Election time: Tas Liberals are afraid of the shooting vote

Law-abiding shooters in Tasmania get to vote next month.  They’re fed up with the appalling Tas firearms registry.  Rene Hidding, the Liberal Government’s Police Minister, has largely defended the appalling mismanagement by Tasmania Gun Polices.  Until now…

In what appears to be a letter to key firearms dealers and consultation group members, the Minister puts it very diplomatically:

Service levels at Firearms Services (FAS) have disappointed some. While 2017 was a year of extraordinary levels of licence and permit activity, we needed to act, and we did. Heeding your calls, a civilian manager of FAS has been appointed, extra staff were employed to handle the huge increase in activity, an independent review of processes and services of FAS was conducted, and a new FAS website was launched with a large increase in infonnation available for firearms owners

Big promises: new range, longer licenses, suppressors

The Liberals are clearly terrified of losing seats to the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party and to Aunty Pauline’s One Nation, because they’re prepared to promise a lot:

Establishing a new Tasmanian competition shooting range…

extend the active period for licensing of firearms to include options for up to 10 years for Category A and B for all licence holders…

contravention of storage laws for relatively minor reasons… an infringement notice may be issued rather than a summons, and no firearms will be removed as a result, if the contravention is rectified without delay…

For workplace health and safety reasons, permit Category C holders or crop protection permit holders to own and use sound suppressors in the course of the use of their firearms for primary production purposes…

Can you trust the Liberals who had four years to do something and all they did was ban some Aus-made rifles and increase red tape on storage?

We’ve reported extensively (here, here, here) about Rene Hidding’s defence of the Tasmania Police decision to ban a bolt-operated, Australian-made rifle because they didn’t like the way it looked.  The failure of the Tasmania Police to offer cogent reasons for the ban is a disgrace.  If Rene can’t even get the Tasmania Police to fulfil their basic duty to give some reasons for a decision that impact thousands of people, why would they be able to walk on water and bring suppressors into common use by farmers?