Selling out to America’s gun lobby

AUSTRALIA

Tory Shepherd

The Advertiser

In public, Australia’s far-right One Nation party supports our country’s popular and effective gun control laws, said Tory Shepherd. In private, it’s willing to do the bidding of America’s National Rifle Association for “cold, hard cash.” In footage recorded by an undercover Al Jazeera reporter, party official James Ashby tells an NRA representative that One Nation could “own” the Australian Parliament with $20 million in donations. The NRA loathes the firearms restrictions that Australia introduced after a 1996 massacre because they are held up as a model of success by U.S. gun control advocates. At another point in the video, the NRA official says his organization tries to “shame” gun control advocates with lines like “How dare you stand on the graves of those children to put forward your political agenda?” Queensland One Nation leader Steve Dickson responds with glee, saying, “I love that.” Ashby and Dickson now say they were “on the sauce” when the video was recorded. But “how many scotches do you drink before you joke about using dead children for propaganda and taking millions of dollars to relax gun laws?” One Nation says it works for “everyday Australians,” but it’s willing to endanger Australian lives for cash. The party’s hypocrisy is “breathtaking.”