Are Queensland Police Weapons Licensing Branch bypassing parliament to make their own laws?
It certainly looks like it, based on some of the things we’ve seen happening in Queensland over the past couple of months.
Shooters have increasingly been reporting online that their applications for PTAs for Category B firearms have been met with “first and final notices”, giving them 28 days to provide some pretty detailed info about where they were planning on using the gun – including the name of the person who owned the property, the details of the property, and what animals were on the property that needed a Category B firearm to shoot.
Never mind that in Queensland, “recreational shooting” explicitly includes plinking – it’s not just hunting, it’s shooting at informal targets like empty drink cans or spinning targets or even throwing a few clays to break with a shotgun.
Naturally, shooters – and user groups like Shooters Union and others – were quick to jump on this, flooding new Police Minister Dan Purdie’s office with demands for an explanation and that WLB be told to pull their head in.
To their credit, Mr Purdie’s office do appear to have gone to WLB and asked them what the hell was going on – and this is where it gets interesting.
It would seem someone at WLB told the Minister’s office nothing had changed and they were still following the legislative requirements of the Weapons Act 1990 and its subordinate legislation.
However, it’s also extremely misleading, because while the legislation hasn’t changed, its interpretation by Weapons Licensing certainly has. More specifically, they’re suddenly caring about things that no-one’s paid any attention to for three decades, using their internal policies, processes, and procedures to essentially rewrite how Queensland’s gun laws work – in essence, bypassing Parliament to create their own gun laws.
It could also be argued they are misleading the Minister, particularly if the Minister’s inquiries did not use the “magic words” WLB were looking for which might force them to admit there had, in fact, been significant changes to how things were done.
We now also know these changes have been in the works for some time – particularly as Right To Information documents show Weapons Licensing Branch’s policies relating to Permits to Acquire were subjected to a significant overhaul in 2024 being drafted by the Weapons Licensing Branch director on May 11, 2024 and being approved on May 31, 2024, as evidenced by the Director’s signature on those documents.
We also know for a fact that WLB head Mark Rhimes acknowledged on August 21, 2024 – in a meeting where then-Police Minister Mark Ryan and then-Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski were present – that he had directed WLB staff to look into “high calibre firearms” and do some policy work around that.
Not long after that, the dramas began, with people wanting guns in calibres like .338 LM and .300 Winchester Magnum suddenly getting “first and final notices” demanding they extra-justify wanting what had been, until then, treated like any other hunting rifle.
Also never mind that Queensland’s legislation contains no mention of “large calibres”, and the only rifle calibre restricted in that legislation is .50BMG (banned in 1997) – someone decided that, for absolutely no reason and apropos of nothing, that making up new restrictions on licensed shooters was a good use of valuable public service sector time and resources.
It’s long been known that Weapons Licensing is the post which many staff use either as a stepping-stone to something more prestigious, or where they put people to get them out of the way, and this is increasingly reflected in the way the department operations.
More specifically, this results in things like someone trying to make a name for themselves by coming up with new policies or procedures to make shooter’s lives worse and use that as their ticket to a promotion somewhere “sexier” or better-paying.
It’s funny how rarely anyone there comes up with ways to make shooter’s lives easier or better, and when they do, it gets shut down – remember how PTAs in Queensland used to be automatically approved in a day or two, especially for Category A stuff? That was someone coming up with a system to make things better for shooters, and then someone else decided they couldn’t have that because of reasons, and put a stop to it.
Now it takes nearly three weeks for a PTA application and two months for a licence application – despite there being many, many more staff at WLB, working extended shifts. This nonsense has gone on for way too long and it needs to stop. The Police Minister is well aware of if – but your local MP probably isn’t.
You should change that – send them an e-mail (or better yet, go and see them) and explain what’s going on, explain how it’s harming shooters – and explain that, if the MP is unco-operative, failure to try and sort it out will mean they aren’t getting your vote at the next election. Weapons Licensing Branch are supposed to be public servants. They don’t get to make laws or “reinterpret” them for their own political or career benefit – and you need to help keep them accountable.