June 3, 2022
KATTER’S Australian Party (KAP) candidate for Callide, Adam Burling, says rural Queenslanders are fed up with glacial wait times for firearm licensing and permit approvals, and is calling for the process to be streamlined immediately.
The Weapons Licensing Branch (WLB) of the Queensland Police Service is responsible for processing firearms licence and purchase permit applications, but Mr Burling said the livelihood of farmers was at risk from the extended wait times caused by sluggish bureaucracy which treated the state’s approximately 200,000 licensed gun owners as potential criminals.
“Even though people with a firearms licence have been through all the police background checks, done the safety training, and proven they have a genuine need for a gun – a process that has already taken at least six months and probably more - it can still take weeks, sometimes more than a month, to get the Permit To Acquire a farmer needs to buy a gun.
“A tradie can walk into a hardware store and purchase a nailgun or a drop saw on the spot, and they can buy a ute and drive it off the lot before the ink has finished drying on the paperwork, but if a licensed farmer needs a new gun for dealing with a fox or a dingo that’s killing their farm stock, that could take a few weeks and ‘oh well’ appears to be the attitude from Brisbane.
“A firearm is a tool of the trade for farmers, but they wait months after submitting an firearms licence application and weeks each time they need an approval for a new firearm, which amounts to considerable time of lost productivity.”
Mr Burling said people may need lawful access to firearms for reasons such as sport, hunting, or employment, but said farmers and graziers, as well as sporting shooters, are being treated like fools by the overly bureaucratic process.
“These Brisbane-based bureaucrats are taking away Queenslanders’ freedoms to hunt recreationally or preserve our natural heritage and biosecurity through humane pest control.
“There’s no reason it should take six months for a firearms licence application to be processed, or more than a month for a renewal to be approved. All the information the police need is on computers; they already know who is a criminal.
“The firearms licence and permit to acquire process needs to be streamlined immediately so Callide’s primary producers can access the tools they need when they need them.”
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KAP candidate wants firearm license registration streamlined