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Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday,

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Speaker 1: the twenty ninth of April. My name is Sam Kazlowski

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Speaker 1: and helping me make sense of today's news is Zara Sidelin.

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Speaker 1: Making news today a review into New South Wales ministerial.

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Speaker 2: Offices, mass COVID nineteen vaccination hubs, some good news about bees,

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Speaker 2: and a deep dive into gun control twenty five years

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Speaker 2: on from the Port Arthur massacre. Here's today's daily digest.

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Speaker 1: A review into New South Wales ministerial offices by former

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Speaker 1: Sex Discrimination Commissioner Peru Goward has been described as brutal

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Speaker 1: by New South Wales Premier Gladys Beragiclian. The strongly worded

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Speaker 1: report found quote protections and processes available to ministerial staff

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Speaker 1: are unclear, ineffective and inadequate. Beveragicalian commented on the thirteen

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Speaker 1: recommendations made in the report, saying I am keen to

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Speaker 1: adopt all the recommendations and there will be an opportunity

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Speaker 1: for consultation in the next phase of this process.

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Speaker 2: Staying with Premier gladysbary Jiclian, she announced yesterday that a

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Speaker 2: mass COVID nineteen vaccination hub will be opened on May

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Speaker 2: tenth at Sidney Olympic Park. The facility will be the

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Speaker 2: first used to vaccinate frontline healthcare and quarantine workers and

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Speaker 2: their families with other New South Wales residents who do

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Speaker 2: not have a GP able to book. From May twenty fourth,

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Speaker 2: the clinic will have capacity to administer thirty thousand doses

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Speaker 2: of the Pfizer and Astrozenica vaccines within a week.

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Speaker 1: Health officials in Fiji are concerned over a COVID nineteen

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Speaker 1: outbreak after the Indian variant was detected there this week.

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Speaker 1: The cluster emerged from a soldier who worked at a

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Speaker 1: quarantine facility who tested positive and transmitted the disease to

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Speaker 1: his wife, who then attended a funeral with five hundred

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Speaker 1: other people. As of Tuesday, Fiji has recorded one hundred

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Speaker 1: and nine cases and just two deaths in a population

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Speaker 1: of nine hundred and thirty thousand. Since the pandemic began.

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Speaker 1: Lockdowns have been announced to avoid an outbreak.

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Speaker 2: We're going pretty niche for how good news today, but

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Speaker 2: the good news is that the B population in the

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Speaker 2: Netherlands has steadied after the implementation of a B friendly

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Speaker 2: strategy that included B hotels B stops at a honey hunt.

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Speaker 1: Eleven thousand B lovers from the Netherlands participated in the

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Speaker 1: B counting exercise as part of the fourth edition of

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Speaker 1: the National B Census, which revealed no strong decline in

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Speaker 1: the B population. I'm buzzing. The census aims to collect

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Speaker 1: five years worth of B data before drawing definitive conclusions

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Speaker 1: on B population trends. That's a low point for our podcast.

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Speaker 3: We need to achieve a total prohibition on the ownership, possession,

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Speaker 3: style and importation of all automatic and semi automatic weapons.

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Speaker 2: So that was former Prime Minister John Howard in nineteen

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Speaker 2: ninety six talking about the government's national buyback scheme for

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Speaker 2: and that was announced following the Port Arthur massacre, which

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Speaker 2: happened twenty five years ago yesterday, and for me it

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Speaker 2: always felt like this mythical thing that had happened in

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Speaker 2: the past. I wasn't alive when the Port Arthur massacre happened.

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Speaker 2: And it's very easy day to day now in Australia

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Speaker 2: to forget that there was a time where people had

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Speaker 2: guns in this country and there were mass shootings like

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Speaker 2: Port Arthur. Sam on the twenty fifth anniversary, what did you.

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Speaker 1: Want to talk about. So I quickly wanted to cover

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Speaker 1: off what happened twenty five years ago yesterday, and then

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Speaker 1: take you through the twelve days after the shooting, because

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Speaker 1: it was some of the quickest formation of law in

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Speaker 1: Australia we've seen in modern times. I think it's important

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Speaker 1: to note as well that some of these laws are

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Speaker 1: now being called into question for their effectiveness, and I

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Speaker 1: wanted to tell you why that is. So here's the

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Speaker 1: short version of what happened. On the twenty eighth of

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Speaker 1: April nineteen ninety six, thirty five people were killed and

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Speaker 1: twenty three wounded in Port Arthur, Tasmania. The guvernment opened

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Speaker 1: fire on shop owners and tourists with two semi automatic

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Speaker 1: rifles at the Port Arthur Historic Site, which if you.

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Speaker 2: Ever get a chance to visit in Tasmania, is really

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Speaker 2: really incredible and they have guides there that talk you

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Speaker 2: through the history of Port Arthur pre the massacre and

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Speaker 2: post and it's just an amazing place to visit if

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Speaker 2: you're ever in Tazi.

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Speaker 1: The gunman was later given thirty five life sentences without

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Speaker 1: the possibility of parole, and.

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Speaker 2: We're not going to name him because the media is

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Speaker 2: moving away from actually naming gunmen. It should be about

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Speaker 2: the victims, not about the perpetrators.

