Mrs SULLIVAN(9.41 p.m.) —I do not want to prolong the debate on this subject. I would have happily not spoken on it were it not for the fact that it was brought home with some brutality in my own backyard, so to speak, only last week. A gun lobby rally was held in my electorate, which also happens to fall into the state electorate of the Premier of Queensland, the Hon. Rob Borbidge, which was addressed by a number of people including certain state and federal members of parliament.

I was not invited to that rally. I read about it in the newspaper and I could, of course, like any other citizen have gone along but I chose not to. In fact, I was out of town but I chose not to cancel my out of town engagement in order to go to it. I therefore will accept absolutely no criticism from the gun lobby along the lines of a lack of interest in the subject and I shall certainly accept no criticism from the gun lobby when the rally which the citizens of the Gold Coast are organising for 14 July does not invite certain other people to it. They will be able to come, like other members of the public, having read about it in today's newspaper or somewhere else.

But I will invite the so-called silent majority for once in their life to give two hours of their life to something they claim they believe in very strongly. On 14 July an organisation which has been put together fairly hastily, because we never anticipated we would need to do it, will hold a rally which will involve all political parties and quite a number of community organisations. I want to pay tribute to the National Party of Australia, the Australian Labor Party, the Australian Democrats and the Greens on the Gold Coast who have very promptly responded. It is not my intention to engage in any exercise of self-promotion through this rally. I will not speak. Nowhere will my name appear. But these people have, on faith, accepted my assurance and will come along and put their shoulders to the wheel to try to do something in which they believe. That, to me, is an absolutely unique experience in politics, that people of very different political persuasions can be brought together. People who only three months ago were going at one another tooth and nail will come together in goodwill and in faith on an issue. Why?

I am not an expert on all these types of guns that people are talking about but I have had in my life my own particular experience of guns. There was a time when I used to keep company with people who did enjoy guns and who shot at things. Just for fun one time, because I was invited to, I took a rifle and shot at something. I found I had a small amount of skill. Thereafter I used to do the target practice things that one does for fun. I did not take it very seriously and I used to pride myself at being able to sit on a log out in the bush and, at quite some distance, hit a matchbox. I thought I was pretty clever.

One day, on one of these excursions, we came upon some ducks on a dam. Because I happened to have a rifle in my hand, one of my companions said, `Why don't you aim at one of them?' So I did, and I shot it. I will never forget the feeling of revulsion that swept through me as I said to myself, `Why did I do that? Why did I shoot that duck? It was not doing anything to me. It was perfectly happy with its companions on the dam, and I killed it.' The explanation is that, in an instant, that rifle became not something which gave me some entertainment; it became something that killed. That is the great divide on rifles. It is the great divide, I believe, between men and women and their attitudes on this issue.

I have eaten wild ducks that have been shot. They taste awful. It does not matter how expertly they are cooked, they taste awful. No matter how much I wanted to please the person who had shot them so that I could have a meal of duck, I could not do anything other than say, `No, I don't want any more, thank you.'

There was a time when people needed to hunt in this country. It was not so long ago in some cases when shooting duck or rabbit was how the family ate. We are not so many generations removed from that. If people needed to shoot a wild animal in order to eat, then I could understand it. But I think there are precious few people in Australia today who need to do that.

I understand the need to shoot feral pigs, deer and kangaroos under certain circumstances for particular reasons, but I do not understand the need to kill for the sake of killing. That may be because I am a woman. That may be because I do not have the hunter's instinct. I know that a lot of men do, and they see nothing wrong with it. There is not anything wrong with it per se, but it is not necessary. When stacked up in the debate today in Australia, in the atmosphere and in the light of the events that have brought this particular debate on, there is no contest.

I, like every other member, have received many very genuine letters on the subject. People have been saying that this is wrong and that it is an overreaction. I have been in conversations with people who have pleaded with me that it is harmless—and it is. It is not a heinous crime to go and shoot a duck, but it is not a necessary part of our existence.

On the other hand, like a lot of older Australians, I have seen in recent decades a shift in our culture, in the attitude of using weapons and their role in society, and in what we tolerate. We tolerate weapons in what we look at. First of all this was in films and television, and now it is in video games, which I have never seen but have had described to me—and I do not like the sound of them.

I think the average Australian feels a certain diffidence about expressing their negative feelings on this—the feeling that maybe they are just old fashioned, like me; that maybe there is not any harm in it. All of a sudden it seems that these things have come together. All of a sudden there is harm in it.

I appreciate when many people say, `You can't label everybody who wants to have guns without having to register or be answerable and who wants to have as many as they like or whatever type they like, because they are not killers and they do not want to be blamed.' I appreciate their resentment of what they think is a labelling of them. I want to reassure them that it is not a labelling of them. The problem is that you cannot label anybody in this society today as potentially a perpetrator of the acts at Port Arthur.

That diffidence that we felt that allowed more and more violent films in theatres or on television, which was done with a feeling of goodwill, of live and let live—an Australian characteristic—has gone too far. I have some familiarity with the American culture. My husband is a very proud American, although he is now an Australian citizen. He served his country as member of the United States Marines throughout World War II in the Pacific and again in Korea. He was in the first landing the US Marines made in the Pacific at Guadalcanal. He went through all the horrors of several very well-known marine engagements of the Pacific war. He was, by the way, aged 14 when he landed at Guadalcanal.

He was recalled against his will by President Truman to go to Korea. He fought in some very bloody and well-known battles there, including the battle of the Hwachon Reservoir, which was a horror—he was taken as a prisoner of war—but he regretted none of that because he was a marine. Marines, by the way, do not call rifles `guns', and neither do their wives. He went through all of that but he has never put his hand on a gun, or a rifle, since the day he left Korea.

