Senator QUIRKE (12:45 PM) —I do not want to take up too much time of the Senate on this today. Basically the National Firearms Program Implementation Bill 1998 is a sensible arrangement. It seeks to extend the buy-back arrangements for the owners of particular types of firearms banned as a result of the 10 May 1996 meeting of the Australian police ministers. It seeks to extend this to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Norfolk Island and other jurisdictions that have so far not come into play on this. I do, however, want to take one part of this bill and use it as a vehicle to express some concern with respect to the way one part of this legislation and other corollary bills have been implemented, and that is to do with the dealer buyback. This bill before us not only empowers jurisdictions to buy back semi-automatic and all forms of now banned firearms in this country and pay just compensation, but also provides for dealers who had before made an income from selling and servicing this type firearm to be paid just compensation.

That is the point I want to come in on because I hope that the people on the islands are going to do better than some of the dealers in some of the other jurisdictions. I want to make a few comments, which I have been sitting on now for the last three months in the hope that I would not have to make them, in respect of my own jurisdiction of South Australia. Everybody in politics who agreed with the police ministers' conference on May 10, 1996 and all the terms that were encapsulated in that, agreed that a speedy buy-back arrangement was necessary to solve this problem. Indeed, once the decision was made by the various parliaments in Australia that there was no longer a place for the widespread ownership of semi-automatic firearms and that a buy-back scheme would be put in place, it was agreed that it needed to be executed expeditiously.

I want to make it crystal clear that that, in general, was done. It was done a bit quicker in my state of South Australia because a state election was coming up and the government was concerned about the implications of this. It was done speedily and efficiently. The firearms destruction unit did an excellent job in South Australia. I have no experience of what happened in the other jurisdictions. I took a close interest in South Australia and was very satisfied with the speedy, efficient and fair operation. The terms of compensation were reasonable. However, that is where it stops.

I do not blame Senator Vanstone who, I understand, administers this particular piece of legislation. I am not sure whether that is so or not. I understand that it went through the House of Representatives with the Attorney-General so I presume that it would have been under Senator Vanstone up here. I want to alert whichever minister is implementing this legislation to a problem that is developing. It is developing because the buy-back arrangements in South Australia for the dealers over there have been stalled for over seven months. They were a long time being put in place and the government is now starting to cop some of the flak for a bureaucracy that has developed around the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

Seven months ago the dealers who decided that they were going to opt out of the system—in other words, who decided that there was no longer an income for them—made application, as they were entitled to do, for fair and just compensation for their business and, indeed, fair and just compensation for the various parts of the semi-automatic weapons that had been banned. Currently enormous stocks of these items are still in the hands of dealers. I want to reinforce this point to the Senate: it was never the intention of these dealers to get out of the system but it was suggested to them that they would no longer be able to sell this particular type of firearm and that maybe the other interests they had in the firearms trade would not be sufficient for them to have a business that would survive the current climate out there. So they opted to sell all of the various parts and, in some instances, almost wholly completed semi-automatic and, as I understand it, fully automatic firearms.

The government then handed to Price Waterhouse the job of making sure that proper compensation was paid. At the first meeting, seven months ago, the bloke from Price Waterhouse who came to South Australia, an officer called Robert Kus, suggested that the whole problem would be solved in a week. It has been said that a week is a long time in politics. It is a long time for Price Waterhouse. The government has appropriated the money—it is sitting there—the community wants these things taken and melted down, the current owners want to hand them over so they can get on with the rest of their lives and Mr Kus flies in and out of Adelaide from one meeting to the next.

I do not lightly name an officer and a company in the Senate, but I want to tell them to get on with the job. I want to tell the government that there is a problem. I want to alert the government to the fact that the agency it has picked for this has not understood that this is an urgent matter that needs to be resolved—not only for these people who want to get on with their lives and move into other businesses and retrain or retire or whatever they want to do, but also for me as an average member of the community who, having seen these firearms banned by parliament, wants to see them melted down, off the street, out of circulation, and no longer available out there for someone to break in and screw together a dangerous firearm that may do what was done at Port Arthur. As a consequence of this, I want to tell the Senate here today that I hope the government take my remarks and I hope that they ring Price Waterhouse, speak to this fellow and tell him to get on with his job.

My understanding is that the cutting edge of this is the problem of documentation. I am probably going to be told that I do not know what I am talking about, because there are a number of dealers that have a lot of parts that they cannot account for, that they have not got written valuations for, that they have not got receipts for or that they have not got this, that and the other. They had better not use that defence because there are a few dealers who can document everything from the smallest firing pin all the way up and they have not been paid either. I can give the names and addresses of these people because a few of them are mates of mine.

I also want to make it pretty crystal clear here that, in the spirit of the buyback, the one smart thing the Howard government did, which we agreed with, was speedy just compensation before tribunals that were independent, that bought certain banned firearms, destroyed them and paid the compensation to the public out there. Had the same process that is being used now with the dealers been taken, then 90 per cent of these things would still be on the street and Mr Kus and his friends would be flying from one state to the next all the time. What the Howard government did—and it was a smart move—was do it quickly, fairly and, where necessary, not get tied up with bureaucratic red tape.

Unfortunately, the firearms dealers, at least in my state, have been treated with much less courtesy. I am not blaming the government for it; I am blaming Price Waterhouse. If I am blaming them wrongly, then maybe the government is responsible. I want to see two things out of this. I want to see the government have a very close look at how the dealer buyback is working and to get it working, to get it functioning, to get these things melted and to get them out of circulation so that people can get on with their lives.

Over two years ago we made the determination that this is the way we are going to go. Two years and three months later, at least where the dealers are concerned, very little or nothing has happened. I understand that has happened in other jurisdictions as well. It is something the government ought to take on board and sort out. I also suggest that, when this legislation here today is brought in, a much more speedier approach should be developed to sort out every downstream issue of the buyback in the particular jurisdictions that this bill is appropriate to.