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Speaker 1: As you can imagine, this event totally rattled Australia and

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Speaker 1: dominated the news for weeks and months after it. Within

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Speaker 1: the space of twelve days, Australia totally revolutionized their gun laws.

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Speaker 1: Six hundred and forty three thousand firearms were handed in

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Speaker 1: at a cost of three hundred and fifty million dollars

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Speaker 1: to the government, and that was funded by a temporary

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Speaker 1: increase in the medicare levy. Basically what Prime Minister John

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Speaker 1: Howard coordinated with all states and territories at the time,

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Speaker 1: which is particularly interesting because Tasmania self and Queensland were

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Speaker 1: very opposed to any sort of gun regulation. He restricted

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Speaker 1: the legal ownership and use of self loading rifles, shotguns

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Speaker 1: and titaned controls on their legal use by recreational shooters.

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Speaker 1: Then he implemented something called the buyback and that's the

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Speaker 1: six hundred and forty three thousand figure I told you

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Speaker 1: about before. He basically said to all Australian gun owners,

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Speaker 1: we will purchase the guns back off you to get

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Speaker 1: them off the streets. And it really worked.

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Speaker 2: I remember when I went on exchange to DC a

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Speaker 2: couple of years ago, and there were two things that

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Speaker 2: Americans would always raise with me. One did I catch

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Speaker 2: a kangaroo to school? And two? How did you exist

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Speaker 2: in a society without guns? And I think it's always

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Speaker 2: really important when we're talking about gun control in Australia

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Speaker 2: to ask why we can't see the same gun control

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Speaker 2: happen in America, where there are mass shootings almost daily,

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Speaker 2: And that just goes to the fundamental fact that guns

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Speaker 2: are quite literally enshrined in the US Constitution. The Second

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Speaker 2: Amendment of the Bill of Rights protects the right to

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Speaker 2: keep and bear arms. So it's not as easy as

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Speaker 2: John Howard's spyback scheme was. Though that wasn't easy and

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Speaker 2: as revolutionary as it was. But this would take deep

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Speaker 2: constitutional change that America just seemingly can't get pass. And

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Speaker 2: they also have a really strong gun lobby. That's not

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Speaker 2: to say, though, that we didn't have strong opposition here

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Speaker 2: in Australia too.

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Speaker 1: As a bit of a.

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Speaker 2: Side note, when Scott Morrison didn't come out to meet

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Speaker 2: protesters after the Brittney Higgins sexual assault allegations came out,

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Speaker 2: many commentators compared it to when John Howard came out

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Speaker 2: to face a whole lot of really angry gun owners

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Speaker 2: when this policy was announced, and many pointed to the

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Speaker 2: former Liberal Prime minister as an example of just leadership

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Speaker 2: in the face of opposition, and so even those in

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Speaker 2: the Liberal Party were making those comparisons. All right, Sam,

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Speaker 2: So if we take a step back, where are we

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Speaker 2: at now? How is gun ownership looking in this country?

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Speaker 1: So the rate of gun ownership at the moment is

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Speaker 1: about three point four to one guns per hundred. To

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Speaker 1: put that into a bit of context for you, in America,

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Speaker 1: it's one hundred and twenty zero point five guns per hundred.

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Speaker 2: That is insane.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, But despite this remarkably low figure for the implementation

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Speaker 1: of a program twenty five years ago, the fact that

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Speaker 1: it's still kept low is amazing. There are still some

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Speaker 1: criticisms around the way that gun registration is coordinated in Australia.

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Speaker 1: The key criticism at the moment is about the failure

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Speaker 1: of a national registration system to get up. So at

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Speaker 1: the moment, gun registration is very similar to how we

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Speaker 1: register our cars. We register with our state authorities and

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Speaker 1: there's a record of who owns the gun and where

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Speaker 1: they bought it. The problem that authorities are finding is

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Speaker 1: that when guns travel into state, they lose track of

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Speaker 1: the weapons, and there's a pattern in organized crime of

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Speaker 1: guns being relocated state to state. Many advocacy groups have

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Speaker 1: put forward this proposal for a national firearms Register. However,

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Speaker 1: the issue that government author alorities are facing at the

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Speaker 1: moment is largely tech based and it's about the transferral

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Speaker 1: of information across state lines. It's a bit complicated, but

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Speaker 1: they've now required all state and federal crime authorities to

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Speaker 1: transfer to another database called the Australian Firearms Information Network.

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Speaker 1: The bottom line amongst all of this information is that

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Speaker 1: there's not really one centralized place for authorities to go

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Speaker 1: with the National Gun Register, and many are calling for

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Speaker 1: its existence.

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Speaker 2: Either way you look at it.

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Speaker 1: We're extremely extremely.

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Speaker 2: Lucky to live where we live, and twenty five years on,

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Speaker 2: we live in a very different Australia. On that note,

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Speaker 2: that's all we have time for today. But in the meantime,

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Speaker 2: if you want to follow the day's news on Instagram,

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Speaker 2: follow us at the Daily OHS. It's where over one

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Speaker 2: hundred thousand readers get their news every day, and we'd

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Speaker 2: love you to become part of the community,