He lived in the United States of America until 1983. He would never have guns or rifles in his home, because he knew them as killing instruments. The only comment he has made to me on this subject was when watching some of the more extremist people on television making some of their outlandish comments. With an edge of quite some bitterness in his voice that I have never heard before, he said, `They've never been ordered to blow someone away.' Keith Payne VC was reported in the newspaper a few weeks ago as saying in relation to the gun lobby, `What they need is some practice in a two-way shooting gallery.'

Part of the horror of Port Arthur and all the other terrible massacres and mass killings that we have seen happen in this country in the past 10 years is that every one of us can put ourselves in the shoes of those people. Whether we have been to Port Arthur or not, we can identify with ordinary peace-loving Australians going to a tourist spot on a Sunday afternoon and enjoying it, and then some unmentionable horror comes in the door.

I want to mention another turning point on guns for me because it links in with that. Until five years ago, I never locked the door of my house so long as my husband was on the premises; and I always lock it now. If he is out in the yard he takes his keys with him because he is locked out as soon as he walks out the door. It is the result of an incident on the Gold Coast where a middle-aged couple was sitting down to lunch one day in their home when a young man walked through their unlocked front door and pointed a rifle at them.

I think most people feel that they are safe in their own homes in broad daylight. I think most women would feel that if their husbands are around no-one is going to come around. But that was another turning point for me. Whilst it might seem light years away from the Port Arthur incident, nevertheless, it is that terrible instant of understanding that, whilst it might happen 10 kilometres or 2,000 kilometres away, the fact that it happens in Australia today suggests a terrible potential.

Port Arthur touched a nerve in a lot of people—and not just a nerve of empathy and sympathy. There is a beginning of that undercurrent of fear in Australia. Guns are not part of our normal culture. To be confronted by someone holding a gun or a rifle is something quite foreign to nearly every Australian. The Port Arthur incident somehow brought home to people that it could happen to them. The odds might seem fairly long but it could happen, just as it happened to those poor people who were on holiday, having a pleasant Sunday afternoon, with such ghastly consequences.

I am sure that all of us have many speeches we would like to make on this subject. There are a couple of things I will get on the record in the small amount of time available. In the course of this debate I came by a publication called New Citizen. This is printed by the Citizens Electoral Council, as I recall it. I am going to seek leave to table a photocopy of the front and back pages of this newspaper. This is put out by an organisation that quite a few of us are familiar with. It runs an extraordinary theory that drugs worldwide are somehow under the control of the British. A gentleman called LaRouche who has been the victim of some awful conspiracy is mentioned throughout this publication. It states that there is a worldwide conspiracy linked in with something funny called a new world order.

This edition mentions an organisation called Mont Pelerin. A number of people whom we know are listed as being involved in organisations which in some vague, shadowy way are linked with this worldwide conspiracy. On the back page under the heading `Mass murder in Tasmania' there is the subheading `It has the hallmarks of the Tavistock Institute's—another one of these organisations—"blind terror" campaigns'. If you read through the previous 15 pages, you will find that the alleged perpetrator of this massacre—I will not mention him because I think some things are sub judice—is in some strange way an agent of all this, albeit against his will; he has been brainwashed or manipulated in some way.

I will table the front and back pages simply so that there is available to people an example of the extremity of it. I have seen this sort of thing arise in other places in Australia. These people move in wherever there is trauma in a society, be it because rural industry is depressed and people are being evicted from their farms as a result of being dead broke or a town is distressed due to an industry being shut down through government policy or whatever. You will find all those issues woven through one of these publications. They move in wherever there is trauma and agitation and simple, ordinary folk are going through some extremity.

They are now moving in on people who are going to lose their guns or rifles, and they are saying, `Hey, you are a victim of this very simply understood conspiracy.' They give this simple, evil explanation. I have had it occur in my own electorate, as it was then, when an issue arose in relation to a multifunction polis, where government was going to compulsorily take over land and the Japanese were going to come in and build on it. I saw how they operated on good, simple, ordinary, decent Australians. They got all this poison into their minds and then away they went. These people are involved in this. I am not saying that all the people who are demonstrating are part of it, but they are being preyed on. It needs to be revealed. It needs to be something that more Australians know about. Given the interest in Australia on the subject of gun control by so many people at the moment, I hope that they will become familiar with these sorts of organisations.

I want to say a couple of other things very briefly. I commend the Prime Minister (Mr Howard) and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Beazley) for the courage that they have shown. I was very interested to listen to the speech by the Leader of the Opposition on the Medicare Levy Amendment Bill this evening. I thought it was a very reasonable speech. It was the sort of speech that should be made. I commend the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the National Party of Australia (Mr Tim Fischer), who is showing a lot of courage. I commend the Leader of the Australian Democrats (Senator Kernot), the Greens and the Independents for falling in behind.

I want to say a special word of commendation for the Premier of Queensland, Rob Borbidge, who is being put under some very unfair pressure. I want to make it clear that this man is going to go as far as is necessary in order to get the legislation put in place in Queensland. I mention it simply because there have been a couple of people in the debate tonight who have cast some sort of doubt on that.

The overwhelming intent and feel of nearly every member of parliament in Queensland—led by Rob Borbidge, Joan Sheldon and Peter Beattie—is to get the legislation in that is wanted and required. Please do not believe anything else you hear to the contrary. I say to people, `Please don't undermine the Queensland government. It is important that we throw our bipartisan support behind those who are trying so hard to do the right thing.' I thank the House for its tolerance this evening. I seek leave to table the paper.

Leave granted.