Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a national gun buyback effort in the wake of the Bondi terrorism attack, describing it as the country’s most significant firearms reform since the measures introduced after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
Speaking to the nation from Parliament House in Canberra on Friday, Albanese said the buyback would target surplus, newly banned and illegal firearms and would be modeled on the approach taken nearly three decades ago following Australia’s deadliest mass shooting.
Why It Matters
The announcement marks the federal government’s first major policy response to the Bondi attack, which killed 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl, during a targeted assault on Sydney’s Jewish community.
Gun control has long been a defining issue in Australian politics, with the post-Port Arthur reforms credited by researchers and successive governments with dramatically reducing mass shootings nationwide.
Albanese said there are now more than 4 million firearms in Australia—more than at the time of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre—underscoring what he described as the urgency of removing more weapons from circulation.
What To Know
Under the proposal, the federal government would introduce legislation to fund the buyback, with costs split evenly between the Commonwealth and the states and territories on a 50/50 basis. State and territory governments would be responsible for collecting firearms, processing claims and making payments, while the Australian Federal Police would oversee the destruction of surrendered weapons.
The effort would be linked to broader reforms being considered by the national cabinet, which unanimously agreed earlier this week to explore tougher gun laws. Options under discussion include accelerating a national firearms register, limiting the number of guns an individual can own, further restricting legal weapon categories and making Australian citizenship a requirement for holding a firearms license.
Albanese said the Bondi attack highlighted gaps in the current system, noting that one of the attackers held a firearms license and owned six guns despite living in a densely populated Sydney suburb.
“There’s no reason why someone in that situation needed that many guns,” he told reporters.
Australia’s modern gun laws were shaped by the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s history. On April 28 of that year, a lone gunman killed 35 people and wounded 25 others at the Port Arthur historic site in Tasmania, using semi-automatic firearms.
Within weeks, the conservative government of then Prime Minister John Howard introduced the National Firearms Agreement, which banned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, imposed uniform licensing and registration requirements across states and territories and launched a compulsory national gun buyback effort.
The buyback, funded by a temporary federal levy, led to the surrender and destruction of more than 650,000 firearms, representing around one-fifth of Australia’s privately owned guns at the time.
What People Are Saying
Albanese explicitly linked the announcement to the legacy of Howard’s post-Port Arthur reforms: “In 1996, the then Howard government did the right thing — intervened to have a scheme which Australians have been rightly proud of…We need to go further.”
NSW minister for police and counterterrorism, Yasmin Catley, on the buyback effort: “We are obviously working on that. It’s not been many days since our terrorist attack in Bondi. But I can give you an indication in Western Australia – they have put $63m aside for their buyback and they have 90,000 guns. So that gives you – ours would probably be ballpark figure three or four times, perhaps more than that.
What Happens Next
Legislation to fund the buyback is expected to be introduced to Parliament in the coming weeks, with negotiations continuing between federal, state and territory governments on the scope of accompanying gun law reforms.
The announcement comes a day after the government unveiled tougher hate-speech laws, part of a broader response to the Bondi attack.
This coming Sunday has been declared a national day of reflection to mark one week since the attack, with flags to be flown at half-staff on New South Wales and Commonwealth buildings. Albanese also said the government would work with the Jewish community to organize a national day of mourning.