Labor says ‘yes’ to more guns and a party worse than One Nation

NSW Shooters and Fishers MP Robert Borsak

Remember this when Labor next piously talks about how it refuses to preference One Nation: it’s happy to preference an even worse bunch of nutjobs.

This morning, Fairfax revealed that New South Wales Labor was preferencing the Shooters Party, second behind the Greens, in the weekend byelections in the state seats of Cootamundra and Murray, which will essentially be contests between the Nationals and the Shooters.

To get an idea of how fringe the Shooters, led by proud elephant-killer Robert Borsak, are, this is the party Labor believes is more worthy of support than the Nationals:

• They want 10-year-olds to be able to get gun permits, and add shooting to school curricula;
• They want the Howard gun reforms reversed because they haven’t prevented gun deaths or crime; and
• They believe American gun laws are fine and Americans should fight hard against their being tightened; indeed, they boasted of being Trump’s “deplorables“

Today, John Howard and Tim Fischer have released an open letter noting that “the Shooters’ first priority is to fundamentally weaken our existing firearms laws, introduced by the Howard-Fischer government after the Port Arthur tragedy” and urging a vote for the Nationals’ candidates.

Another alleged critic of the Shooters is, oddly, NSW Labor leader Luke Foley, who, in 2013, attacked the O’Farrell government for … having a deal with the Shooters Party. The latter displayed a “disturbing extremism”, Foley claimed.

Apparently not disturbing enough for NSW Labor to put aside crass politicking and support gun control.