7news has been sounding the alarm on corruption within the gun license process since June, and you've heard the ComPol say that he doesn't want the job anymore. He believes a board should be formed to vet and approve those applications, rather than just one person. Today that process started with a committee meeting to discuss the amendments that will be made to the Firearms Amendment Act.
It proposes to replace the commissioner's sole authority with a three member Firearms and Ammunition Control Board. The proposed members are the CEO of Home Affairs, the police officer in charge of dangerous goods and a magistrate.
Today the first house committee meeting was held by the National Security and Immigration Committee to consider the bill - and the meeting saw a rigorous examination of the proposed legislation.
Following the meeting, the Commissioner told us the recommendations he has made.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"The members of the board as well as those from the public who came expressed their views and their opinion about the bill and whatever was expressed is being taken into consideration for further amendments to the bill."
"There are several things that were brought up by some of the stakeholders who came, and certainly the board, the committee is taking those into consideration and some of what was brought up is already in the proposed amendment so I don't see any difficulty going forward."
Courtney Menzies:
"I understand you, apart from the composition of the board, you also wanted a commissioner, whether a current or a former commissioner, to be on the board, what is your thought process behind this?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Well, my thing is basically, I would want that the board is one that is always available to meet, maybe at least once or twice a week. I certainly don't want to be on the board but I suggested to my minister that I would think that it would be a good idea to have a former commissioner on the board or what is being done to address that issue is that the commissioner do have a representative on the board, either the commander of dangerous good, or someone of higher rank, so that will be able to address that issue."
"It is okay, I would like to see more, but those other amendments, we have made recommendations to our minister for a more in depth amendment of the firearms act. Look for example, we have these air pistols that are being sold in Spanish Lookout and in other places across the country like westrac. These air pistols are of significant power. You will recall about a month ago, two persons were shot in the Spanish Lookout area with one of those weapons and it caused severe damages. In some cases, those weapons are even more powerful than a handgun so we believe that something needs to be done to regulate them. Either ban them or they must apply for license for them, so that's proposed amendment we have also made to our minister to see if the firearms act can be amended to ensure that those persons who are selling those weapons get some permit and those purchasing them, that they do license them as well."
And a few stakeholders, most of which were gun dealers, made presentations. 7news' Jules Vasquez was also in the meeting, and he explained that he believes there needs to be a retroactive audit.
Jules Vasquez, Journalist/Presenter
"I just went as someone in the public interest, the other persons up there were all gun dealers or one of them owned a range, so I just went to speak in the public interest, or what I feel is the public interest because there has been so much proven corruption in the issuance of gun licenses and I went up there to make a cry for transparency. There is in the new law a provision for audits, I'm saying these audits have to be public, the CEO suggested that up there, they should be tabled quarterly, completely in support of that. So I said also that I feel that there are too many members from the security apparatus on the new proposed board, which is the CEO, and the officer in charge of dangerous goods and I also pointed out that a retrospective audit has to be done because we have to know what went wrong in the past, and that has to be done, so that we can see all the criminality that exists in the existing gun register, and that has to be done and the CEO agreed with me that it must be done post haste, that it was ordered to be done some time ago, but they have their own issues, however, my point is that we can't just move forward and say everything was going well. We have to accept that the vetting from the Special Branch has been compromised for many years, not a PUP problem, not a UDP problem, it's a problem in the police department that has plagued both governments and has plagued the country."
"And one more important feature of the new law is digitization, it's incredible to me, gun licenses are still being hand written. It's obviously persisted like that to facilitate corruption, that's why we still have hand written gun licenses, and the law contemplates digitization."
The ComPol has told us that when they attempted to digitize the licenses before, the cost of the software was too hefty, costing about 3 million US dollars.
