Anthony Albanese ‘ready for the fight’ to tighten firearms laws as National party and gun groups push back | Bondi beach terror attack

Anthony Albanese says he is “ready for the fight” to tighten Australia’s firearms laws after the Bondi beach terror attack, as the gun lobby and the National party push back against changes they claim are attempts to divert attention from radicalisation.

Former Liberal prime minister John Howard, who introduced sweeping gun control measures after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, said he’d support tightening firearms laws and there were too many guns in Australia, but claimed Albanese was focusing on the wrong issue.

Howard said the debate over gun laws was “a diversion” and that “the issue here is antisemitism”.

“The failure over the last two years has been that of the federal government, led by the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, to bring sufficient energy to a broad-based attack on the evil of antisemitism,” he told Sky News.

Albanese’s push to tighten gun laws has the backing of Walter Mikac, whose wife and two daughters were among the 35 people killed at Port Arthur.

“Honouring those killed at Bondi beach – and the legacy of my daughters, Alannah and Madeline – requires more than words of sympathy,” he said in a statement.

“It requires courage and a renewed commitment to public safety as the guiding principle of our firearm laws. Australia has led the world before – we can, and must, do so again.”

But the president of the Shooters Union warned of a “massive pushback” to proposed changes, claiming licensed firearm owners were treated as a punching bag.

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The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, claimed: “this isn’t a gun problem, it’s an ideology problem”.

Federal and state leaders agreed at national cabinet to investigate gun law reform including limiting the number and type of weapons able be owned, reviewing licensing including more sharing of criminal intelligence in deciding applications, and limiting licenses to Australian citizens.

States and territories have widely varying laws, including how often licenses are renewed, with some still using paper-based systems for licensing. The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, said states must “act as one nationally”.

“That was certainly the intention out of yesterday’s national cabinet meeting, that not only do we need to act in a uniform way, we need to act with urgency,” she said.

Albanese said New South Wales could not act alone and “the system is only as strong as its weakest link”, raising concerns that state agencies issuing gun licences “can’t talk to each other”.

NSW will lead the work on national gun reforms along with Western Australia, which last year passed what the state government described as Australia’s “strictest gun laws” – including a 10 firearm limit for farmers and competitive shooters, mandatory training for applicants and regular health assessments for gun owners.

A long-awaited national firearms register – first recommended after the Port Arthur massacre – will also be “accelerated” but the commonwealth’s work in setting up the system will not be completed until late 2026, and some state governments will not be ready to use it for some time afterward.

Questions have been raised about why alleged Bondi beach terrorist Sajid Akram had been granted a firearms license and owned six guns, despite his son and fellow alleged shooter, Naveed Akram, having been investigated and cleared for potential links to an extremist cell in 2019.

NSW police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, revealed Sajid Akram was issued a firearm licence in 2023.

The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, told ABC radio there were “certainly issues in terms of connecting intelligence that we might have to gun licences”, particularly in relation to the family members of licensed shooters.

Littleproud said he believed current licensing schemes were working, instead questioning why police hadn’t raised concerns about Sajid Akram owning firearms despite Asio investigations into his son.

“The existing gun laws work – it is how they are used. Changing gun laws is simply a distraction from the failings of the Labor government, to take the rise in antisemitism seriously since October 2023,” he said.

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, said he wanted to allow police to use criminal intelligence about a licence applicant – not just their criminal record.

“If we can craft a law that the police commissioner can say; ‘I’ve got concerns about this person, I don’t want them having access to a gun’, notwithstanding the fact they don’t have a criminal record, that is the kind of legislation we want to see in NSW,” Minns said.

The federal opposition it would consider changes to gun laws, but called for a primary focus on antisemitism.

“What the change to gun laws won’t do is stamp out antisemitism, and that was the driver behind these attacks … Fixing the gun laws in some way will not prevent from happening what happened [on Sunday],” shadow home affairs minister Jonno Duniam told the ABC.

“If it’s not guns it’s explosive devices, it’s knives, it’s other forms of attack weapons.”

The push to tighten gun laws is already facing resistance from shooters groups.

Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia chief executive, Tom Kenyon, said that “talking about gun laws rather than about radicalisation of individuals is wasted effort, and it’s a waste of the prime minister’s political capital”.

He backed Australian citizenship as a prerequisite for gun ownership but said limiting the number of firearms an individual could own was “an artificial attempt to show that you’re doing something”.

“Even if you limit people to one or two firearms, it would still be technically possible to commit a terrorist act,” he said.

Shooters Union Australia president, Graham Park, said Albanese’s push for new gun controls was a “disgraceful and embarrassing attempt … to distract from the failings that helped bring on this terrible tragedy”.

“Within the Australian firearms community of one million owners, I believe you are going to see massive pushback [to changes] because we are sick of being a punching bag because of politicians that are looking for a diversionary headline,” Park said.