The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, will recall parliament next week to consider tougher gun laws in the wake of the Bondi beach terrorist attack, including limits on the number of guns each licence holder can own.
Minns said his government was urgently drafting legislation that would include the limits as well as other changes to allow police to block the issuing of gun licences to particular individuals.
“I think a lot of Australians are asking the same question: ‘How can this person have six guns?’” he said.
“After Port Arthur, with bipartisan support, there was the enacting of very stringent gun laws. But it’s quite clear that we need to do more. The prime minister put that on the agenda quickly at the national cabinet. We can do more to keep Australians safe, and we will.”
Minns on Wednesday noted Western Australia had a limit of five weapons.
“But I think that’s too many,” he said. Sources said a limit of three was being considered.
Minns said the NSW government would reclassify straight shotguns and was looking to prohibit belt-fed magazines in those shotguns.
He will also propose changes to strengthen the powers of police to reject a firearms licence, where there is intelligence that a person may pose a security risk, or is an associate of a person considered a security risk.
The current law states the commissioner can reject an application based on “criminal intelligence” if they believe the person poses a risk to public safety.
Minns said the bill would remove the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal as an appeal mechanism once a designation has been made about removing a licence.
“At the moment, NSW police routinely yank licences from gun holders and licence holders they suspect, or fear, are a threat to the community. Those appeals are heard in Ncat, and often police’s objections are overturned and the guns remain with that individual,” the premier said.
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He foreshadowed that the NSW government was looking at whether recreational hunting should remain a legitimate reason for gun ownership.
“We are going to review that. But the best mechanism to handle it – we haven’t worked out yet,” he said.
“These are the measures that we think we can announce today … but it’s not the end of it.”
Minns said he was in discussions with stakeholder groups, particularly gun control groups. The premier drew support from the Greens, who have campaigned on greater gun control.
“The premier has identified reforms to enable greater consideration of intelligence by police when licensing firearms,” the state Greens MP Sue Higginson said on Wednesday.
“The organisations working to curb gun violence have put forward an evidence-based plan to ensure some of the world’s tightest gun laws in the wake of this horror, and it’s time for us as lawmakers to unify around these reforms.
“Now is the time to heed the advice of experts, advocates and survivors and rule out recreational hunting as a genuine reason to own a firearm.”
But Minns’ stance on guns has not always been so firm.
Throughout most of 2025, the momentum was in the other direction when it came to gun law reform as the state parliament considered a private member’s bill put forward by Shooters Fishers and Farmers party MLC Robert Borsak in the upper house.
It included a legislative right to hunt, which could have had impacts for other laws that restricted gun ownership; a right to shoot on public lands with a permit; a new body called the Conservation Hunting Authority, composed of hunting representatives; and a relaxation on the use of silencers and night vision goggles.
The single-issue Shooters party only holds two seats in the Legislative Council, but they are often crucial to getting legislation through, particularly when there is opposition from the progressives on the crossbench.
Up until September, when gun control advocates waged a major campaign, Labor was broadly supporting Borsak’s bill, meaning that, unlike most private members’ legislation, it stood a real prospect of becoming law.
Since then, Labor has progressively walked back its support for elements of the bill – notably a legislative right to hunt and the more permissive use of silencers – but still, Labor remained supportive of hunting on public lands, even after a parliamentary inquiry during which gun control experts warned of the dangers the bill posed.
The NSW agriculture minister, Tara Moriarty, whose department would administer the bill, supported the bill initially, including a proposal for a right to hunt.
“Hunting is an important cultural tradition for many people across NSW,” she told parliament.
“For some, it is about food, connection to country or time spent outdoors with family. The bill seeks a sensible middle ground that reflects the valuable role hunting already plays, while firmly maintaining the critical safeguards that the community expects.”
Minns then floated the idea of a bounty scheme to pay shooters to kill feral animals, despite opposition from his own departments and scientists.
“It’s about time we start thinking about novel ways of reducing the feral goat, the feral pig, the feral cat population, which has really taken over a lot of parks,” the premier said.
“We should be open to bounties and other things, because we’ve got a lot of recreational shooters out there that are actually getting rid of a lot of the pests roaming across our native vegetation.”
In June, the 2025-26 NSW budget revealed funds had been allocated to the Conservation Hunting Authority – later confirmed as $7.9m – which was another of the Shooters’ key demands.
That prompted a strong rearguard action from the gun control lobby, who were concerned that the body would be a lobby group for gun owners and the right to hunt would undermine laws aimed at gun control.
After representations and a meeting in September with Walter Mikac, whose children Alannah and Madeline were killed at Port Arthur in 1996, Minns started getting cold feet.
“You’re allowed to hunt in NSW, but whether you have a right to hunt, akin to a right to freedom of speech or a right to vote, I think they’re vastly different things,” Minns told parliament in September.
He said he was concerned that the right could evoke the idea of a right to bear arms, as exists in the US.
“We can never go down that road,” the premier said.
A fortnight ago, Labor was still backing a watered-down bill, although how much of the original bill would have been left after the government-led amendments was unclear.
The events of Sunday, when 15 people attending a Jewish festival were gunned down at Bondi beach, now doom Borsak’s bill to the dustbin.
