Member for Nanango, Deb Frecklington says the LNP Opposition has overturned regulations in Parliament this week which severely impacted gun dealer businesses.
Mrs Frecklington said the Labor regulation automatically suspended the licences of gun dealer businesses if the representative on the licencse died or lost their authority to represent the business.
“The LNP Opposition moved and passed a Disallowance Motion to the Weapons Regulation 2016 which said a license held by a business is automatically suspended when the person endorsed on the license dies or that person’s licence is suspended, revoked or expires.
“As the licence was attached to a person, and not the business, this automatic suspension meant that police were forced to seize all stock while the licence was suspended - a huge waste of Police time and resources which could be devoted to targeting the misuse of firearms.
“Now it will simply be a matter of updating the dealer’s license - meaning businesses won’t be thrown into limbo for weeks, if not months, while police freeze their stock.
“These changes have put Queensland into line with New South Wales and Victoria, meaning we’re no longer at a commercial disadvantage to our interstate counterparts.
“They will have absolutely no impact on the way the public usually applies for firearms – the existing process remains in place.
“All of this could have been avoided if the Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Bill Byrne, had bothered to listen to industry representatives.
“After the automatic 10-year review of regulations the Minister chose not to change the Weapons Regulation 2016 on August 11th. Instead the Minister dug in and preferred to demonise hard working business owners and law abiding gun owners,” she said.
“The Minister seems to have a deliberately targeted agenda to make it harder and more difficult for regional and rural Queenslanders, primary producers, sporting shooters and gun business owners to conduct their lawful business,” she said.
