After one full year of governmental power in Victoria the Bracks ALP government have, in GCA’s experience, shown themselves to be more evasive, more secretive, more underhanded and more in the grip of the gun lobby than the Kennett Liberal/National government.

Five months before they were elected a year ago we asked Steve Bracks to discuss the weaknesses in Victoria’s gun laws. He did not reply to our letter.
Three months later we wrote again, specifying a half dozen of the weaknesses.He did not reply.
A month later we wrote an open letter to all ALP parliamentarians, noting the problems we were having with Bracks, and with Victorian gun laws. We asked what Bracks would do to improve the laws if he won office. Bracks wrote the briefest two sentence reply to us claiming he was tackling the task. This was a deception – in fact he had already made a community safety policy which did not even mention the words gun or firearm.
Early in 2000 and following the February 1999 death of a young man at the hands of a careless deer shooter, Bracks minister for Natural Resources and Environment, Sherryl Garbutt, released a proposed policy to improve public safety regarding deer hunting. Despite the fact that we had indicated our interest with letters and discussions with the previous government, Minister Garbutt choose not to invite us, or animal welfare associations, or the Victorian National Parks Association, or the communities who border the forests, to comment on the proposals.
After becoming aware of the deer shooting proposals in March 2000 we made a submission which extensively criticised the Garbutt plan. We asked: “What arrangements were being made to include the dozen concerned community groups and forest communities into the discussion to develop a deer shooting safety course and allow such groups to be represented on the Hunting Advisory Committee”. Ms Garbutt did not reply.
We asked the Ombudsman to request a reply. He said he that he was unable to insist on a reply because Sherryl Garbutt was a Cabinet Minister.
We wrote to Minister Garbutt again, asking what would be done to include representatives of all the people who are not hunters into the Deer Shooters Safety Course and Annual ‘Hunters Guide’. No Reply.
Soon after becoming Police Minister we wrote to Andre Haemeyer’s police department asking for simple but important statistics on the numbers of shooters licences which the police have cancelled and number reinstated. No reply.
We asked the Ombudsman to help. He tried but obtained no cooperation from Mr Haemeyer.
We used FOI to request this simple information. We applied but never obtained the information.

The only conclusion we can make from these experiences is that Mr Bracks intends the State of Victoria to remain a servant of gun interests.