The Western Australian police minister, Paul Papalia said 'the threshold needs to be lower' in police intervention following the shocking Perth shooting death of Jenny and Gretl Petelczyc.
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00:00 I understand that since Arielle's statement was released yesterday, there's been quite
00:07 a few requests for me to comment and I appreciate that.
00:11 Just like to say at the outset, it's unbelievable or incomprehensible what people are going
00:19 through, all of the families, including Arielle and her mum, what they've confronted.
00:25 And I'd like to again extend my condolences and sympathies to everyone that's been impacted
00:31 by this terrible tragedy.
00:33 Where does the blame lie mostly, for the failures of the family?
00:40 So what I've got to say is, as I said on Monday, as I understand it, the police were approached
00:53 by Arielle and her mother and what they reported did not meet the threshold for application
01:02 of a police order.
01:04 I've said, and as a consequence of that, as I said on Monday, the Premier's asked the
01:09 police commissioner and myself to look at that.
01:12 My personal view is there's a need to lower that threshold and move into the space of
01:20 where there's an acrimonious breakup and there's known to be guns involved, move very quickly
01:26 to remove those guns.
01:28 We need to change the law because the current law is what dictates the process.
01:33 That's what dictated what happened here and it's inadequate.
01:37 I've acknowledged that.
01:38 That's why we've got new laws.
01:39 But in this particular case, with respect to removal of firearms in an acrimonious breakup,
01:46 I think we need to move earlier.
01:47 I've asked the police to provide us with a submission to potentially move amendments
01:53 to the current law that's going through the parliament.
01:55 So whilst it's in the parliament, we can amend it to specifically target that challenge.
02:02 It will upset some people because we'll be moving very early at the very first contact
02:08 potentially by someone in an acrimonious breakup where there are firearms involved.
02:13 Police will be moving to seize them.
02:15 And that will remove any discretion or concern around subjectivity around the process from
02:24 police.
02:25 As the police commissioner indicated, some of the things that were in the statement by
02:39 Ari or we hadn't heard before, he's directed an investigation into that whole matter.
02:45 And that's the right thing to do.
02:46 You requested that we talk about guns in light of a horrific gun murder only on Friday.
02:53 The laws are being debated.
02:55 They had been in part in the parliament for months.
02:59 They passed through the lower house.
03:01 They had been debated in the lower house.
03:04 They'd moved to the upper house.
03:05 They'd been debated for more than a week in the upper house by the time this incident
03:09 occurred and by the time your newsrooms requested that our comment.
03:11 It's a reasonable thing that we reflected on what was being done.
03:16 It would have been impossible for me not to have stated in what ways the murderer would
03:23 have been impacted by our new laws.
03:25 I didn't say that they would have prevented him having the ability to carry out the act.
03:32 But what I did say is there are at least four different ways the laws would have impacted
03:37 him.
03:38 He wouldn't have had the ability to have a collector's license for the Glock that he
03:42 used.
03:43 He wouldn't have had those under the new laws.
03:46 He would have had fewer firearms.
03:48 That's a fact.
03:49 Doesn't mean that he wouldn't have had a firearm, but under the new laws, we would be the only
03:52 state in the country that imposes a limit of firearm numbers.
03:57 He would have been impacted by the principle, which we are the only state, I believe, to
04:02 have in our law, which reflects the national firearms agreement statement, an observation
04:07 that ownership and use of a firearm in Australia is a privilege subject to the primacy of community
04:15 safety.
04:16 Now that's in our laws.
04:17 Nowhere else is it in our laws.
04:19 There's other things that we're doing.
04:20 So this is, and I know it's not directly relevant to this case because until he conducted this
04:29 act as far as I know, there was no indication that he was an FDV offender or anything of
04:35 that nature.
04:37 But we, as part of the laws that are going through the upper house, are creating a disqualification
04:43 order.
04:45 There are a thousand serious offenders.
04:49 So people who have been found guilty of serious offenses for which the maximum penalty is
04:54 five years or more.
04:56 There are a thousand of those people who currently have a license, a firearms license under the
05:01 current laws because the state administration tribunal, the Supreme Court of Western Australia,
05:07 enables them to retain their firearms, even if the commissioner deems them not fit and
05:13 proper.
05:14 We are changing the law to create a disqualification order.
05:17 When that law becomes effective, we will remove a thousand firearms licenses from people who
05:25 currently have them.
05:26 We'll take all their guns off them.
05:28 That is part of what we're doing.
05:30 It wouldn't have impacted him obviously on Thursday because he hadn't at that point done
05:36 anything that would enable us to apply that law, but it would impact a thousand people.
05:41 Potentially, as I understand it, around a hundred of those thousand are FDV offenders.
05:47 So they have committed serious FDV offenses, but they still have their guns under the current
05:54 law.
05:55 It's important.
05:56 Because the gun laws that are passing through parliament right now will make the community
06:01 safer.
06:02 They won't necessarily stop every incident.
06:05 They won't necessarily have stopped that incident, but we weren't writing this law for Friday.
06:11 This law began to be written two years ago.
06:15 If you consider what has happened in the last, just the last seven years since we've been
06:19 in government, licensed firearm owners, there have been on average, this is on average four
06:27 people a year are shot dead, murdered with a gun in Western Australia over the last seven
06:32 years.
06:33 A number of those murders are committed by licensed firearms owners.
06:40 The Osmington murder, mass murder, the biggest mass shooting in Australia since the Port
06:45 Arthur massacre happened in Western Australia was committed by a licensed firearms owner
06:51 with a licensed firearm.
06:54 Nick Martin's assassination in a public place at the motorplex surrounded by other innocent
07:01 people was committed by a licensed firearm owner with a licensed firearm.
07:05 Last year, the first school shooting in Australia was committed by a child with a licensed firearm,
07:13 the child of a licensed firearm owner, and last year the Kelleberran murder suicide was
07:18 committed by a licensed firearm owner with a licensed firearm.
07:22 And then this year we've had this horrific event, a licensed firearms owner with a licensed
07:27 firearm.
07:29 Firearms aren't the only thing that needs to be considered in FDV response, but it's
07:35 a part of it.
07:36 It's one of the elements.
07:39 It's not in the upper house because of what happened on Friday.
07:43 It's in the upper house because we've been working on it for two years and that needs
07:47 to be considered.
07:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]