Guns, leaks & answers

THERE is a scene in the Coen brothers’ film of Cormac McCarthy’s grim novel No Country For Old Men where a freshfaced junior lawman and Tommy Lee Jones’ gnarled older sheriff survey a bloody crime scene in the desert.

‘It’s a mess aint it Sheriff?’ the younger man asks.

Jones answers: ‘If it aint it’ll do till the mess gets here.’

The same could be said of the gun leaks scandal that has occurred in this state.

Fortunately there have been no bodies mounting in this local fiasco, but there is little doubting it is a monumental mess.

In 2013 police seized a black book containing a list of gun owners. There has long been suspicion this information could have gone from official hands into the long hands.

Then in January this year the State Government apologised to almost 9000 gun owners after a data breach saw gun owners’ personal information accidentally emailed out to eight people.

For the moment let us call these incidents bungles and assume they are accidental mistakes rather than intentional acts of corruption.

But given the size of the stakes — the safety of the public — it is time we were given some more detailed answers.

It is more than fair for Modewarre farmers like Ross Matthews (and other legal gun owners across the state who have had their firearms stolen by burglars) to ask the question: ‘Did I get burgled because of public service ineptitude over my details?’

It is a shocking state of affairs that the question even needs to be asked.

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, the Privacy Commissioner and Victoria Police need to disclose to the public everything they have learned about bungles that may have seen private information fall into the wrong hands.

To do anything else is to add insult to injury.

Staying quiet while regional firearm burglaries continue will only cause more undue alarm in the community than what is already being felt out there.