’re a fit and proper person to have a gun.
So how on Earth did whoever gave Mr Purdie the information for his response think it was showing an improvement in the situation by saying their data showed it took nearly two months to process a PTA? Even that raises questions about the quality of data being provided to his office, or how it is being interpreted.
Regardless of whether Mr Purdie mis-spoke, mis-understood the information he was provided, or was provided bad information; the fact remains his April 29, 2025 comments in Parliament on Weapons Licensing matters are demonstrably incorrect and the record needs to be corrected.
While we’re here, Mr Purdie’s reluctance to directly order WLB management to pull their heads out of their cloacas and stop hassling shooters is puzzling.
Surely, as Minister, he has the power to say “I formally direct you to issue all Category A PTAs within 72 hours and process all Category B PTAs within 5 days, and you are to cease requesting additional information for PTAs except in truly exceptional circumstances”?
It gets even more surprising when you consider WLG’s nonsense nearly impacted several Anzac Day events in Queensland when they refused to let historical re-enactment groups have working or blank-fire guns as part of the proceedings.
During the resulting backlash, Bob Katter was on social media threatening to find out who made that call and name them in Federal Parliament, and suddenly it was decided – on April 24 – that the whole thing was a misunderstanding and of course re-enactors could have their .303s for Anzac Day events.
From outside, it looks very much like Mr Purdie has lost control of Weapons Licensing Group – which begs the question: How long will Queensland Premier David Crisafulli put up with what increasingly appears to be a government department gone rogue?