I thought I’d give you a quick update on what’s been happening, as you may not have heard from us over the past couple of weeks.

Apart from the usual end-of-year distractions, we have been busy:

1. Preparing our response to the current review of firearms regulations here in Victoria;
2. Organising a meeting of our political committee (which will be mapping out our plan for this year’s Victorian State Election ) for later this month; and
3. Organising a meeting of a committee looking at the Category B PTA issue – for next week

The first item – being our response to the firearm regulation review – has taken up the most time.

The good news is that we got off to a quick start and the first draft of our submission is now going through an internal review. We hope to share this with you in a bit over a week’s time.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) at https://engage.vic.gov.au/firearmsregulations (click the link to go there) and work up a submission if you haven’t already done so.

The RIS is a document which explains what changes the government is proposing to make to our firearm regulations which support the Firearms Act.  They set out fees – some of which are:

• going up (permits to acquire);
• others down (pensioner discounts are proposed); and
• others not changing (junior licence fees frozen)

– as well as other detail such as the list of ‘exempt’ devices from the definition of a firearm, membership of the Firearms Appeals Committee and so on.

Submissions are due by January 25^th, so don’t forget to check the RIS out if you haven’t done so.

COMING UP: over the next few weeks will be more on the RIS process, updates on the Firearms Amendment Bill currently in Parliament, news about the future of the CFCV – and some early news on the election.

Here’s a quick look at what is in state parliament. We’re doing what we can to make sure we don’t end up with more bad laws…