Mr BROUGH(10.52 p.m.) —I felt it was important to rise tonight to respond to the honourable member for Kalgoorlie (Mr Campbell), who has continued to mislead the people of Australia with the rhetoric he goes on with regarding the guns legislation.

What is most enlightening to all of us is that he and maybe one other person in this entire House, on both sides of the parliament, spruik the same message that he has been spreading, which means that we have something like 146 to two in this place, which is pretty much representative of this debate in Australia. Unfortunately, those two seem to be very noisy but have very little to say.

For the record, I would like to clear up why this legislation has been brought in. It is John Howard, the Prime Minister—not `Little Johnny', as the honourable member for Kalgoorlie likes to refer to him in his typically arrogant manner—who has demonstrated leadership and shown the rest of Australia what is necessary to make Australia a safer place.

This legislation is not designed so that the gun owner, the person who likes to go shooting at the weekend or any other member of the public is going to be disarmed. It is designed for that unfortunate set of circumstances when a person who is deranged at a moment in time and has had no prior mental illness has the motivation, the depression and quite often the alcohol or some other substance on board and then has access to the weapon with which he is able to carry out such mass destruction.

Legislating so that people can have semiautomatic rifles registered and so that the person owning them can be registered is absolutely pointless because, as the member for Kalgoorlie pointed out, the gentleman who carried out the Hoddle Street massacre—and I use the term `gentleman' rather liberally—and the man who was responsible for the Port Arthur massacre did not own the weapons but secured them from a third party. Therefore, if we had bothered to legislate to have those rifles not banned but owned legally, those men still would have had access to the semiautomatic rifle which created this carnage and we would still have ended up with as many dead people.

I think it is about time the member for Kalgoorlie and one or two other members of this place who take delight in going around this country inciting people unnecessarily, forcing upon them mis-truths and misrepresentations about the resolutions of the police meeting, did themselves a lot of good and sat back, pulled their heads in and had a good, long think about what they are doing. They are the ones that are being destructive; they are the ones that are taking away the leadership in this nation. If they, just for once, took a good look at themselves, looked at the good of the nation and then presented logical arguments, this would be a much better place in which to do business.

I met members of the Sporting Shooters Association in my area and spent an hour with them. At the end of that meeting, they concluded that they were quite happy with the way they see things going. It is only the loony fringe, not the mainstream gun or shooters elements—that very small percentage of the population—that is disturbed by what is going on. It is using this for its own political means, not because it is concerned about the rights of Australians or their ability to defend themselves; those rights have not been undermined.

I hope that the one or two people who continue to rave on in this lunatic fashion refrain from doing so in future and look at what the Prime Minister has put up and see that it has been and will continue to be supported by the overwhelming majority of the Australian public. If we get this legislation approved by the states in the form proposed, this country will be a safer place. People will be able to go forward into the future feeling that Australia will not go down the path of the United States. That can only make our country a better place to live in.