Australia’s most populous state, New South Wales, will begin a gun buyback scheme on November 2, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Saturday, moving forward with a reform pledged in the aftermath of last December’s mass shooting at Bondi Beach.
A father and son are accused of opening fire on a Jewish community gathering marking the start of Hanukkah in Sydney’s eastern suburbs last December, killing 15 people in one of the deadliest mass shootings in the country’s modern history. The attack, which authorities have described as an act of antisemitic terrorism, prompted New South Wales officials to promise a package of firearms reforms, including a buyback program.
“We must do everything we can to make sure the antisemitic terrorist attack in Bondi doesn’t happen again,” Albanese said.
Under the scheme, gun owners holding more firearms than permitted under the state’s new rules will be able to surrender eligible handguns, shotguns and rifles in exchange for compensation of up to roughly 1,000 Australian dollars, depending on the weapon type, with the cost shared between the federal and state governments.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the program could see hundreds of thousands of firearms returned. “We want those guns handed in, compensated for and safely destroyed,” he said.
The buyback follows a broader national gun-control push Albanese launched within days of the Bondi Beach attack, which he described at the time as the country’s most significant firearms crackdown since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, when a nationwide buyback led to the surrender of hundreds of thousands of prohibited weapons. Albanese has said Australia now has more firearms in circulation, at an estimated four million, than it did at the time of that earlier reform effort.
The suspects in the Bondi attack were reported to have held a valid firearms license despite owning multiple high-powered rifles, a detail that fueled criticism of gaps in the country’s existing gun laws.
