Mulder misses mark on guns

I RESPECT Tony Mulder’s contribution to the Tasmanian community. He is an involved politician with strong links to the Liberal Party and is a Clarence alderman. He was a police commander in charge of the Tasmania Police counter-terrorism force and was the police logistics commander during and after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. He supports the National Firearms Agreement brought in after the Port Arthur massacre.

These contributions should give him great authority and responsibility to our Tasmanian community. I am amazed that with his past experiences as a police officer he should be advocating the loosening of Tasmania’s firearms legislation.

While Mr Mulder is correct that “you can’t shoot a feral deer with a .22 bunny gun”, he did not mention that the existing Firearms Act 1996 already allows farmers a licence to use a self-loading, centre-fire rifle suitable for culling large feral animals.

It is impossible to think Mr Mulder and the Hodgman Liberal Government believe that relaxation of Tasmania’s gun laws could be for the good of our community or that they have any mandate to change the law.

Mr Hodgman and his fellow Liberal politicians did not campaign on this issue. Most Tasmanian’s are bewildered by the proposed loosening of gun legislation and wonder who or what is pulling the strings.

The sporting shooters and hunters to whom I have spoken say they do not need semiautomatic or automatic weapons.

The National Firearms Agreement has prevented massacres in Australia for 22 years. If the law is loosened in Tasmania the laws in the rest of Australia will surely be loosened too.

When this happens the Tasmanian and Australian community will again bitterly regret the greater availability of firearms that can be used for shooting large numbers of people.

Lib spinners

THE revelation Liberal Party spin doctors used social media, under assumed names, to further its cause in the election campaign seems to echo the presumed influence Russia had in the US election last year. Assurances by Will Hodgman that all is well does nothing to diminish the gravity of this sort of manipulation of public thinking. Or am I just getting cynical?

It ain’t cricket

I HAD a dream. It was about a new ball game where the players strove to maintain the quality and uniformity of the ball and would rely only on their own skills and not on imperfections of the ball. The players would respect each other and not make disparaging remarks about their opponents or their families. I am not sure what the game should be called but not cricket.

Data mining

ACCORDING to reports, the Liberal Party withheld 200 policies prior to the election. After the election, they said there was too much detail and too many policies to release publicly, however the Premier said “key stakeholders and those with a public interest have been advised”. Would it not have been cheaper and easier to in- form everyone by press release? How did the Liberals know who were key stakeholders and those with a public interest? The federal Coalition has been implicated in data mining, perhaps the state Libs have been doing a bit of digging as well.

Libs and guns

THE proposed watering down of gun laws in Tasmania is offensive to many, with the Government’s lack of transparency prior to the election adding insult to injury.

Also disturbing is the lack of innovation and vision. Alternative methods for landowners to manage animal species are already in play on the mainland. A sterilisation vaccine delivered in bait form has been trialled to manage wild horses and has wider application for managing animals like deer and wallabies. It delivers permanent inability to breed and is the work of the University of Newcastle’s Centre for Reproductive Science.

A government respectful of electors and instep with calls for greater gun control globally has a chance to deliver a winwin for most stakeholders by supporting the sterilisation vaccine program.

Basslink failure

THE installation of Basslink cable should have been done properly in the first place or not at all. This project has cost millions and achieved nothing. It is a monumental failure that should be scrapped, including the second cable proposal.