Hansard debates

Mrs McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (18:25): My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Police and Emergency Services. In February last year the Labor government announced that $25 million from the taxpayers purse would be spent on 600 new semiautomatic long-armed rifles for use by the Victoria Police operations response unit. This works out to be approximately $41 000 per firearm. I have done a bit of research, and I have found that the Smith & Wesson Military and Police Sport II, which is a .223-calibre centre-fire semiautomatic rifle capable of taking a 30-round magazine, apparently the most likely candidate for the purchase on the taxpayers’ behalf, costs just $1099 from Cleaver Firearms in Queensland. These are really quite cheap mass-produced items. You can go and buy them off the shelf if you like. I am no gun expert; however, I presume that, like most other items, when ordered in bulk they will cost even less.

The National Shooting Council wrote to the minister on 2 December last year asking the minister to clarify where the rest of the money is being spent. In the minister’s response she informed the NSC that the remainder of the $25 million was spent on ancillary equipment, including optical sighting systems, tactical lights, slings and carry cases, and the rest on specialist user training, organisation-wide awareness training and firearm part replacements. The Labor government appears always willing to shove innumerable zeros behind any announced government expenditure to further deprive future generations of taxpayers of important infrastructure and government services. However, this particular expenditure cannot go unexplained. The numbers simply do not stack up. Even if you included all the expensive ancillary equipment, it would be difficult to envisage each firearm costing more than $6000, given the $1099 estimated unit cost. Even if we are being generous and say that each heavily equipped rifle costs $10 000, where did the remaining $19 million go? Is the $19 million for training programs? The minister’s explanation was patently absurd. The action I seek is for the minister to provide Victorian taxpayers with an in-depth breakdown of costs for the $25 million expenditure on 600 rifles.